I still don't understand the ongoing preoccupation with trading Tierney. He's not a high-demand player. He's not going to bring back an elite return or be the centerpiece of any deal that gets made. And without Tavares and the crazy high cap hit he commanded, the team does not need to pinch pennies and move his (still probably manageable) RFA payout in order to keep the budget on track.
At this point he's probably more valuable to the Sharks than as a trade chip unless DW or an arbitrator goes nutso and awards him like a $4m/yr contract. And especially without Tavares and with no guarantees of what sort of other pieces are on hte market, we still kind of need centers for the bottom 6. I do not now nor have I for most of recent history advocate shoving Hertl down to the 3rd line just to "give him his own line" or something.
Kane - Thornton - Pavelski
Couture - Hertl - Meier
There's your no-transactions top 6. Ideally I'd swap Pavs and Meier but I don't think Joe comes back without assurances he'll get to continue riding shotgun with his bestest buddy. Besides, the advantage of this deployment is that both lines basically have two centers on them (Thornton/Pavs, Hertl/Couture) for added flexibility. It's essentially 2 good second lines instead of a traditional setup, but since we're clearly not going to just out-talent everyone on raw ability anymore, they might as well go the depth approach.
Labanc - Tierney -Donskoi becomes your scoring-capable, hard-working (Tierney and Donskoi at least) 3rd line. Then you build a 4th line out of all the leftovers (Goodrow, Sorensen, Melker if he's still here I guess, Suomela, Praplan, Radil, any of Gambrell/Letunov/Balcers if you're hellbent on pushing them up the ladder now even if its miscast into a 4th line role)