Again though, do we really have to act like teams and agents didn't know/have an estimate of what next seasons cap hit would be
Thinking and knowing are different things, and they wouldn't have even thought 95.5m, because that required further negotiations to even be possible. Not to mention two more massive jumps in the following two years.
our players are out for money and nothing else waiting for the cap to rise officially to sign their new deals.
You've kind of just jumped to the assumption that not signing a year early is a result of only caring about money and wanting to take advantage of cap raises.
No games are being played with Marner.
Disagree. We should have made it a priority last offseason, and the whole deadline stuff was a circus. They knew Marner wasn't interested in signing in-season. They should have known Marner wasn't going to waive. This is the last thing we needed heading into the playoffs.
1st round exits non stop is not getting closer to the cup
What round you've exited past playoffs is a poor measure of how close you are to a cup, and making your team worse doesn't get you closer to a cup.
An emotional reaction is saying blow the core up after 2-3 years of round 1 exits. 8 years of the same stuff is more than enough time for fans to see this isn't working and have nothing to look forward to.
An emotional reaction is wanting to remove one of the best parts of your team for change's sake because you are upset at past outcomes. It has not been 8 years of the same thing. You're just looking at things through one very specific lens.
This is the NHL. Winning rounds in the playoffs is the main goal
The Cup is the main goal. What round you lose in doesn't actually mean or represent a whole lot.
The fact you try and make excuses and say that's shortsighted when fans are expecting more playoff success from this core is ironic.
Acknowledging the actual reasons for things and what it actually means is not making excuses. It's fine to want and expect more playoff success. But it's counterproductive to then damage your team's future because you haven't got it yet.
Losing pieces of this core doesn't impact our team like you say. Every player in this core has missed time and our team has looked fine with 1 of them out of the lineup almost every time
Maintaining a respectable record through a handful of games is different than maintaining a record long-term, and having multiple superstars is one of the reason we
can maintain through injury. And ironically, Marner is the one we are the worst without. Which is likely in large part statistical noise, but also probably a bit about how much and how many things Marner impacts.
Paying proven and consistent 40-50 point scorers does help the depth scoring be more consistent.
Bunting the only 1 who we can say was 1 of the few league min guys who had his miracle seasons getting a chance to play with Matthews before falling off. Mikheyev, Engvall, Kerfoot and Foligno are interesting ones since I don't remember these guys being known for their offence so idk why we'd think they'd help the depth scoring. Foligno especially. Got 11 games total out of him and 0 goals and 5 assists for a 1st round pick I believe. Bertuzzi was only her for 1 season and had a pretty good season after a slow start. O'Rielly was great in his 24 total games we had him for. Laughton has been here a week. Domi has been a great playmaker here but needs to start scoring more.
You're missing the point. These are the guys getting 3-5m in UFA. In fact, with the rising cap, even worse players are going to get that. We've already had them! Paying the same caliber of players more money isn't going to help our depth scoring be more consistent. And even if we were able to make our depth scoring more consistent, the difference between them and what we can and have gotten for cheaper is not going to be worth the loss of Marner.
The cap rising doesn't free up much cap when we're just paying the same guys who took up all our cap even more money, and then also having to pay other guys who were on team friendly deals after trades or on ELCs. Knies, McCabe and Woll are the 3 that come to mind here.
We're paying the four 46.65m this year. That leaves ~41m. Re-signing them all, we're probably looking at around 45m. That leaves over 50m next year... 59m the next year... 68m the next year... Yes, players like Knies, McCabe, and Woll will see increases, but it's the job of the GM to get the next Knies/McCabe/Woll.
We have 7 forwards making 2+mil towards our cap. 4 of them are the core who are making 11+. Did Florida also have 4 of their 8 making 11 mil+? Barkov and Tkachuk are the highest paid and they made 19.5 combined.
Both teams had 8 forwards on 2m+ contracts, and both teams used a number of cheap depth players. Toronto pays their better players a bit more, and Florida does things like pay 11m+ for goaltending and have millions in dead cap. There are many ways to win, and the depth players that helped them are not players that we would not have been able to afford.
