I'm very glad that Provorov is getting some love. It's definitely worth considering extending him. As of today I'm probably leaning against it. Though we might very much regret not keeping him.
If you pay him as a middle of the pack left D and give him something like 3 x $4.25, I could live with that. But he’ll probably want 7 x $8 and he isn’t worth anywhere near that. We are at risk of being two years away from having a bottom pair with a $14 million cap hit.
Have you been living in a cave? Middle of the pack D are going to be making $6m+ per from now on.
If we didn’t trade for Severson we could have outbid Washington for Matt Roy the following off season. That is the move we should have made. I don’t know who will be available in a year, but rushing to be a borderline playoff team is not how I think we build a Cup contender.
You can't predict who you can land in free agency. Especially not a year out and especially not the Blue Jackets. We have no idea what we'd have to have paid Matt Roy to come here, or if there would have been any interest. If it was well north of what we paid Severson it might not have been worth it.
I'm not sure if Matt Roy is better than Severson overall. Very good defender but not close offensively. With Severson we're currently getting 54% xG and 55% actual goals. He's a good player. The length of his deal might become a problem (as it might for Matt Roy), but right now we're getting our money's worth for Severson.
Mateychuk has a pretty good chance of replacing Provorov well. Severson is a liability defensively and he's making pretty good money for it too.
I truly rather build the defense around good defensive dmen who can skate. Provorov is better than Severson but both of them together is going to take up a boat load of cap space for guys who just aren't that impressive. Neither of them are great defensively, shout out Jarmo.
This team still needs to draft elite talent, right now they have Mateychuk and Werenski. There could potentially be a trade option this off season if they trade Provorov but otherwise, the team still needs to keep building. Wonder what 3 1sts could bring back in a trade.
This can't be fast tracked and yes, building the right core and then going all in, is the proper way to contend for a Cup and do it for many years.
So you want D who play D better than Provorov (he's above average defensively in my view), and are high end skaters. Okay you're talking about a small group of players, very hard to land.
I'm leaning against extending Provorov partly because I think Mateychuk will earn more minutes than him and drive a lot more offense, though defensively I think Provorov is above average and will be missed.
