elmatus

Jones is definitely better, but I can see Werenski's agent getting him more than that. He's not gonna care that Jones is signed for less than he should be.

I think McAvoy will be a bridge deal. He didn't have a great year. I think he'll bet on himself and raise his price over a couple years on a bridge. Werenski is the bigger issue I think. Columbus can afford to spend whatever he wants, and I've no doubt they're going to lock him down before he starts padding his value with 60pt seasons from the back end.

It's entirely possible someone else will have to be moved to sign both. I'm not saying that's what should happen, but it is a possibility. Provo could be asking for 7-8M. If it wasn't for his disappointing season last season, he would almost certainly get that much. TK is only 22 and fitting in perfectly on the top line. He is easily the best shooter we have on the team and probably the fastest on the ice. If he starts putting up 60+ per season, how much is that worth? I'm not worried either. Fletch has to sign them both, or he'll be run out of town. That said, it is possible someone might yet be moved to give him cap space to work with. If so, who could he move? Ghost remains a possibility I think, but Raffl and Hagg would do it as well. It'll open some holes though. Or maybe Provo settles for 7M and TK for 6M. We don't know enough about Fletch yet to figure it out I think.

It's interesting idea. I don't know what Vancouver has sitting around for defensive prospects. I can't imagine they'd get rid of Boeser, but maybe if they have a dearth of incoming dmen or something. I'm pretty doubtful it would happen, but I'd go for it if it were a possibility. That said, assume boeser came in at 7M as you say, it would only leave 6M for Provo. I have to imagine Provo is asking for more than 6M, or they would have signed him by now.

I don't think it's a minority situation. They really have everything needed to make the playoffs for sure. Depending on the competition and how things shake out, they might even win a round as you say. Just as others here have expressed, Fletch is really coming into a dream situation with this team. All he has to do is not screw things up too badly, and they absolutely should be a playoff team this season. Just the coaching upgrade and having Hart from day one would likely have been enough in fact. Those two things were easily our biggest challenges over the last bit. Adding to that, if any of our young guns take the next step, it'll be even better. TK? Patrick? Sanheim? A return to form from Provo? Frost? Just take your pick. If even one of them has a breakout season, we'll be laughing. If more than one does, even better! I think many of us here are expecting a playoff berth for sure. It would be silly to expect otherwise.

Sure, that's fair. At the same time, someone will need to play 3RW. It could also be Raffl, or maybe one of the kiddos from the farm will take the next step. I do think it's also possible Laughton will spend time there though. There really aren't a ton of options for that spot. Unless of course Fletch goes out and gets someone else. That seems unlikely at this point though with only 13M left and two future studs to sign.

Until proven otherwise, I think he'll continue to be a 45-50pt guy. I don't see what opportunities he'll have here that he didn't in the past. It's not as if he was ever held back. He had opportunities plenty. He seized on some and failed to seize on others. He's very much the definition of a 2-3C. I'm curious about the PP. I imagine they'll put him on PP2. Again though, he's not exactly Giroux. To think he's going to make our PP2 better is a bit much. Also, all bets are off if Frost makes the team. I can see him getting minutes because of his contract though. The brass may want to save face regardless of whether he belongs there. PP1: Giroux, Voracek, Ghost, Couts, JVR PP2: TK, Patrick, Sanheim, Provo, Hayes/Lindblom/Frost (?) I could see them putting Niskanen on PP2 as well if Provo doesn't seem to fit as well as we might want. I have faith in Provo though. In fact, now that I think about it, they may put Niskanen on PP2 regardless.

I would say NJD and NYR both should be a good bit better, and Columbus is going to suck. The rest I think are all about a wash. Losing Lehner in NYI is pretty bad. The Pens adding Galchenyuk is just annoying, cause now we're going to find out Galchenyuk is a 70pt guy after all. I haven't heard much out of Washington, though they didn't need much for improvements anyway. Carolina seems to be banking on their youth, which makes sense.

I wish I shared your idealism @brelic, but that would be a pretty big bump for a guy like Hayes. It's not as if he had bad line mates in the past. He's played with a number of solid players. He has been beat out from 2C positions by guys who aren't amazingly inspiring either. I think it's far more reasonable to assume he'll continue along the same lines he has been for the last five seasons. If he surprises us by showing something he never has before, then great, but operating on that assumption seems like a bad idea. Whether Fletch is expecting that, I don't know. I hope not.

