pharrow - 2019-20

I don't think this team is as good as their current team. On top of it, you are so close to the cap. It makes problems with call ups in the year. Most teams want to be roughly 1 million from the cap.
Then you are looking at Vasilevskiy getting at least a 5 million raise. Hard to say given the cap going up twice and they just don't have the cap space for that. Which leaves you problems with every one of those RFA. Some will make more than double what they are currently making there. Especially if given larger roles and they excel.
It's a cap nightmare. 9 players over 5 million isn't sustainable and still being able to keep depth. This shows exactly what I mean. You have to really hope you get something out of the prospect pool, but TB has been trading out picks like last year. They did get Cal Foote, but that's not gonna help the forward group. Years of finishing in the playoffs and trading talent has left it's damage. And this assumes that there are no deadline trades this year sending people off making it more difficult.

Either way, I don't see this team as being as good as the team they have now, and you can see the road map to further cap problems. They are going to have to move more people out than just Miller and Callahan. Probably Palat or Gourde. But those are high salaries and you will have to sweeten the pot on those I would think. Either way it's gonna create holes.

This year is their best shot at the cup in 3-4 years. Killorn and/or Gourde will go the following year with TJ and Palat leaving the next to make it work. Yes, there will be holes, but Tampa still will have a future. I don't see them being bad enough to miss the playoffs for a long, long time. Later when Stammer, Kuch, Hedman, and McDonagh are all veterans, Volkov, Raddysh, Katchouk, Cirelli, Point, Joseph, Barre-Boulet, Fortier, Cernak, Foote, Sergachev, and Vasilevskiy will be going through their prime years. That will be a force of a team. But within the next five years or so, this year is the biggest for Tampa. I just get bugged when people say with teams like Tampa and San Jose that after this year, they will go through cap hell, and be wrecked as a team and have to go back to rebuilding. Those two teams have incredibly deep prospect pools and a current contending team simultaneously. They will both be able to sell a few players, or let a couple walk in free agency, retool for two or three years, then go right back at it again. That's what made Yzerman such a good GM. He built a contending team and kept deep prospect pool for times like this.

Yeah that wasn't really the point of the other thread though. It was more how dominate TB is and that no one else had a chance like the penguins going forward, because TB and Toronto was so strong. And the point I was making is both of those teams are going to have to go through the same crap the penguins are going though. AKA cap wrecking their depth and making them weaker. As long as TB has it's core they will be contenders. They just won't be as dominate as they are now. It's hard to stay that way. Someone else will always poach your talent.