Here’s my take:
AlJo has looked great in a very small sample size with Edvisson so far. Is it all on him, or is Simon the type of player who makes his partners look better? It’s way too soon to know for sure. Certainly premature to assume he can handle top pairing minutes with soul-crushing deployment like Seider does.
Also consider that not long ago he was not even rated as highly even by us as some of his peers like Wallinder, Buium, and Tuomisto. All those players were expected to be better than him and still may be. We can’t keep them all if they start hitting. That’s part of the reason we traded Andrew Gibson, too many guys already ahead.
My thoughts, I think if he keeps up this play he will price himself out of Detroit. Edvinsson will be due for a big raise in the 8-9M range or more. ASP will need big money too if he’s what we hope he will be. Paying 4 defenseman big dollars isn’t ideal and probably not the best. Even with the cap going up by almost 20M the next 2 years we have to be smart. AlJo is a prime guy who can get excellent trade value while having in-house cheap replacements already set up. He’s not a core guy imo and is probably long term best utilized trading for a top 6 forward than paying a big contract to keep around as a highly paid 4D behind Seider, Edvinsson, and ASP. If we are paying Seider 8.55M, and Edvinsson and ASP with the high cap probably 8.5-9.5M that’s already 25.5M-27.5M of the cap tied up in 3 defenseman. Do we really want to invest another 6-7M more for a 4D. Even at a projected cap of 113.5M for 2027-28 that’s around 30% of the cap on just your top 4 D. Then you have to figure Larkin, Raymond, whichever goalie hits between Cossa and Augustine, Kasper will need to be paid if he keeps it up, Danielson if he is what we hope he will be, DBC……. Cap runs out really fast and players will cost a LOT more starting this offseason knowing that all the teams will have loads of cap to spend for the next 4 years.
