NSH doesn't seem to have much motivation to move Lauzon. It would probably take more than they paid for him - which was already too much - so it's not really worth it for you.

Curious - why would we want to move assets for Lauzon? He’s good, but can’t you get ‘good’ without trading something?

Probably fair enough

Umm you mean massively overpaying for a defenseman who's probably going to get overpaid by $1-2m just to get him here

I think we can eliminate overpaying for Debrincat, thankfully

I mean a 8X8 is not reasonable and he adds another scorer.

Yea he’ll likely get more and add in Car is only half a match for our needs. Luckily we aren’t on his list

That list has expanded and we have the cap space to overpay him (for the next few years). You're going to have to pay a premium for scorers... Just look at Aho

Aho is center and a pretty good one. Cat is not and not a full fit of our needs. There isnt a real need to add him here and burn our only chance to improve.

A scorer is one of our needs and DeBrincat is that. He has the most proven track record (while still being young) of any of the scorers that are either on the trade block or in free agency

I mean sending assets to NSH for a replacement level (or even a little higher for argument purpose) and overpaying the player at the same time. You can get as good player in UFA for $2m without also paying pick or prospect

we have small wingers. Our need is a big body, dirty area, winger. Cat isnt that and dosnt play good defense. It just isnt a 100% match. no need burning 8.5 million a year on a guy who isnt our 100% need for 8 years. Really if Pesce and Skjei come back for 24-25 on beyond, we only have about 6.5 million for a top 6 acquisition anyways.

Fair enough

big body, dirty area, winger... We can get that for the bottom six with the exception of Flordia everybody puts that kind of player in the bottom six. We can sign Corry Perry or Brendan Lemieux and stick them on the fourth line to solve that problem

It's pretty likely that we won't bring back both Pesce and Skjei. He plays okay defense under D. J. Smith and that's under a guy who doesn't know how to coach defense. There is nobody on the market who's going to fix both our size and scoring need they are going to need to be addressed separately.

its pretty much a foregone conclusion both are coming back. Yes you address them separately but for much cheaper. Dumping all of your available funds into a partial solution is bad business.

I just don't see anybody on the market that is going to address both needs... So that means you need to fix it seperatly

I agreed but we don’t have the money to address both separately if one costs 8-8.9 million per. So both are addressed much cheaper than acquiring and signing Cat

You aren't going to get a scorer for less than $8-9m unless you want to dump a bunch of assets in Arizona for Clayton Keller. Given his history, I think that DeBrincat is the surest bet to give big money out of all the people that have been linked in trade rumors. The Hurricanes will probably have $8-9m in free cap space after the resign everybody even if Skjei and Pesce decide to come back