I could see the Mase trade happening but we'd probably have to take Mike Smith back. Chances are he signs with CGY or WPG I think. He's running out of options at this point to be a starter...

In order for the Mason trade to work he would have to probably be in agreement to go to ARI in a deal like that. The NHL doesn't really do "sign and trades" type deals because the players would have to accept the deal first. The NBA has them, but the players almost always have knowledge that a team is looking to strike a deal for them. And in the NBA, the team that owns the players rights can offer more money in a deal, sweetening the pot, for a player to want to accept a deal to another team willing to take that contract on.

Mason can start on about 1/3 of the leagues teams.

Hopefully you didn't mean that as a knock on Mason and were just commenting on how many teams have set #1 goalies. Mason's numbers since coming over to Philly have been right up there with Rask, Lundqvist, and Crawford in the same time span

If we re-sign VandeVelde, I might go ballistic. If we do and we give him over 1 million dollars, I'm starting a riot. It's bad enough we gave Pebbles a two-year deal when he's already 32 and not effective. VdV is worse. I also don't think Hexy would be inclined to go the route Carolina did and field such a young defense. The team obviously likes the AMac-Provorov pairing for whatever reason so I think we're in for another year of that at least. Sanheim and Myers together in Lehigh probably to start the year. I don't think we see the full youth movement on D until 18-19. If anyone gets dropped down and Hexy wants to ice three rookies, it'll probably be Manning