Now what is Danault worth His play has improved since Jan

Something close to this.

If you guys give your 3C 5 mil a year your screwing yourselves financially. He is a 2C on weaker teams and. A 3 C on top teams I see him as a 3.5-4 mil a year max.
I really like him but he needs to put up 50+ points if he wants 5m+ a year

rather give him a 7th year and drop the AAV to 4.25-4.4...he gets his $30M and we save a decent amount on the cap hit

Thing is, he's not our 3C. He's the 2C for now, pretty much on par with Kotkaniemi. Is he gonna pass him eventually? Yeah, but he's still much needed for now. Heck, he shut down Crosby last playoffs and is MacKinnon's most difficult player to play against. He does put up 45+ points while being a top defensive center in the league.

I agree with you 100%, but...it's hard to argue he's a 3C when he's always played against the opponent's top C. I would have expected KK to surpass Danault now, but Danault is clearly outperforming him by a great margin. So I guess Danault is more of 2C than 1C