It's too late now though, they moved off of Strome but replaced him with Trocheck. Trocheck, Kreider, Zibanejad, and Fox aren't going anywhere anytime soon. If they buy out Panarin, it doesn't help them at all, and if they are trading him they probably need to retain a few million. They do need to replace him externally with a 7-9m guy, unless Lafreniere, Chytil, or Kakko start producing at a higher level.

Trouba is due for a new contract in 3-years but I doubt he is going anywhere either. He probably switches AAVs with and Shesterkin more or less. Their opportunity to make significant changes to the roster would be by letting Trouba go in 3-years but let's see if they do.

They have Miller and Chytil who could get deals like you suggested but I feel like bridge deals will happen, and they will move Goodrow and/or Lindgren to make the money work if necessary.

Miller for Panarin?

Sorry bud, but Panarin only has 3-4 years left. I’d rather deal with Panarin for that reason alone.

It’s like I said, this team is doomed and without a drastic move nothing will improve. Last year was the peak as they’ll never surpass that level of depth again. I personally would tear it down and restart from scratch.

Yeah, I don't think you are wrong that they are probably doomed, but I don't think they can tear it down now either with all the NMC and their history with developing young players (maybe without expectations things might be different). I think the only option they have is to play through these contracts and keep their young players/picks. If they can move some guys with NMC like Panarin they should but chances are they can only get rid of one.

And his contract and awful 5 on 5 play are why we’ll never win a cup.

you can almost say that with all forwards on a big contract on nyr(all have NMC/M-NTC thanks chris)

On a nightly basis, Panarin’s biggest impact is on the power play. It’s not 5 on 5. If he’s not producing on the powerplay, his absence becomes far more notable.

Can we have Panarin back?

Why do you want him gone, your a legit playoff team

And there are no takers for Trouba unless you dump a billion first round picks to get rid of him

He has the most 5v5 points on the team at 27.

27 out of almost 50 games played isn’t great. This team overall is awful at 5 on 5. And that production is not worth $11.6 mil to me.

Tied for 38th in an admittedly down season, in an area that isn't even his strong suit.

Taking away your best 5v5 producer takes an already bad 5v5 to horrendous. 2 Andrew Copps wouldn't make this team better than 1 Artemi Panarin