It's not too bad. Most of that trash will be easy to take out. Cowen's an obvious buyout candidate, or maybe an asset a cap-strapped team will trade for. Bozak's a tradeable asset. Robidas will either get dealt in some creative deal or we'll suck up $3M in dead cap space for one more season and be done with him. Greening will either get included in a deal, or he'll get buried and only cost us $1.75M for one more season. Bernie will hopefully be relegated to backup status, and maybe we'll find a taker for him once his contract is expiring, otherwise he's another guy we have to ride out for just one more year.
Laich might be bad enough that we'll have to just buy him out. Which would cost us $1.8M next year and $1.3M the year after, which isn't too bad. I guess we'll see over the next 20 games whether he's worth keeping around as a leader-beanish fourth liner/thirteenth forward. Ideally that'd be the case, then we'll be free and clear from his cap hit after next season.
Babcock might be able to turn Michalek into a tradeable asset by next year's deadline, if he can stay healthy. Otherwise, he's Joffrey Lupul with one less year on his deal. And Lupul, I'm not even sure what you do with him. Maybe you convince him to pull a Robidas next year and collect his paycheck for lounging around in SoCal with an "injury". Otherwise, unless he recovers his game to the point where we could dump him to someone at 50% off, he probably plays on your fourth line or sits in the pressbox until we either buy him out in the summer of 2017, or just run out the clock on his contract.
pretty much.
something like this:
Trade: Bozak
LTIR Shenanigans: Horton, Lupul, Robidas
Try to maximize deadline trade value: Michalek, Laich, Greening, Hunwick, Bernier
VanRyk - Kadri - Marner
Komarov - Nylander - Matthews/Laine/Puljarvi
Michalek - Holland - Leivo
Laich - Froese - Greening
Hyman - Smith - Soshnikov
Gsrdiner - Rielly
Hunwick - Carrick
Marincin - Corrado
Harrington - Percy
Sparks
Bernier
Marlies
Johnson - Leipsic - Brown
Lindberg - Gauthier - Kapanen
Timashov
Loov - Valiev
Dermott - Nielsen
Bibeau
but to be honest I think more of those guys listed as marlies will deserve a shot. I'd be fine with finding away to ditch the 1yr contract guys without worrying about trade deadline stuff. even if that's just waiving them to the minors.
Leivo - Kadri - Matthews/Laine/Puljarvi
VanRyk - Nylander - Kapanen
Komarov - Holland - Marner
Hyman - Froese - Soshnikov
Leipsic - Smith - Brown
Gardiner - Rielly
Marincin - Carrick
Harrington - Corrado
Loov - Percy
Sparks
Bernier
not a very good team, but all of them deserve an nhl shot next year imo.
Marlies
Lindberg - Gauthier - Timashov
Nielsen - Valiev
Dermott
Bibeau
