Is Johansson our 4th long-term/core top-4 D (Mo, Ed, ASP.. AJo?)

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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.

FWIW, Boston, Vegas and Colorado are currently spending 35% of the cap on their defense. Carolina is at 32%. Dallas is at 36%. Kings are at 34%.

I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself stressing about cap allocation for the defense when 3 of the guys you have mentioned have yet to sign a contract.
 
I think this is probably right. Long term I doubt we see both Aljo and ASP in the top four. We have room for one of them in the top 4 but not both I suspect.

I am extremely happy with how Aljo has played since the coaching change. I have been the biggest Aljo bear on this board and I am extremely happy that he is proving me wrong. That said, I encourage people to be cautious. I sense people are judging him against the crap on our roster, and not league standards. I see him as more of a number 5 on a really competitive roster. Everything is relative in life. We are all accustomed to watching four really bad defensemen a night. The least ugly girl is still ugly.
And that attitude is how Forsling ended up in Florida...
 
There’s no way ASP is more hyped than Ed. ASP has been hyped to be our future second pairing RD and PP1. Edvinsson has been hyped to be better than our young #1D
Pre NHL debut hyped, I mean.

Edvinsson was a great prospect. But if he'd won 2 world junior DMan of the tournament's people here would've been jumping off buildings w him in GR last yr
 
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Right now, Johansson is the future 3rd pairing LD. He may eventually work up to the 2nd pair if things keep going well.

Right now Johansson is 2nd pairing RD, and a good one, that the only things that matters. I mean Larkin might be also future 3rd line center or Seider is 3rd pairing RD...
 
Well, wtf.

Going into the yr it looked like we had 3 of our 4 top-4 long-term core D in the organization (Seider, Ed, ASP)...and we still needed to add one more elite D.

Now it looks like we may actually already have all 4 in place, and might not need to add another elite D.

If you want to focus on the actual pairings...yada...whatever.
Didn't you start this entire thread with a D pairing in the title? He shouldn't focus on the actual pairings in a thread about a D pairing?
 
Right now, Johansson is the future 3rd pairing LD. He may eventually work up to the 2nd pair if things keep going well.

So, uh…you may have missed a few things
The last 6 weeks.

It’s 2025. Petry is injured. Gus was taken off PP1 and they’re scoring at a pretty high rate. Soderblom is a regular. AlJo has already been promoted to the 2nd pair and has played a big role in our 7 game, then 6 game win streaks.
 
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This. Honestly that's the one thing about coach Todd that bothers me. Not using ed on the pp over gustufson. Ed clearly has lots of skill to help improve the 2nd pp unit. Long term i think ed would be more effective than seider on the pp (ASP will be 1st pp).

Why does it bother you? Our first unit does most of the damage anyway? I'd much rather at this time develop Ed into the best pk and even strength dman in the league, lock him up long term this summer and then unleash his offensive prowess next year after he's had a full season of developing on the second pair the right way.
 
FWIW, Boston, Vegas and Colorado are currently spending 35% of the cap on their defense. Carolina is at 32%. Dallas is at 36%. Kings are at 34%.

I think you are getting a little ahead of yourself stressing about cap allocation for the defense when 3 of the guys you have mentioned have yet to sign a contract.
I don't get it either. I'd much rather pay 4 top tier dmen 32 million combined then 4 forwards $46.5

Hell 4 dmen at 32 combined plus Raymond and seider and we're just barely above what the leafs pay 4 forwards.

With a d core like we're building you only need 3-4 good forwards and 2 very good/elite forwards.

Especially if one of cossa or Augustine pans out
 
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