Quoting: pharrow
this is awful.
4.25 on a 6 year deal with a guy who has a bad back.
Rust for nothing.
a 1st for Kovalchuk, who's like 80.
Gardiner would help tremendously on the transition for Pittsburgh.
Aside from the letang duo, nobody on D pairs 2-3 can start a good transition. In Pettersson's defence, he had to be paired with either of Gudbranson or Johnson who are both subpar D making too much money.
Dumoulin - Letang
Gardiner - Schultz
Pettersson - Daley is a lot lot better than what we had before.
Also, Kovalchuk had a down year on a bad LA kings team.
On Pittsburgh, he would be a 65+ pts player playing in this top-six. @ 3.5 mil that is an absolute steal.
You now have 6-7 forwards on this team capable of 50+ points.
Onto Rust,
The Tanev signing pushes this to happen. Both play PK, and can move around the lineup. We have Kahun now who has a bit more offensive ceiling. Might as well move Rust for a 3rd pairing d until POJ bulks up and can potentially make the team in 1-2 years. We've seen what Daley can do. He can move the puck, is OK defensively but most of all, even at 35, understands the game better than Johnson and Gudbranson.
Rust on the 4th line doesn't make sense and we can't move hornqvist there because that's not ideal for a net driving winger who makes $5+ million.
Even so, all these moves give us some cap flexibility.
around $20 million to sign all our RFAs/UFAs with Schultz walking, Gardiner would be a good consolation prize. The backend of that deal matters little because the time to win is right now.