At 27 years old, Hayes has never had a single 50 pt season. Expecting him to line up a bunch of them now isn't a bet I would take on. If anything, hitting 55pts would be the outlier for him at this point. If Patrick does not prove to be better than Hayes in the next bit, that would also be a problem. Hayes is an known quantity as a 2-3C player. He has been consistent in this role his entire career. To assume he's going to morph into something he's never been before seems like a pretty bad bet. Patrick has a much higher ceiling than he does. We should all want Patrick to reach his potential. If he does, the coaching will have to decide if they prefer putting the better center on the second line or keep him on the third. It's possible AV will want to keep him on the third in either case. Having three scoring lines is better than two. I understand Patrick has been underwhelming, but I'm choosing to not give up on him just yet. He's still very young with plenty of room to grow. I just hope the new coaching staff allow him to develop as needed. It's entirely possible part of his problem was coaching.

If Laughton plays 3C, we have a much larger problem. That spot needs to be Patrick or Hayes. I could see him playing on the 3RW though. There's a gap there right now, and he's played that position before.

Yep, I think you nailed it. I think they’re starting to plan for the next CBA. Now Laughton doesn’t matter much in that respect, since he wouldn’t be a buyout anyway, but I can point to one guy who is a prime candidate for sure. I’m curious to see if other teams follow suit. If so, I think we should probably expect yet another fiasco at the next CBA.

Is it an overpayment? Maybe maybe not. Even if it is, it's really not that much of an overpayment. It's also only for two years, which is perfect and more important than 500k too much salary or whatever. Whether or not this is a trend Fletch exhibits is certainly worth considering. Really though, Hayes is the only substantial overpayment so far. Niskanen and Braun are on good contracts for what they offer and again are both on very short terms, which is what we want when we've got a stacked set of prospects waiting in the wings. It may become a trend for Fletch, but I wouldn't say that just yet when we only have one legit example of it.

I don't know about that. I think both players bring about the same amount to the table. They're both decent players to have in our bottom six. This contract is fine. It's just long enough that it shouldn't be a burden down the line if our kiddos start coming into their own over the next couple years. Works for me.

Honestly, I’m starting to think you’re just trolling at this point.

I haven't seen many people say he's a bad player or going to suddenly deteriorate. People stressed by his signing are mostly looking at his contract and implications for future seasons. I think we're all pretty much in agreement that he's a good guy to have around. Kevin Hayes is a respectable option for the 2C, ideally the 3C position. We need that kind of player, and we don't have one right now since Patrick hasn't really shown he can pull it off (yet). Even if Patrick does shape up, we're always going to need a 3C, and Hayes is perfect in that role. Any way you cut it, he's a benefit to the team. Again, bad contract, good player. It's really that simple.

I know next to nothing about the NBA. How does this work?

You think Hayes will deteriorate? It's possible, but I think he's still young enough to maintain his level of play for some years yet. He may have a bad contract, but he's not a bad player. He should be a solid 2-3C for at least three or four years I would think. What I'm saying is that he's not really the kind of guy you just move to the wing if he gets supplanted by a more skilled center. It seems more likely he would slide down to 3C if that happens. Patrick or Frost both have top six potential. Frost I could actually see get moved to the wing, but Patrick I don't think so. If he pans out as advertized, Patrick really should be our 2C by the end of this season. I like to think he will pan out with new coaching to give him life. I expect we'll start the season with something like: Giroux / Couts / TK JVR / Hayes / Voracek Lindblom / Patrick / ??? But by the end of the season, we may very well have: Giroux / Couts / TK JVR / Patrick / Voracek Lindblom / Hayes / ??? Which would be a great thing really, since it means Patrick would finally be growing into his own. I happen to think new coaching will help him become that guy, or at least I want to believe that! I want to believe we didn't actually get the worst 2nd overall pick of the last decade, and that he just needed some time to find his game. He stands to benefit from new coaching more than anyone not named Provorov imo. It's also possible they would keep Patrick and Lindblom on the third if it seems to be working out well, and then we just get three scoring lines. It depends on whether the coaching staff wants to spread the scoring across three lines or make two more lethal ones. I don't know what AV would choose, but it should be interesting to see.

