If you want to take any cues from Tampa, a group with a pretty versatile set of forwards, you'll note that, aside from Palat at 5.3M, they don't commit over 5M to any of their crash-bang guys and the majority of the cap space is dedicated to the high end skill guys.
They've cycled through value contracts in Goodrow, Coleman, Paul, Hagel, Bellemare, Colton and I guess Perry/Maroon too. Franchise-equivalent of Warren Buffett as far as identifying bottom six value. Of course, they paid in draft capital.
Only way to improve on this would be to actually draft those types of players, and it remains to be seen if we have truly done that. I'd love for Zetterlund, Thompson, etc. to become as useful as those guys but not holding my breath. Part of what makes those guys useful to a championship team is the amount of experience they accumulated before coming to TB.
I also think this is an implicit argument to shoot pretty damn high (boom/bust) in the later rounds of the draft. Is true bottom six value for a contending team ever that young?
Bottom line: never do the Backes, Anderson, Lucic, etc. thing. Like, ever. Draft them? Yeah sure. But never carry their third deals.