I think if Gaudreau and Monahan each improve on last season's performances they'll probably be able to command more money than that, I mean, look at Tarasenko after basically two good seasons.

It's doable but it means gutting the 3rd and 4th line quite a bit to do so. In my opinion that's a worthy expense to be able to keep the core group together. Calgary's major problem is that they have too many secondary players with 1-3m salaries who aren't needed if this scenario is to work. If they wanted to keep the core of the team together and signed they'll need to do something along the lines of:

Instead of buying out Raymond and Smid I'd buy out Stajan and Engellend because their value is just too low to trade and they still have another year after this one left on their contracts. Raymond and Smid still have a little bit of value believe it or not and can be traded if you retain a little bit of their salary. If not, they only have this one year left on their contracts so you bite the bullet and after the season is up they're off the books without any cap penalty for buying them out.

Backlund is a good player but if this is to work you'll need to make a sacrifice. At least he can be shipped off if needed. He has some value.

Granlund and Byron do not need to be resigned for 1.4M since they haven't really proved enough at the NHL level yet and if you can't get him for under 1M than they can be traded away as an unsigned player for whatever you can get for him. These are huge losses when looking at the big picture.

With these 3 changes, they should be able keep all the key pieces together and not lose anything that would hurt them too much.

I don't think they have the cap space to go Tarasenke with the two yougsters.

Every buyout could also be a trade with money retained. Should have explained this.

Of course Ganlund/Byron could be exchanged for some free agents, but I don't think they get a significant improvement for less money. Buying out Stajan might indeed be a good idea.

Another option might be to trade Kris Russell now. He's only got a 2,6 mio cap hit for next season, so the market for him would be huge. Or a Wideman trade/buyout is another option.

My main point is, they have some huge decisions to make and especially if the cap doesn't go up a lot, they will have some head scratching to do.

Hmmm I actually went against my believes here. I just don't think Ortio will be around for much longer. If he's sent to the AHL a team like Buffalo will pick him from the waivers.