Yeah, you're still not gonna win the cup with that bottom 6, defence, and goaltending.

That bottom 6 is great, IMO. Larsson, Cousins, Simon, and McLeod all provide solid defense (Simon is also decent offensively). If Foegele rebounds and starts playing like he did in Carolina again, he should be great on line 3. Dylan Holloway can also provide some offense.

The defense is still not great in this BUT, only one of the players on it has a negative xG +/- (it's Ceci, but its because he does 0 offensively)

Skinner has been great and would likely be even better when the defense actually can prevent high-quality chances unlike what they have done this year.

Yamamoto > DeBrusk

I'm not sure I agree, tbh.

Using Evolving Hockey's RAPM stats (19-22 (including this year)) Yamamoto has: 0.016 xG +/- (0.035 xGF/0.019 xGA) and DeBrusk has: 0.107 xG +/- (0.072 xGF/-0.035 xGA)

and Using TopDownHockey's WAR Yamamoto is in the top 68% of players (inflated by his finishing) while DeBrusk is a top 78 percentile player (also sort of carried by finishing but he drives offense better)

Neither guy drives offense. But Yamamoto is useful even when he's not scoring, whereas DeBrusk gets healthy scratched if he's not scoring. Oh, and he's WILDLY overpayed.

Should add that DeBrusk is not as effective when playing on his weak side.

Can swap him and Hyman then.

Perhaps, but that doesn't fix the salary cap issue.