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GDT - Return of Reim Take 2

The problem is, you trade JVR and you have an immediate and major hole to fill.

Also, presumably if you trade him, you're looking for a Gardiner type or better on D, who happens to be super young.

But how do we sign all of these kids when they run through their ELCs? Marner, Matthews, and Nylander will all be $6M players on their next deals probably. So you lock them up, you lock up the dman that you got for JVR, and you've suddenly got Marner, Matthews, Nylander, Rielly, Kadri, Gardiner, Andersen, and the new dman all making over $4.5M per. That's $42M there. With another $32M to sign the other 12 players.

Now that I've laid it out, maybe it's actually doable. So the only question becomes whether JVR at a decent contract is worth more than the dman we get for him, who may or may not pan out, and who may require a $5M plus contract himself very soon.
 
The problem is, you trade JVR and you have an immediate and major hole to fill.

Also, presumably if you trade him, you're looking for a Gardiner type or better on D, who happens to be super young.

But how do we sign all of these kids when they run through their ELCs? Marner, Matthews, and Nylander will all be $6M players on their next deals probably. So you lock them up, you lock up the dman that you got for JVR, and you've suddenly got Marner, Matthews, Nylander, Rielly, Kadri, Gardiner, Andersen, and the new dman all making over $4.5M per. That's $42M there. With another $32M to sign the other 12 players.

Well thats the exact problem that necessitates trading JVR. You only lock up your key guys long term. You have to cycle through the JVRs of the world and continue to draft and develop well, and trade them for pieces so that you have lots of options to develop into replacements. You never resign those guys. You keep trading them for more assets. There just isn't room for half a team worth of guys making $6+ million.

Whatever you trade JVR for likely won't turn into a 10+ year player here. But JVR only has one more year here so better to get something than nothing.
 
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Chicago locked themselves into Toews, Kane, Hossa, Sharp/Panarin up front, Keith, Seabrook, Hjalmarsson on the blueline and Crawford in net.

Over the years they've had to trade away Ladd, Byfuglien, Campbell, Saad, Versteeg, Sharp, Leddy, Teravainen. The cap forces you to move good players to stay competitive if you are building a team right. If you are in the position of having to move a guy like JVR because you have too many better players that is a good sign IMO. The goal is to get the organization to a place where you consistently are in that position. In a perfect world guys like Kapanen, Neilsen, Dermott etc turn into good players and eventually we can't afford to keep them too.

But the one thing you can't do is sign a guy who isn't one of your 5-6 best players to a long term, big money deal. You can't think in the small picture of player x out, player y in team worse. You have to think of the bigger picture and the long term implications to the organization's ability to remain competitive over a long period so they have multiple opportunities to win a cup.

By the time Matthews and Marner are 22 and have to be paid JVR's best years will be behind him, and he'd still potentially have 5-6 years left on his deal for $6-7 mill.
 
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But if you can keep your top players signed to discounted deals, you can have another guy like JVR signed on too.

If you get Marner, Nylander, and Matthews all making around $6M and potentially leaving $2M each on the table, there's your money to sign JVR.

We already have Rielly and Kadri signed to cheap long term deals, Andersen too for a goalie (if he's a true #1), and have Gardiner making less than market for another few years.

They'll most likely sign Zaitsev to a team friendly long term deal at $3M per or so too.

They've really set themselves us beautifully to have a larger core of long term players. And if JVR can be signed for say $5.75M for 5 years, I think you gotta keep him.

Now, if he wants $7M or so, that stops the conversation and then you need to identify that asap and move him this deadline.
 
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