Yeah, we don't have as many assets as people think.
We can't really afford to do a lot of 2-for-1s or 3-for-1s anymore. We might have one big move left but then we will be hurting elsewhere. As much as people don't want to hear it, we stopped the talent acquisition phase too early, simply put, and even setting that aside, the Copp, Tarasenko, and Kane rentals were just terrible ideas and terrible values for us. We could really use another 3-4 good prospects right now.
They simply cannot buy this deadline. Yeah, they have talent. But most of that talent isn't at their "last chance," moment quite yet. At the same time, it's not so painstakingly close to winning it all that they just have to try to insulate themselves. They are one of the best 8 or so teams and they could win or lose any round, but you don't throw assets away on a toss-up.
They need to get their youth some experience down the stretch and try to feed minutes to Lafreniere, Kakko, Cuylle, Berard, Othmann, Rempe and Edstrom. Losing Chytil this year really killed them. They would need to go on a legit miracle run without a real 3C. They won't have the firepower at 5v5 in the playoffs - they never did before, they definitely won't now without a real 3C. It would have been nice to have another young center they could have inserted but they don't listen to me or they would have had one or two.
They need to move out Trouba and Goodrow in the offseason at any cost. They have to get out of those salaries. We can table the "is Trouba actually an NHL defenseman," talk but whether he is or isn't, he's too expensive. We can get 2-3 guys who are better than him for his salary. I'm also open to moving Lindgren if he can bring back a package for a long term piece. He has had a very bad year but his prior years were measurably better.
In an ideal world, with the cap going up slightly, you pawn Goodrow off on someone for free (ie, you don't have to pay assets for someone to take him), you trick someone who thinks they need size into paying you a first for Trouba, and Lindgren is swapped for a young center.
Perrault probably isn't ready for next year yet. With Goodrow, and probably Pitlick and Vesey gone, you are looking at
Kreider Zibanejad Kakko
Panarin Trocheck Lafreniere
Cuylle Young Center Othmann
Bottom line some makeup of Brodzinski, Rempe, Edstrom, Berard, journeyman grinder
If Chytil comes back, Cuylle can play bottom line.
Then you use whatever assets you have to go get a top pair defender. Let's say you can use the first you got for Trouba to package for Chychrun (just an example).
Chychrun - Fox
Miller - Schneider
Gustaffson, Robertson, Jones, cheap UDFA
