The most realistic off-season

Kaprizov is the only reason it's a fringe Playoff team. Without him it's a bottom feeder.

It's pretty much how I see the offseason going. Fiala for stuff that won't help the team next year.

Try to re-sign MAF. I think MAF walks away just like Cole and Bonino did. So MN gets stuck with whatever leftover back goalie he can find.

I did some math so no one else has to.

Looking back at the last three seasons worth of data, and taking each players goals per 82 games played rates, assuming everyone on this roster plays 82 games at their average for the last three years, this team can be expected to score 252 goals next season. That would have been good enough for 16th in the league this year. Assuming the GAA doesn't change much (because we haven't improved the defense or goaltending at all) our projected goal differential is close to 0.

Obviously there's a lot of room for error with this model, because guys like Boldy should improve (though without Fiala, how much he actually does is a valid question). For the sake of simplicity, I assume injuries and regression from the top two lines will cancel out any potential improvements on these numbers from guys like Boldy, Gaudreau, Jost, Dewar.

Teams that had a roughly even goal differential this season were Los Angeles, Winnipeg, New York Islanders, Dallas. Two of them made the post-season as wild card teams, two of them missed the playoffs.

what about Boucher+2ndrd(ott)+Gustafsson(goalie) for Fiala. ONly a handful of teams might be going for Fiala

The only difference between this and what I proposed is that the 4th is replaced with a goalie, and unless we can't find any other goalie, Gustafsson isn't something we want. Guerin has already said Talbot is going to be back and that he wants to bring Fleury back too. Fleury has said he'll test FA, but returning to MIN is an enticing option for him.

This is my opinion as well. When doing the calculations for xGF next season, Kaprizov has 45 goals, the next highest is Boldy with 26, then Zuccarello with 23, Eriksson Ek with 22, Foligno with 21, and Hartman with 20. You can be the judge of how realistic each of those are. This team is going to be scraping and clawing for every goal when Kaprizov isn't on the ice.