IMO the reason they came up short was depth. Going early and often to 11-7 was very successful giving RNH and Hyman career seasons but they ran out of gas in playoffs. Combined with Kane injuries and Yamo being sub par they were very thin offensively in the end. Prior to trade deadline Ceci and Nurse were also overplayed. Next season we need to believe Foegele, McLeod and Ryan can play tough minutes as a shutdown unit. They need to move Yamo and allow the young guys to battle for the 2RW(Holloway, Lavoie, Tullio, and Bourgault). Sign Bjugstad and play him with young guys. If we need a move at the trade deadline use Broberg or Holloway or Bourgault to upgrade for an all in. Play four lines(12-6) and rely more on the young guys early, see what rises to the top.
I like your general strategy, but you need to take it a step further.
If you are going to play youth early in the season and upgrade gaps at the deadline, we need to be sitting on at least $3M in empty cap space on day one of the season. Otherwise we'll have no money for a meaningful upgrade.
Rationale: moving a $3M guy to replace with a different $3M guy at the deadline, won't move the needle much. If you are planning to upgrade at the deadline, get rid of a $3M guy in the summer and sit on the cash so it grows to be >$6M by deadline.
Since we are already cap constrained and facing raises to our RFA, that means that THREE of our FOUR $2.5M to $3M guys need to be gone:
* $3M player one (Foegele or Yamo, replaced with ELC youth) gets traded to make room for McLeod, Skinner & Kostin raises
* $3M player two (either the remaining forward or one of Ceci/Kulak, who gets replaced by Broberg) gets traded to make room for Bouchard raise
* $3M player three gets traded to create non-LTIR cap space to be spent at the deadline (it would be >$6M worth by TDL)
* And if you want to upgrade the D this summer then that means the remaining D (from Ceci/Kulak) also gets traded and replaced with a better D.