Maybe they give someone a PTO and see if drouin can play in camp, if not they bury him and sign the PTO... I'm really interested in cal foote though

I think the PTO route is a very likely scenario. There's a lot of dudes that are flat-out not going to get contracts with the cap situation this year, and taking one of those guys and bringing them in would be a great option. I do think we will get a good idea of whether Drouin can play pretty early on, so hopefully that situation finds a conclusion one way or another before the season really gets going. I REALLY don't want a Yakupov deal where he gets small cups of coffee for a few months and then just gets burried. Drouin is either gonna stick on MacKinnon's wing or he's not playing.

I’m not interested in calling up Foudy if we are just gunna staple him to a 4th line role. Let the man cook on the 3rd line and let’s figure out what he is

That is totally fair.

I said the same thing with Kaut for the longest time. These AHLers with offensive upside (formally Kaut, Foudy, Olausson, maybe Beaucage one day) need to be given an opportunity on the third line for min. 20 consecutive games in order to determine if they’ve got it or not. Playing limited 4th line minutes with someone like Meyers is pretty much setting them up for failure.

Now, in the case of prospects like Pavel and Ranta, these guys are just fine on the 4th line. These are forechecking, physical, defence first type guys (you won’t stifle their offensive upside in this role as there isn’t much upside to begin with)