If Minten is going to play 4LW, might as well send him back to Junior.

More probable is Cowan plays 2LW, and Minten plays 3C with Perron and McMann/Robertson as his winger.

Cowan played wing most of the season in London.
Minten played centre primarily in Saskatoon.

The LW side could be a nightmare - and Perron at 3 Mill would be a nice chief reunion discount.

I like Montour a lot but I doubt the fit with Rielly. Looking for a Schenn / Lyubushkin type. More stay at home, bigger, tougher.

I want your honest opinion
With the players I signed, what would the lines be, what would the defensive pairings be and how would play the goalies?

Honestly, the only other person I could think of that could fit with Rielly was Theodore. But that included trading Marner so I couldn`t do it for this

With the players you signed I’d go as follows:

Knies - Matthews - Nylander
Cowan - Tavares - Marner
Perron - Minten - Robertson
Holmberg - Dewar - McMann
Reaves

Rielly - Montour
McCabe - Roy
Benoit - Timmins

Woll
Brossoit

Quillan will need at least a year in the AHL if not 2, he is on a similar path to Abruzzese. He won’t thrive trying to make the jump from NCAA to the NHL as a 4C.

This is part of the issue Toronto has, they have too many bottom 6 guys that could potentially turn into reliable 2nd/3rd line guys if they were given the opportunity but there is no room right now.

Moving Quillan to the Marlies, and moving Timmins in a trade for a draft pick give you 2.7M to work with. You could hopefully find a back up for 2.5M (maybe Broissoit) and that would give you another 700k in cash to bring you to 3.4M which then should be enough to re-sign a guy like Edmundson who knows Berube and his system from his time in STL when they won the cup. I’d bring him back on a 3X3.

I think I’d rather Domi over Perron to which then you’d move Knies down to L3 to help balance out that line and they can be an effective hard working line. Knies won’t ever be more than a 2nd line player but I think you start Cowan on 2LW to let him adjust and then maybe move him down to L3 or next year he becomes Matthews winger.

I don’t mind some of your moves here, the key is there is lots of options to play with. It is obvious we won’t get Montour for 6.5M someone will over pay him into the 7s unfortunately but there are other high end options, Pesce, Tanev etc.

Since we are win now, Tanev is fine on a 4.5M X 4 year deal just to get him now, it’s not ideal but he would do well on our first pairing with Reilly. I also like Zadorov but not for more than 5.5M X 5.

We shall see what happens.