Quoting: JayTea
Agreed, Zucker is having a good season which should help with any concerns his 30 goal season was a fluke.
Pretty sure Kaprizov plays RW, so their top 2 RW next year are probably him and Zuccarello to start. Ideally, their top 6 would be Fiala, Parise, Staal, Zuccarello, Kaprizov and a right shot center (which they'd probably need to acquire). Third line could probably be the GEEK line if they do trade Zucker. 4th? Foligno/Donato/Hartman seemed to be working before injuries forced them to move Donato into Koivu's spot.
Worth mentioning I think there's a good chance they move Brodin this summer, with Soucy looking more and more like a top 4 player Boudreau can trust. Hopefully Guerin can find a way to turn Zucker and Brodin into a top 6 right shot center. Goalie will be interesting too if they give Kahkonen a chance to earn a roster spot next year. Reasons to be optimistic going forward if Guerin can make some good moves.
Kaprizov plays both wings, but from what I saw watching him last year I really liked him on the right side. Honestly I'm warming up to the idea of moving Dumba and keeping Brodin, but I agree completely with your point that we should move a defenseman.
Here's why I think moving Dumba makes sense: for one, he's probably our most valuable trade piece which means we could actually go out and get that top 6 center. Brodin is a great player but realistically I don't think many teams would be willing to move a top 6 center for him. Dumba has shown a ton of potential and the ability to step up and play a top pairing role well, plus he's an offensive RD which many teams covet. A team like Tampa (or even Philly) is ripe with star center talent and they also happen to need RD.
Second, we have a bunch of promising potential replacements for Dumba in the pipeline with Menell, Belpedio, and the Johansson's. Compare that to Gordeev and Warren, which isn't as strong of a pool for our LD. I know we have Soucy, but he has looked awesome on the right side and from the limited sample size we've seen I'd be confident about our top 4 going forward with him there.
Third, if we trade Brodin we are almost guaranteed to lose Soucy in the expansion draft. As it stands, we have to protect Suter and Spurgeon assuming we go with the 7F, 3D, and 1G plan. That leaves one spot for Dumba or Soucy since Brodin is a free agent that year (Seattle would be foolish to pick him with an expiring contract unless they knew he would re-sign a few days after). If we kept Brodin and traded Dumba, we could protect Soucy and then wait until after the expansion draft to re-sign Brodin, essentially circumventing having to lose him to Seattle. That all would require Brodin wanting to re-sign here, of course. If we traded Brodin and kept Dumba, we would be fools to expose Dumba which would leave a nice 2nd pairind D in Soucy available for Seattle's taking.
Finally, we don't really need Dumba. He's a great piece to have on the team but our top pairing will always be Suter and Spurgeon as long as both are healthy and having Dumba on your second pairing is kind of a waste. Yes, it's nice to have that right shot on the PP but if you trade him for a right shot center you wouldn't be losing that. A top 4 consisting of Suter, Spurgeon, Brodin, and Soucy is still a great top 4. I think we could get a star center if we packaged Dumba and Zucker together. Cap would be tough to figure out, of course, but I think a ton of teams would be interested in those two compared to Brodin and Zucker.