I just want them to prioritize our 3 best players in Karlsson, Duchene & Stone and worry about how the rest fits around them later. IDGAF if it means having to lose guys like Ceci, Pageau, Smith, etc. if we get to keep our best trio of players. Enough with prioritizing the complimentary pieces. We have plenty of money coming off the books staggered over the next few years, we just need to weather the storm and possibly cut bait with a couple guys we would otherwise prefer not too.
A worst case scenario, Karlsson+Stone+Duchene would combine for 28.5 million dollars (12.5 for Karlsson, 8M each for Stone+Duchene).
Add the opportunity cost lost with dumping Ryan, and now we're talking about 36 million dollars from 2019-20/20-21/21-22 on Stone+Duchene+Ryan.
Buyout Gaborik....during that same period, we have an additional average of 2.7M per season on the books for the first 2 years of Karl's extension via Gaborik+Phaneuf.
Mac will have 950k on the books during year 1 of a Karl extension....
So we could potentially be looking at this to keep Karlsson+Stone+Duchene and miss the opportunity of dumping Ryan with Karlsson....
Cost of keeping Karlsson+Duchene+Stone
2018-19: 25.8M
2019-20: 39.8M
2020-21: 38.5M
2021-22: 37.2M
2022-23: 29.7M
So it's not as simple as just purging the rest of the roster to keep them all because of our 68 million dollar budget. We would have between 28-30 million dollars to spend on an additional 19 skaters for the three seasons from 2019-2022. That means, we'd be limited to spending 1.5M per skater.
It also has to be noted that if guys like Chabot break out, they'll require major raises, which would further complicate things.
It's pretty much impossible to compete in this situation. So we can spend an average of 1.5M per skater, later on becoming a farm team for the rest of the league because we'll have to liquidate anybody who overperforms their way to star money, and if we make even minor mistakes with extensions and overpay even a 3rd liner, it will have potential to sink us....
It is a very harsh reality, but the reality is that under the conditions the Senators operate under, and with the bad money we already have on the books, the best option is to trade Karl+Ryan for a huge package of futures/young NHLers and rebuild with the intention of starting our "peak" 2-3 years from now. It goes against the grain of what most people would typically assume which is that when you have a player like Karlsson, it never makes sense not to keep them, but the situation we're in is the exception to the rule.
Blame Melnyk for his internal budget, blame management for paying players who have sunk us with bad contracts, blame those players for not living up to their contracts.....regardless of who people want to blame, it doesn't change the fact that we have to operate within the rules of the game that have been laid out for us.
The current rules? We have a 68M budget and double digits of wasted salary. Unfortunately, that means trading Karlsson is the best play right now if we want to be as successful as possible long term.
