The Season is Over in February - A Summer Speculation Thread

So I've been thinking a lot about what the options are for this summer. And with some free time I started playing with Cap Friendly and generally put together an attempt at identifiying the gaps and options to resolve, primarly focusing on free agency. 

Figured if at the very least this could help visualize where the money's spent vs. line-up and help drive some discussion. In short - we're fucked. 

Attached the sheet I've been playing with. Basic gaps are below - 

Meier (6mil) - Couture (8mil) - Kane (7mil) 
FA (5.5mil) - Hertl (5.625mil) - Labanc (1.5mil) 
Sorrenson (1.5mil) - Soumela (1mil) - FA (1.5mil) 
Kellmen/other prospect (.925mil) - Thornton (.750mil) - Noessen (1mil) 
Bench (.750mil)

Total: 41.050mil

Vlassic (7mil) - Burns (8mil) 
Simek (1mil) - Karlsson (11.5mil) 
Heed/FA (1.5mil) - Ferraro (.925mil) 
Bench/depth: (750mil)

Total: 30.675mil

FA Savior (4mil)
Jones (5.75mil) 

Total: 9.75mil


Total hit: 81.475mil

Sheet has some UFAs that seem plausible. Notice this is a shit selection for basically all options given the fucking 11million glass D man + Joner. Any real shot would need massive wealth distribution in the line-up, I'm talking Lenin shit. 

Possible F - 

Sheery - 3mil
Janmark - 2.5mil
Dadonov - ~5mil
Toffoli - ~5.5mil???
Grant - 1.5mil

Possible D - 
Sekara Beaulieu / Hutton / Mueller - 1.5mil

Possible Goalie - 
Murray 
Markstron
Greiss 
Khudobin - All around 4mil now - I figure Khudobin may have a season in him. The others I'm thinking will go for a bit more or better team. 


Sharks_2021.xlsx (12.4 KB)

Basic take-aways - 

I figure you keep Jumbo, Labanc, Kellman, Soumela, Noessan. There's really no reason any of them get a major raise - Labanc bet on himself and lost. If he wants arbitration, fuck him. We have ~37 AHL/NHL hopefuls making about 900K so I'm figuring at least 2 slots on line 4 end up in their hands and I'm praying a couple are actually truly ready this year with another year in the A to develop (I also plan for Jumbo to make 900k and be competing against the 22 year olds - no more bullshit name recognition contracts for him). 

This carves out about 7 million to attempt to find 2 middle 6 guys. Not great. Not awful. I am actually thinking you can go with a couple around 3.5 million and try to roll more equitable lines. Toffoli the cabbage patched kid, anyone?

Simek is kept with modest bump. Heed can be attempted but if he goes higher than 1.5 million we are shit out of luck. My take on the d situation is the salary allocation is already massively skewed to D so the only way to even out is trade one of the big 3. And frankly, Karlsson is the only one that would make a big enough drop to actually distribute the remaining cap between 2 useful bottom 4 guys. I don't think that happens, so I think we're largely stuck on a cheap option for #5/6 and may as well hang on to Burns/Pickles. Hell, bring back Mirco (I am not advocating this - or DelZotto - just showing the shit sandwich we are in for that slot and all of a sudden Heed looks, fine). 

Goalie is a similar boat. I think we can feasibly attempt to grab a weak starter around 4 million. Otherwise we need to punt Jones by any means necessary to have a hope of getting anything better for #1 (and in that scenario maybe we do try to through a couple mil at Dell). 

Given all this and the rebuild I'm thinking chances are high that DW just stands pat with his boat anchors. Best case he can offload Jones and allocate the ~9.5 mil in goal to one starter + Dell. Otherwise I don't see the skaters working with anything better than whatever they can scrape together for those 3 major holes at ~8.5 mil.