Dynasty, salary cap, $20.269 million over, own picks #1 and #2. Help me form my roster!

[tobias]

OK, so I couldn't land Drouin for the 9th pick, but I managed to trade that 9th overall pick + Toffoli for the 3rd overall pick. It pained me to trade Toffoli, but I still needed cap space for this year, so he was likely going to be a casualty (or Anders Lee, who I couldn't interest the other GM in as much as Toffoli), he is only RW eligible (or which I have lots), and he'll be an RFA with Johansen (!!!), Zibanejad, Vasilevskiy, and Teravainen.

I now have picks 1-3. With the third pick, would you target a cheap defenseman to get me through next summer's debacle of Byfuglien (UFA), Vatanen (RFA), and Barrie (RFA), not to mention, MacKinnon (RFA). It's too premature to speculate, but MacKinnon will almost certainly be a guy I will want to keep, so I likely will not be able to afford the other three defensemen who will be getting increases.

I am thinking about Derrick Pouliot ($0.863), which fits into my cap crunch nicely for this year, and could provide some decent numbers by simply moving the puck up the ice and/or if (when?) Letang gets injured and a spot on the PP1 opens up.

Or, am I better to take someone like Ehlers or Bennett and just go for more offense (assuming he makes the team... we don't have a farm system)?

[tobias]

My draft for this is coming up quickly. With McDavid and Eichel, my roster currently looks like this, and I still have the next pick to use (1 = McDavid, 2 = Eichel, 3 = ?):

Roster Spot	Player	Position(s)	2015-2016	2016-2017	2017-2018
1	Ovechkin	LW/RW	9.538	9.538	9.538
2	Tarasenko	RW	7.5	7.5	7.5
3	Hall	C/LW	6	6	6
4	Schneider	G	6	6	6
5	Quick	G	5.8	5.8	5.8
6	Byfuglien	RW/D	5.2	UFA
7	Hornqvist	RW	4.25	4.25	4.25
8	Klingberg	D	4.25	4.25	4.25
9	Johansen	C/RW	4	4	RFA
10	Lee	C	3.75	3.75	3.75
11	Zibanejad	C/RW	2.625	2.625	RFA
12	Barrie	D	2.6	RFA
13	Vatanen	D	1.262	RFA
14	McDavid	C	0.925	0.925	0.925
15	Eichel	C	0.925	0.925	0.925
16	MacKinnon	C/RW	0.925	RFA
17	Vasilevskiy	G	0.925	0.925	RFA
18	Drouin	LW	0.894	0.894	RFA
19
20
21
	TOTAL		67.369	57.382	48.938
	REMAINING		4.031

This league is on Yahoo, and I lost LW eligibility for Lee (for now?), so the LW has suddenly become a weak spot. Do I still go with my initial thought and draft a D (Pouliot) in anticipation of next off-season when I likely cannot retain all of Barrie, Vatanen, and Byfuglien, or do I go for a young top prospect at LW, such as Ehlers?

Or do I do something entirely different?

[newper114]

Who else is available?

I'm not taking a dman this year. I'm taking best goalie or forward available and eating this year and hoping for a better year next year. Still think you should cut tes with quick and find a backup or cheaper option. How many goalies do you play?

[tobias]

We need to have four goalie appearances per week, which makes Quick/Schneider pretty valuable. I could grab Martin Jones at 3 for 3 x $3 million. Kuznetsov (2 x $3 million) is available, and is C/LW, but would mean that I would need to make salary cap space by dropping someone else, and he's not a sure thing. Huberdeau is also very enticing, but he hasn't signed yet and we draft Tuesday. He would also mean that I would have to drop someone.