Man I'm playing around with capfriendly, trying to think about next seasons team and I think there is a way out. It's optimistic and I think semi-realistic, but here me out (I'll address what needs to go last):
Pettersson 4 years @ $8.25m (big QO in RFA)
Hughes 2 years @ $7m
Demko 3 years @ $3.75m (3, 3.5, 4.75)
Re-sign Pearson (I don't actually want to do this) 3 years $3.3m
Re-sign Juolevi 1yr $1m
Re-sign Chatfield and Rafferty (or any other league minimum D) $750k each
Sign Vasily Podkolzin 3 year ELC (I don't burn it this year either) $925k
Free Agency
Sign Nick Bonino 1 year $1.5m
Sign Adam Larsson 2 years @ $3m
Sign Brock McGinn 3 years @$2.5m (this might be too low)
Sign Riley Nash 1yr $850k (C/W able)
Lineup
Miller - Pettersson - Boeser
Pearson - Horvat - Hoglander
McGinn - Bonino - Podkolzin
Motte - Beagle - Nash
Scratches: Eriksson (I really want to see if he'd trade hitting 1,000 games for LTIR'ing next season....still gets his $4m) and MacEwan.
But as is, Eriksson is in this lineup.
Hughes - Larsson
Juolevi - Myers
Chatfield - Schmidt
Scratches: Rafferty
I've got Ferland on LTIR. ANd the plan is to get rid of Virtanen and Roussel with no salary coming back, think picks for Jake and pick swap for Roussel (only $1.9m cash means something to some teams hopefully). Gaudette left too, hopefully as a sweetener.
This lineup has $73k in cap space. If they could find a way out of Loui's deal all bets are off. You can probably afford to bring back Edler and get a better dman than Larsson. I don't think the job is going to be that hard. Plus it gets even more flexible if you choose not to bring Pearson back.
Something like this can tide them over for the next season and maybe some more draft picks surprise in the mean time. To me it's imperative not to go big on guys like Laughton when guys who are more 2B type C's might be available the following season or as rentals.
21/22 is about building but biding time. 22/23 is the summer where they need to go big game hunting.
Something has to happen with #18, #21, and #26 this season/offseason.