Tarasenko trade value

[Jorge]

So it seems that Tarasenko will be getting back on the St.L roster at some point during the current road trip. I've had him on my farm since the off season not knowing how long he would be out or what kind of shape he would be in. I had the option to put him on IR or my farm during the off-season so I chose farm so I wouldn't be obligated to roster him when he comes off the IR.

My team is currently in a 4 way battle for the league lead and there's prize for 1st overall plus playoffs. I'm tight to the salary cap so I just can't bring him in without moving a player that has been providing solid numbers. My current best option would be Kreider as he's of the least value and his salary is high enough that I can switch them out with just a minor tweak with players earning less than $2M.

League set-up is 14 teams, daily start, 23 man roster and 27 man farm, with the following cats: G, A, Pt, +/-, PIM, SOG, GWG, PPP, SHP. Trade deadline is Friday, March 5th.

So my options are as follows:
1) Move Tarasenko for an upgrade to a low dollar value player (fine tuning) plus some futures.
2) Move a roster player in order to make room for Tarasenko. Hall, JVR, E.Kane, Krug and Kreider are about the only options from a dollar value without going into multiple players and blowing up my team just to roster Tarasenko.
3) Do nothing and hold Tarasenko for this season and depending on what happens with salary for my team over the off-season, make a decision then. It is possible that I could use Tarasenko on my roster if one of my higher priced players goes to long term IR but there's no guarantee that will happen.

What would you do with Tarasenko and if trading is your preference, what would be an estimate on the return value?

It should also be noted that once Elvis is healthy, my intent is to send Coleman to the farm which will free up enough $$ for Elvis. That would leave about $700K plus whoever I move to fit in Tarasenko at $7.50M


My current roster is as follows (salary in parenthesis):
Salary Cap - $111,500,000
Salary available - $2,905,835

C - Mika Zibanejad ($5.350M), Brock Nelson ($6.00M), Vincent Trochek ($4.75M)
LW - Taylor Hall ($8.00M), Filip Forsberg ($6.00), Evander Kane ($7.00M)
RW - Brendan Gallagher ($3.75), Kyle Palmeiri ($4.65M), Patric Hornqvist ($5.30M)
F - Chris Kreider ($6.50M), Victor Olofsson ($3.05M), Alex Iafallo ($2.45M)
D - Erik Gustafsson ($3.00), Torey Krug ($6.50M), Juuso Valimaki ($0.894,166M), Dougie Hamilton ($5.75M), Jeff Petry ($5.50M)
G - Chris Driedger ($0.85M), Devan Dubnyk($4.333333M)

Bench - Samuel Girard ($5.00M), James van Riemsdyk ($7.00M), Dillon Dube ($0.778333M), Sam Steel ($0.863,333M),
Blake Coleman ($1.80M), Zachary Aston-Reese ($1.00M), Jack Campbell ($1.65M), Mason Appleton ($0.90M)

IR - Elvis Merzlikins ($4.00M)

Thanks in advance for all opinions provided.

[Jorge]

Bumped to include bolded question.