You’re in a similar situation to Kingston where if you buy buy buy you still likely go out first round. That’s the unfortunate truth. 2(TWO) of Brampton, Barrie, Oshawa, Brantford, Kingston, Sudbury only make it on to the second round.
I believe Kingston and Sudbury are likely those teams. You won’t be better than Brampton or barrie for starters, Oshawa has been struggling but they’ll figure it out, also will be getting Calum Ritchie back in the next week or two likely. Dylan Roobroeck has a chance to come back still too. Brantford has been playing without Vanacker, they just got hamara and according to some jiricek has been practicing with the team- not to mention they still have a crap ton of picks and 16 year old O’Donnell to trade at the deadline if need be.
With musty leaving soon you would have lost your entire first line from last year and 128 goals, 307 points JUST from that top line. To put into perspective your returning leading scorer after musty is Delic who had 30 goals(on pace for 7 on the year right now lol- will pick up but still) and 54 points which is 10 less than he had last year.
You will quite literally have to buy a whole new top line, and even still none of them may be as good as musty. Now is it really worth going all in to lose round 1?