Like, the notion of building through free agency sounds nice & all, but if you take a second to look at our situation...
We have the highest total salary in players on a single roster all throughout the NHL, and barring a trade, as it stands our two highest salaried players who are going to be off the books next season are Chiarot ($3.5M) and Lehkonen ($2.3M). Both of which are going to be traded within the next month.
All of our big salary players are here for a while unless we can trade them. Price is unmovable, Weber's on LTIR, Gallagher is going to be difficult, Petry is likely gone but won't be easy, I heard Drouin's going on LTIR soon because his feelings are too hurt to play right now, and Hoffman/Armia are... Hoffman/Armia.
Realistically, we don't have all that much money to spend under the cap. And if you're looking at the list of UFAs, who's really the one guy you'd want to sign?
Malkin? You want to give $9M for 3-4 years for a soon-to-be 36 year old Malkin? $8M for Claude Giroux? $8M for Forsberg, even though we don't really need another high priced winger? Johnny Gaudreau, Kris Letang, Tomas Hertl? Hampus Lindholm, Nazem Kadri? Vincent Trochek? Justin Schultz?
Outside of Lindholm, I wouldn't give a long term contract to any of those players.