So...after recovering from last night (sorta) i spent a stupid amount of time today fiddling around thinking about things and playing with cap situations and just having a little bit of fun to try to lift my spirits after a pretty crushing loss.
This is basically what i landed on. Which is probably being very optimistic with some cap numbers and generally just wistful about a lot of things. But...here goes...
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-Trade Hronek. Probably to a team like Buffalo who need a natural RHD badly and need to make a push. I'm not even sure exactly what it would be...but it'd be a futures package. Maybe shoot for a guy like Savoie.
-Whatever that package is, should be something that Vegas covets. Trade whatever you get for Hronek for Shea Theodore, where there's increasing smoke that he's about to go on the block. He only has a year left on his $5.2M sweetheart deal but that's enough to buy us another year to get the cap situation rectified and he's a straight up better player than Hronek. Basically just swapping Hronek for Theodore and using that cheap cap hit to kick the can an extra year down the road.
-Trade Mikheyev to Pittsburgh for Ryan Graves and Reilly Smith (with a couple million bucks retained for the year). It's pretty darn clear that Graves was a mistake signing for the Penguins and just doesn't fit there. Dubas loves Mikky. Mikky is more or less the same salary and a similar case of "right idea, wrong player" here. I can't see another way out of the Mikheyev deal without adding a bunch of assets and futures to dump him...and personally, i still think Graves is a very good defenceman. He's a lot like Zadorov who thrived here under this system as a big aggressive defenceman. He's only a year removed from playing as a very good matchup defenceman with Marino on a playoff team. Huge gamble on him bouncing back...but it's basically a swap of cap dumps, so the "risk" is...whatever.
-Trade someone like Raty to the Habs for Josh Anderson (with $1-2M retained) and Justin Barron. Not sure what sort of prospect they'd want, but Raty is a big guy and they seem to constantly be looking for big Centers. I think they'd obviously like to dump the bulk of Anderson's salary if they can...he also seems like a major change of scenery candidate who looked frustrated there last year but he's still a rare specimen with actual offensive talent, huge size, speed, and physicality. He's also a RH shot that might be nice to camp out in front of the net on the Powerplay. The salary retention would basically put him in the same realm as what Dakota is likely to command, with more speed. Barron would sort of be the "throw-in" who is likely the odd man out in their crowded blueline anyway. But a cheap RHD with some offensive upside would help backfill for moving Hronek and replacing him with a LH shooter as well as basically just plugging in to replace the Chaos Giraffe.
-Re-sign Bluegers somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 years @ $2.3M.
-Re-sign Lafferty somewhere around 2 years @ $1.3M or less if for no other reason than his chemistry with Hoggy, size+speed when he was using it.
-Re-sign Silovs for a couple years @ ~$1M. Hopefully his playoffs haven't put that out of reach.
-General houskeeping with the other RFAs.
-Sign Jake DeBrusk at something around $5-5.5M for 6 years if you have to. Dude is fast, tenacious, a beast on the forecheck great around the net, has some natural goal-scoring instincts and basically built to be the perfect complement to Petey. He's basically...a better version of what Mikheyev was supposed to be.
-Sign Grandpa Tanev to come home and close out his career with Vancouver. Probably two years at somewhere in the $3-4M range. Have a contingency plan to move up for the games he'll miss.
Based on my ambitious accounting...that still gives them a little under a million bucks in wiggle room that i'm sure would be eaten up by the actual contracts. But a roster with a bunch of huge gambles that looks something like...
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DeBrusk-Pettersson-Smith
Suter-Miller-Boeser
Anderson-Bluegers-Garland
Hoglander-Aman-Lafferty
*PDG
*Podkolzin
Hughes-Tanev
Graves-Theodore
Soucy-Barron
*Juulsen/Wolanin
1.Demko
2.Silovs
Obviously being a little generous on some things and there's a lot of "what if?" to it. Plus the fact that it's a huge amount of roster turnover (though i think that's likely anyway and it's not like they didn't just do that this year either).
But i like that group. Hate that it probably means cutting a guy like Zadorov loose. But i just don't see how you can make that work if he's looking for the reported $6M deal. I adore Zadorov but you just can't spend that money on a somewhat inconsistent 4/5 Tweener. Could almost afford him if i weren't taking on Graves in this scenario...but i think that's just the reality of what it'll cost to unload Mikheyev without giving up premium futures assets. And in a lot of ways...i think Graves is the better defenceman anyway.
