imo Graves is a terrible choice. Super overrated

Fair enough, I think he is a perfect second pairing defenseman, so I have absolutely no problems having him on the third pairing. Big and mobile, defensive first and can chip in every once in a while. Defense like him usually don't get the love from the media and fans.

Problem is that when you're doing one of these roster building challenges where you have every player in the league to choose from, every little choice counts. There are really only two choices from PIT that work--Crosby and Ruhwedel.

Take a look at the roster I made this morning and you'll see what I mean

Only difference is you didn't pick a player from every team, you don't even have a player from PIT. I took one from every team and picked my roster from there. I originally had Letang but didn't have the money for a goalie, so I switched him out for Graves to save $1.5m and upgrade goaltending. You may not like the Graves pick but I'm completely fine with it, he is worth $4.5m and is a good serviceable Top 4 defenseman. I already got Hughes, Montour for PP1 and PP2. Need shutdown and PK guys like Graves and Mccabe to fill out the D.

I mean it's not hard to pick out league minimum players from every remaining team and put them on the taxi squad like you did

Graves is not a shutdown defenseman. He got that reputation from playing with Marino, who padded his stats all year. And again, there's a difference between worth 4.5m and worth more than 4.5m. It's not enough to be worth your contract when there are plenty of players worth far more than their cap hits.

I would make a couple changes
Oettinger to Sorokin
Thompson to Pettersson
Hughes to Dahlin
Graves to Heiskanen