Quoting: CapFriendlysFinest
Totally fair with Comtois / understand why you want him there. Has he played with Terry and Z yet this year? Feels weird why they wouldn't try it yet.
Love the idea of Dumba being a locker room guy and standing up for his team. I just worry a cap hit of lets say 6 million a year could see him lose some of that defensive touch he has get lately. Would you resign Shat for a year or two to play on the 3rd pair of the idea of the first two pairs looked like this?
Flower and Dumba D1 and Graves and Drysdale D2. ? and Shat D3?
I personally wouldn't and if Dumba was the guy you wanted I would suggest getting a shut down guy to play the PK and third pair. But again, I haven't seen or heard enough of Shat this season to know how good he's been.
I'd sooner take the trade for Nylander than resign Shattenkirk to be brutally honest. The guy keeps piling on the bad giveaways that keep ending up in the back of the net. He has good games from time to time, but there's no middle ground left, he is either good (not great) or absolutely brutal, and we really need better stability at the back. I don't know if he hasn't learned the system, if he and his D partner are not communicating, or what, but he constantly appears to be on a different page than the rest of the team.
Comtois has had very limited utilization with Z&T. Not a whole lot came out of it, but its been a small sample size, and I think the coach was looking for Max to put up points rather than play the supporting role. Right now he is playing with Zegras and Strome on 2nd line and its looking good as far as generating chances go. Really Max just needs to stay with Zegras wherever Z goes in the lineup. Zegras notably heated up when Comtois got put on his LW and he got moved to center on 2nd. (went cold on the top line, got dropped to 2LW with Strome centering, that DID NOT work)
I don't think Dumba is going to get 6 million again. I think signing him to 4.5-5 mil AAV for 4-5 years is enough of an overpayment to secure him. I know it SEEMS like he is old, but he is only 28, he should keep it together well enough until his age 32 or 33 season. We'd also be looking to sunset him down to 2nd pairing with Fowler in the 24-25 season until Fowler's deal is up, then maybe let him down to a sheltered 3rd pairing role to finish out his deal. We have limited RD options in the pipeline outside of Helleson for the next 3-4 years anyway, we should get our value out of Dumba.
As to a shutdown 3RD and PK guy, yeah, we need one of those too. I'd like to take a one year dump for that personally, a Zaitsev or a Meyers. We have Helleson who should be good to go for third pairing after another year in the AHL, but I want to let him adapt properly before calling him up, if we burn him we have no one else (a couple long shots) in the tank until we get down to the guys we drafted last year.