Kapanen hasn't had the NHL success TK has though. He might given another couple years, but he hasn't yet. More importantly, if I'm TK's agent, I'm not using Kapanen as a comparable. I'm definitely using Hayes, as I think any agent worth their salts should do given the situation at hand. You're not wrong about the RFA status. TK could sign some sort of bridge deal, but he also has plenty of legs to stand on to fight for better. Sanheim made more sense, but TK has been a solid NHL player now for some time, and he has yet to enter his prime. While the RFA status may drop his pricetag somewhat, a good agent is going to milk TK's relative success in comparison to Hayes and get more money. 10M over three years seems very low to me for TK. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be a bargain and would likely require some pretty substantial posturing from the Fletch camp. If it's a bridge, I could see him getting 5M for 2-3 years. If it's not a bridge, I have to assume we're looking at something closer to 7M using Hayes as a comparable. If TK becomes even marginally better (and he's only 22), he could easily flirt with 60pts this year. That really wouldn't be a big leap at all for him, especially given improved coaching. Fletch should be locking this guy up for some time, not giving him another bridge deal that's just going to bite us in two years.

It really depends on what the team needs honestly. Hayes is not a scorer by any stretch. He's a fairly responsible center who averages in the 40s for pts per year. In many ways, he's sort of like a lesser version of Couts. That isn't a terrible slot for a center who tends to play defensively a fair bit, but it's not really what you want from your wingers, who are typically expected to put the puck in the net more regularly. If he gets supplanted by Patrick or Frost, it seems more likely he will be demoted to the third line. As it stands, he's really a career 2-3C anyway, so that's no big deal. It's pretty much exactly what he should be doing. To me, the whole point of signing him at all would be to light a fire under Patrick's a** and push him to live up to expectations. For the record, I happen to think it'll work too. I think Patrick has more to offer than he's shown, and I think better coaching will make that apparent over the course of this next season.

Wow, I hadn't thought of it in that context. I really hope you're wrong, but you may very well be on to something. Would it have made sense to sign Subban? That I don't know. I don't think we know enough about Fletch to figure out how much money he'll give Provo and TK, which is key. The Hayes contract tells me Fletch is not particularly conservative in his spending habits. It's entirely possible both Provo and TK are in line for a very nice pay day. If that happens, Subban would have been impossible anyway at that price, so it's kind of a moot point. I have no idea at all what's going to happen with our young FAs over the next couple years. Seattle is likely to take one of them, which is probably just as well, but even then some tough roster decisions will need to be made. DISCLAIMER: I realize some people are allergic to looking more than one season ahead. If you're such a person, please just move on to another post. I guarantee you won't like the rest of this one. We have 15M in cap space right now, with Provo, TK, and Laughton left to sign for this year. How much could they want? Well Provo is slated as a franchise dman. Sure, he had a bad year, but given the current negotiations, I expect he's going to get a pretty substantial paycheck. I would say he'll get easily 7M and possibly even 8M. TK has better numbers than Hayes who just signed for 7x7, so the comparable there seems likely. He could very easily ask for a similar dollar point and term based on that. Would Fletch give say 8M to Provo and 7M to TK? Of course he would. Both of those guys are integral pieces to this team moving forward. He's going to give them what is necessary to keep them. That would essentially chew up our remaining salary for next year, meaning Laughton has to go. That's fine. He's not a huge loss, and really we have a handful of AHLers who could plug into the 4th line just as well. In fact Fletch brought in a couple of Minnesotans who are already on the payroll for cheaper now. Just get one of them to do it. Then looking into 2020-21 we would have: Need to resign: Patrick, Myers, Lindblom, Lyon (or some other comparable back up at a reasonable price) Leftovers: Braun, Elliott, Hagg, Pitlick (who cares), Gabriel (who cares) Let's say Myers or Lindblom get plucked by Seattle, which seems possible given our current roster and what we would likely protect. All those leftovers amount to about 7.5M, which Fletch would then have available to resign Patrick, Myers/Lindblom, a back up goalie of some capacity, and at least two if not three dmen of some kind. That's gonna take some wicked magic to pull off. It almost certainly means Fletch will be trying to trade at least one of our core vets -- Voracek or JVR would seem the most likely candidates. I can't imagine he'll trade Giroux, and Hayes can't be traded. No one else on the team really makes enough money to be considered in this context. The more I look at it, the more I think this team better make one hell of a run this season, cause it seems very likely the roster will change pretty importantly over the next couple. That may be good or bad of course, but it is a thing either way.

