My yearly "What would you do' thread

[lusshouse]

Made a final trade :
Ovechkin + 5th
for
Niku + 2nd next year, which gives me 1 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 3 next year.


I dropped Kase, Rosen, Montembeault, Sikura, Borgstrom, Muzzin and Trochek. I had already 1 open spot, and got rid of Voracek for a pick, but gained two extra bodies in my Nurse vs Sanheim swap. Which means I could draft between 1 and 7 guys with 29+ M of cap space.


Owned 6th, 20th, 34th and 42nd -- and then no 4th or 5th round picks.

Wanted a top prospect and future D.

Wanted to close with whatever vets were left for LW and C which were a bit thin, and/or maybe a vet D that could solidify my depth. Or who knows, if nobody touched Karlsson (12M) or Doughty (10M) or Subban (8M) I'd give it a shot.


Top5 went : Lafrenière, Kaprizov, Sorokin, Stuetzel, Byfield

So I picked up Marco Rossi, C.

Then a couple of guys picked up goalies, others went for the top prospect forwards. Only Drysdale got taken before 19th when the guy picked Soderstrom, which was my guy -- but never thought he'd make it to 20th anyway.

So I picked Scott Perunovich, D.

More B-grade forwards (and some C-grade I believe) along with a few older picks (Pacioretty, Suter) got picked, and the following D which ranked highly on my list : Mitchell, Lehtonen, Marino and Romanov all got picked there.

So I picked Callen Addison, D, ahead of K'André Miller or Sean Walker which I debated with.

Walker got picked before my second 3rd round pick, and my second winger on my list was still available while much weaker options IMO were picked.

So I picked Ilya Mikheyev, RW-LW.

At that point, I had two rounds to see what was happening and decide my plan of action with the money left -- keep it all for next year, get a Doughty, get Seguin, etc. Other teams with money started to spend it on wingers, then Doughty, Subban, Lindholm all got picked, and at some point, it was mathematically impossible for all the other teams to get Karlsson at 12M.

So I picked Robby Fabbri, C-RW-LW.

Then I picked Andreas Johnsson, LW.

And I picked in the final round Erik Karlsson, D.

--

In conclusion, I had hoped to get more young wingers to rebuild in 3-4 years. But these were picked really high. Also, I needed to improve my blueline, and options were really thin. So it gave me a few options.

Also, Karlsson is 30. If he can rebound, he'll could still be very good in 3-4 years and cost me 11.5 or less.

Without good prospects, I still collected 3 wingers who are all in their breakout treshold year. Those who'll pop, I'll keep. Those who won't, I may just drop and pick other darts with my 5 picks in the top-3 rounds next season.

To remember -- most salaries are kinda low this year (we work with salaries, not AAV, so this has a great impact on 2020-21 vs 2021-22). So I might sneak two of these wingers for a better option that other teams won't be able to afford.


Final roster :

Markstrom, Ullmark (bench : Peterson. For the future : Gustafsson, Primeau)

Karlsson, Burns, Grzlecyk, Nurse, Niku, Gostisbehere (bench : Brannstrom, Perunovich. Future : Liljegren, Addison)

Dubois, Couturier, Rossi (bench : Donato, Fabbri)

Konecny, Arvidsson, Kakko (Bench : Tarasenko, Terry)

Marchesseault, Mikheyev, Johnsson (Bench : DeBrusk, Kahun)



--

I predict another bottom-6 season out of this roster.



Thanks to all that followed.

Can't wait to tag this post next season!

[stevegamer]

Nice job endplaying the others to get Karlsson.