You seem to think this team hinges singularly on nuke. We were screwed if this had happened to any one of him, Mack, Makar, Rantanen, Lehkonen, Toews. It just happened to be him. For the second straight playoffs. We need all the good players we can get and he is not trusted to stay clean. Use his cap on a good player that is, it’s as simple as that.
Nuke is a good player, good players are useful to winning. Add in the shock and disappointment factor of removing a good player from the roster, for personal transgressions two years in a row and it’s very obvious this shouldn’t be weighted the same. This is not brain science or rocket surgery here.
This player is a liability and we can use their cap space on someone that isn’t.