I've run the numbers on capfriendly a bunch of times and I don't see any cap related issues for the next 3-4 years at all. We can afford to give Laine a $9.5 - $10M contract if we want to and can keep Connor, Ehlers, Wheeler and Scheif. Perreault comes off the books and his cap covers his replacement and Laine's raise. Pionk needs a new contract but depending on what we do in a trade, he may be the player taken in the expansion draft.
The big question at this point is what do we do at 2C? We have Stastney this year but what happens next year? If Perfetti can step in as 2C we have it made but in some ways it would be better if we could slide his ELC one more year.
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We likely lose Harkins or Appleton in the expansion draft so Suess moves onto the 4th line and Vesalainen moves to the 3rd line.
We'd have over $8M to sign 2 players, one of which is the pressbox guy and the other is a stop gap 2C until Perfetti is ready. If it works really well would Stastney come back on a 1-2 year deal if we needed him? The trick is we can only pay for a max of 2 years because then we'll need Perfetti's ELC to be there so we can pay Samberg and Heinola. In a worst case we could bridge them for 1 year and then Wheeler comes off the books.
There is no cap related reason to trade anyone. If we decide to trade someone it's a hockey trade where they are trying to reallocate talent from the Wing to either Center or D.
Even if Laine needs $12M and he puts up 120 points this season to earn it we can swing it. Roslovic needs to go for futures. Not ideal but we could absolutely make that work. Unlikey we'd need to, but we could.