Another quick fix with different signings and trades. This time, Tavares gets signed as well as Statsny, allowing Drouin to be on the left wing. Alzner, Shaw and Benn all get traded out. I drafted Zadina at 3.
Offense :
The Shaw trade is mainly to offload cap hit. Edmonton take him for a relatively small price due to his injury history and because they want to make cap space after having moved Lucic out, while retaining that kind of player.
Whether Drouin or Pacioretty will play better alongside Tavares on 1st line remains to be seen (if this scenario plays out in real life...) but having Scherbak on the top line with Tavares is due to his creativity and playmaking. Hopefully they, as well as the chosen LW, can produce consistently.
Having a good passer and a good shooter on the 2nd line is incredibly important, especially if you are winning over 55% of your draws, as Stastny did last year. Plus, Drouin and Gallagher showed some nice chemistry last year.
This 3rd line will be a scoring line, with Domi and Byron hopefully being able to create lots of chances with their speed. Danault is a safe signing and gets to prove himself if he wants more term and money. Could potentially be a top 6 centre one day but has to prove it. 1.5 over 2 years gives GM an idea of whether he will eventually fill that role or not.
The 4th is a fairly standard 4th line, but hopefully they can contribute. Having depth at all 4 lines is the key to getting this team back on track. Putting Zadina in there would likely help with production down there.
Defence :
Jamie Benn is a great depth player for Washington, and at 800K for one year is extremely low risk. I move him because I like him less than Schlemko, and the 4th coming back is more or less what we gave up to get him.
Alzner getting traded out is difficult and I imagine y'all can poke many holes in this one. Hard to figure out his market value, and places that want him. Next, working around his 7-team No-Trade list, I assume that he wants to go to a team that can win, seeing as he wanted good term and money from a win-now team. Calgary need defence. Their GM doesn't mind going after defence players on the market and for the price of a 4th rounder, a centre who went in the 6th round and a RD prospect when they already have another who could potentially crack the roster this year (Rasmus Andersson), this seems low risk on Calgary's side, even with the cap hit. It's not a fantastic return for the Canadiens but gives us some depth and two positions we desperately need depth at.
As for the roster, I like the Mete-Weber pairing, so let's keep them together. Schlemko gets a chance at 2nd pairing with Petry, and Rielly, who I liked a lot near the end of last season, gets a Top-6 role with Juulsen. Taormina gets the promotion after an incredible 52 points through 63 games in Laval last year.
Goaltending :
Again, not an issue. While the return on a Price trade could be amazing, we'd probably end up retaining salary, and salary retained over 8 years is bad news bears.
See it as a 3-way swap. Someone else is getting Lucic at the same time. Shaw is faster and can potentially play with McDavid to play the role Lucic is supposed to be playing right now in EDM, but with 2.1M difference. However, I agree that this one is a stretch. Maybe a team interested in Lucic's services would be interested in Shaw due to the cheaper option.
3rd and 5th are much better than the 2 2nds Habs gave up for him.
Tavares and stastny and the rest of the league is just sitting around.. I would love this but I thinking even get one of them would be close to dreaming ...,..nice thought though
It would definitely fill the two holes. Getting the puck and keeping it off of the draw makes it considerably easier to not concede goals. Defence that we have isn't the greatest but it could certainly be worse. That's just put into perspective by the fact that the entire team lacks defensive awareness.
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