That's true, but I don't think you can really depend on that for anything other than patch work. Like how the Ducks claimed Lassi from us because they had injuries.
I think they need a legitimate veteran #5 D who is a known quantity and ideally on an expiring contract. It's not going to be a David Savard or an option people are super excited about.
Ideally, they would add two veteran defenseman to get depth and force Kleven or whoever else to have to fight for their spot.
If Edmonton is willing to bundle a pick to dump Ceci, maybe we could do a deal where we send that pick to a 3rd party for some retention. Pittsburgh is a team who wants to accrue picks to re-tool with. Something like Edmonton sends Ceci+3rd to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh retains on Ceci and sends him to us for JBD
So, if we fill in the blanks, and add say Crookshank/MacEwen as our 12f and Ostapchuk as the 11th, then add Kleven to push Hamonic to the 7th D, we only have 600k left in cap space. We can get a bit more by swapping Ostapchuk for a 775k deal like MacEwen but we still won't have enough to carry an extra body.
The problem we have is that Hamonic is locked in place, we can't send him down, we can no longer buy him out, he's th 7th D, which i think is fine but it does mean that anyone we bring in on D can only push out JBD or Kleven, the former being Waiver eligible..
Up front, there's more flexibility because we can send Crookshank or Ostapchuk down and cover the incoming player without any worry.
I think we could bring in some guys that we don't mind waiving, but then what...
Kylington seems like a decent option, he plays both sides, great skater, has played top 4 mins but might want more money than we can offer, and probably isn't keen on going somewhere he could get waived rather than at worst end up the 7th D. If he were to sign here, it probably means either more time in the AHL for Kleven or JBD gets waived.
