Équipe: 2021-22 Predators de Nashville

Date de création initiale: 18 févr. 2021

Publié: 18 févr. 2021

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

2 options:
1) Full rebuild where we completely blow up the team. This means trading even Arvy, Fil, and Ellis (in addition to the likely departures of Ehky and Granlund). We won't be fielding a contender for 7-10 years. This is not good because we still have some quality players right now on good contracts (Fil, Arvy, Josi, Ellis).
2) Quick retool. The main goal here is to be very competitive for the 3 year window between 2022-23 and 2024-25. By 2025 we will have $22M tied up in 34 year olds Duchene, Josi, Ellis which will severely cramp our ability to be competitive. So we need to take this season and next season to let Tolvy/Tomasino/Kunin/Fabbro/Saros develop and show us what they are. Our ability to compete will rely on whether these guys can turn into solid NHL players. By 2022-23 we will have Askarov as well, and he could also be a key piece in the aforementioned window. Here are the steps we have to take:
a) trade away Granlund/Haula/Richardson for picks/prospects to refill the cupboard; nothing that will help the team immediately but will be needed as trade chips or to fill out our AHL squad
b) figure out what we can get for Ehky; this is a big piece to the equation. I'd love either a solid center or D prospect or a first rounder. Whatever we get out of this deal needs to contribute during our window. I would also honestly be okay with keeping Ehky and protecting him in expansion.
c) give Joey to Seattle; we can't win with 2 centers at $8M that aren't 1Cs
d) sign a veteran C on a 1-year deal so we don't have to throw Tomasino in there quit yet if he isn't ready. I don't care who it is, could be any one of Stastny/Krejci/Staal/Bonino/Stepan whoever doesn't get resigned and we have the cap to overpay them for a year.
e) figure out who out of Tolvy/Tomasino/Kunin/Trenin/Pitlick/Parssinen/Carrier/Davies will be the contributors alongside our core of Josi-Ellis and DuFA. Then in 2022-23 offseason go sign whoever we need to in order to fill the holes.
Big pieces we will need are a 2nd pair D to fill Ehky's shoes and likely a 2nd line forward if one of Tomasino/Tolvy/Kunin don't cut it.

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