To be honest, I put those in there to have more questionable things to say about Hextall. I have no good answers for those questions. And that's part of the problem. Hexy did so many things well. It leaves big shoes for Fletcher. He's not stepping into a situation where the franchise is in shambles and in desperate need of serious attentions. This is just the very opposite situation. Will he fill those shoes well? I hope so. He has one hell of a head start as far as prospects are concerned anyway. This forum exists for the express purpose of discussing stuff like this. Hexy got no free treatment either. We talked circles about all his early moves -- Pronger, Grossmann, Coburn, Timonen, Hartnell. We talked about them all as they came up, cause that's what this forum is for. What exactly are we supposed to do? Are we to have no opinion on stuff? Why come to a fan forum if we have no opinions? We come here to hash things out. We're not always going to agree to everything, and that's completely fine. We should still be able to talk about it. My challenge is mostly with the all or nothing mentality that seems to have come out of this off season. It seems perfectly reasonable for someone to have a measured view of Fletch's moves. It doesn't have to be all bad or all good. Saying "oh he's new let's just not bother talking about it" is... kind of not why we're here? It seems very normal to look at what Fletch is doing and measure those decisions based one A) What Hexy would have done, since he's the obvious comparable; and, B) What impact the decision will make on the team. These are fodder for discussion. Sure, the Hexy thing won't last forever, but it seems very normal to use him as a yardstick in this first off-season with a new GM. Would Hexy have signed Hayes to 7x7 with a bunch of move protections? We can't say for sure, but it seems highly unlikely given previous Hexy signings. Will Hayes make the team better? Short term yes, long term probably not. Would Hexy have gotten a pair of vet dmen? Yeah, maybe. It doesn't sound so silly. Will they make the team better? Probably a bit yeah, though better coaching is about 100x more important imo. Would Hexy have gotten rid of Hakstol? Probably not, cause for some reason he had the biggest blinders in the world when it came to his HC. Does getting a new coaching staff make the team better? It most definitely should! So there you have it: What I would consider a fairly reasonable evaluation that doesn't assume Fletch's moves to be 100% good or bad...

I really feel like we're getting way too polarized here. It really isn't a black or white scenario where everything is 100% good or everything is 100% bad. Speaking from either of those perspectives really does nothing to promote real discussion or understanding. If we get bogged down in a polarized debate, we're all likely to be wrong more than we are right. At the end of the day, much of what we're talking about is an exercise in evaluation of Fletcher's first off-season as GM. We're jumping in on different sides of the pool, which is fine, but we won't get anywhere without acknowledging those differences. Personally, I really liked Hextall -- a lot. By and large, I defended his actions against all comers, and honestly I still think he did almost everything right. From my vantage point, he got rid of plenty of garbage contracts and useless players -- more often than not without giving up much or anything in return -- and he stocked the cupboards with more talent than we've had in ages. Did he have blind spots? Yeah, he overpaid for Voracek back in the day, though the contract as it stands now is pretty on par with what he should be making. He did very little to find us a reasonably good goalie option over the last couple seasons. Sure, Hart was on the way, but even today we'd be in a better spot if we had an actual decent veteran starter on the roster. He also didn't get us a proper 2C when he should have. The kids simply weren't pulling their weight quickly enough, and he should have done something about that. Most important of all, he held on to Hakstol too long. I love the loyalty, and I remember being perfectly fine with hiring him at the beginning, but Hak should have been gone probably in the 2017 off-season at the latest. So yeah, he made some questionable moves. He also left this organization in a fantastic position. He was a better than average GM in my opinion. As such, his replacement is filling some pretty big shoes. Fletcher's tenure is still beginning, so we can only say so much. If I'm being honest, the coaching revamp is the *only* thing he did that stands to have a substantial and noticeable impact right away. Again, this is just me evaluating, but his additions to the roster are complementary at best pieces. These are not guys who have a truly major impact on a team imo. I'm not saying they're bad players. I just don't think they're going to make this team that much better. Will the team get better? Yeah, I would say. The coaching frankly cannot be any worse, so that's a huge upgrade immediately. Hart is a toss up given his age, but I'm happy he's at least in the league now and learning the game at this level. Really though, if this team becomes more than just a bubble team again next year, it will not be because of Niskanen or Braun or Hayes. It will be because of Provorov, TK, Sanheim, and Patrick -- without mentioning Frost. They're the ones who have untapped potential and who are the real wild cards in this whole equation. This is the legacy Hextall left behind, and it's one we should all regard quite highly. Will Fletch fill those shoes? It's way too early to tell. But I think it's fair to look at his first off season and to be critical of certain things. I don't think it needs to be an all or nothing deal.

I haven't watched Braun much, but a buddy of mine who is paid to know a lot about these things has informed me that he really wasn't very good in SJ. I think he may start in the top four given the signing and all, but I really hope AV gets off his high horse and is willing to adjust if it turns out he's not worth taking the ice time away from someone like Sanheim. It's possible the situation here will work out better for him than SJ too, but it's not like SJ had bad teams in his time there. Sanheim was showing solid progress last season. I really hope he gets the opportunity to take another step forward.