Talk about no weaknesses in the lineup. Not winning a cup with a team like this would just be sad. Curious to know where is the cap to resign Makar unless you plan on bridging him, but that’d still cost between $4.5-5.5 mil for 2-3 years (going off Werenski, McAvoy contracts)

I like it except for Kuemper. Also don’t know you want to roll 2 rookie dmen.

No cap space for Cole. Sorry its a pass from Vancouver

Cap for Makar and Landy extensions would have to come mostly from remaking the bottom six after next year, mostly with ELCs and such. Third line of something like Newhook - Compher - Kaut, fourth with Bowers - Jost - O'Connor. Hopefully it's either Compher or Donskoi taken in the expansion draft to get a big cap number off the third line. Then let Grubauer walk and fill in the backup spot with Werner or someone else cheap. That probably doesn't quite do it, but I think it gets near the ballpark.

As far as the two rookie D - I agree it's not ideal, but that's the tradeoff to this roster concept. To be stacked up front and in goal, you go young and cheap (but talented) on D. Probably a few hiccups along the way, but you hope that they work out enough kinks in the regular season to be pretty reliable once the playoffs start. With Kuemper, I can't pretend to know goalies super well, but he's had great numbers the last few years, he's big and athletic, and he looked great against the Avs until his team just fully quit in front of him and he wore out.

Point taken about VAN lack of cap space. I didn't invest much time into figuring out the trade destinations for Cole or Zadorov - I was just going with a general sense of what their overall trade value might be.