As fun as this run has been, my guts are telling me that Bergevin & co will take for granted this team's contender status and won't make any significant changes, including keeping Dominique Ducharme behind the bench.
The fact that Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Cole Caufield and Alexander Romanov, who are all 21 years old and under, have been scratched for the benefit of much worse players shows how disconnected Ducharme's system is, especially for a team whose best players are on ELCs.
Brendan Gallagher and Jeff Petry have a combined 12 points in 42 games and have new $6M+ deals with NMC kicking in for 6 and 5 years respectively. It's unclear how much of their lacklustre performances can be related to their injuries, but they're naturally going to decline at some point. Then, there's Carey Price and Shea Weber on their olympian deals that have both 5 years left, one of them being buyout-proof with a full NMC.
If there's one veteran I'm looking forward to having back, it's Phillip Danault. Hopefully, Nugent-Hopkins' deal set the market for him, and Danault signs for $4.875Mx8. It may end up aging like Backlund's deal, but the rising cap will alleviate the inevitable last overpaid years.
My take on Drouin's situation: I'm expecting a summer hockey trade, at loss, given the current situation. If they plan on rebuilding a part of his value, play him with Anderson who he had success with and Kotkaniemi on the third line. If not, potential trade targets include Butcher, Gostisbehere, Leddy, Ristolainen, Skjei, Walker, White, Zucker.
Wait, just wait. In a couple of days we'll see who played injured and we'll be able to see if the team needed more or if the team just wasn't healthy enough to compete. It's known that Petry needs a surgery for his dislocated fingers (He wasn't the same after the injury), Gallagher clearly still had a broken hand and the same could be said about Weber (Broken thumb), put a healthy Gally on the ice and he scores but now he just couldn't shoot.
Instead of trading Drouin at a loss and loosing Allen for nothing we just have to leave Drouin unprotected at this point, I'd be more confident with Allen than Halak knowing where they are in their career.
Bergevin needs to not overreact and assess what went wrong, bounces went TBs way early in the series (Akward deflected shots) otherwise we'd still be playing hockey.
Why protectign Kulak?? He's a fine defender but isn't a franchise altering guy especially with his inconsistency, great when he's on but good christ when he's off, he's off for real. Chiarot holds the line on the first pairing for the time being, something Kulak couldn't do.
Knowing Bergevin and his "flawless" big 4 you're probably right. Protecting Kulak would be my ideal scenario though.
protect kulak to dress for maybe 40 games next year? i'd be pumped if seattle even considered taking him, we have multiple young d on the cusp on making the jump, Fleury probably couldve been up already had they not jammed the depth chart with dmen at the deadline, Kulak's a 7th dman ideally, not someone you should even consider protecting.
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