This makes the jackets close to a playoff team but is super risky. I don’t want to walk Laine to UFA status when he will be putting up big numbers playing with gaudreau. In this scenario we could flip Nyquist at the deadline if the jackets are out of the playoffs though

It’s high risk, high reward imo. Idk if it’ll happen and as I said it’s kicking the proverbial can down the road in terms of the cap issues, just means we will need to move Voracek too.

The amount of forwards is one thing I dont like. In this scenario we have Olivier, Chinakhov, Marchenko, Bemström, Foudy, Gaunce, Luoto, Fix-Wolansky and Meyer as wingers in the AHL… so two of them in the fourth line and one doesnt even get to play. All of them are basically capable of playing atleast fourth line rome in the NHL..

I would really like to see Chinakhov and Marchenko playing in the NHL

This is just showing a situation where Columbus doesn’t have the trade anybody and of the players you mentioned the only 2 I could see getting consistent ice time is Chinakov and Marchenko, the rest aren’t that good and should probably be in the AHL, I’d even say that maybe it would be better for chinakov and Marchenko to play top line in the AHL (20+ minutes a night) vs playing bottom 6 in the NHL (7-12 minutes a night). And then next year when Voracek and Nyquist are gone they get 2nd or 3rd line roles. It’s not ideal but it does work.