Chev to Sergachev: "Hey bud, hope the Cup celebrations are going well. Just calling to see if you want to sign a below-market offer sheet to leave your wagon of a Cup team in sunny Tampa Bay, Florida to come play up in WPG? Anyways, hope things are good where you are, because winter is already upon us up here. Take care."

Tampa would have to clear out three impact players within a week to even match that offersheet. It's either Serg signs the offer or he sits all summer without a contract as Tampa physically cannot move enough players to clear cap as no teams are doing teams favors in clearing cap. Tyler Johnson cleared waivers. It's either the big RFAs on Tampa start looking for better deals, or they take DeAngelo/Labanc esque 1 year deals for no money to keep playing.

Issue is, you have to lure players that just won a cup out of Sunny Tampa bay playing on a wagon to.... the frozen tundra of Winnipeg.... on a team with a defense made up of DeMelo, Morrissey and coffee lids... in a far harder division.... it's just not happening. With the Aho offersheet, Aho used Montreal to get his deal sorted. He signed below value to ensure it would be matched. With Tampa, the players have no desire to leave. They'll get the money, they know that. Even if Tampa move out Stamkos.

Sergachev is a Russian ice hockey player. If Winnipeg legitimately bothers him he wasn't raised right. Tampa also isn't getting rid of Stamkos, you saw what his presence did to that team in the finals. The only reason he's even brought up in trade talks is because he was injured for the playoffs, and if the players see their beloved captain traded because of that they'd revolt, or at the very least play like **** next season. The RFAs know that even if they stick around, the team next year is going to be a far cry from the one they just won a cup with, and might perhaps look at their other options to fill missing pieces on other good teams.

Okay hold on a second... Stamkos was on the ice for all of 3 minutes in the playoffs. They lose their captain. Fine. It's not like he played a major part of their cup run. If Tampa lose him, they can bring back everyone else, and it's still the same team that just rampaged to the cup. Saying the same roster that just ran to the cup at a canter is going to play like **** is just laughable. RFA's will still see the role they had (or in Cirelli's case, a better role) and see that they can still win in the warm Florida sun. As for your notes on Sergachev, Russia isn't as cold as you think it is. On the river about an hour out of Kizam isn't that bad. It's not as bad as somewhere like Winnipeg in the winters. If he was from Siberia, a different story. There's no reason for these RFA's to move when their best shot at winning the cup is staying where they are. This is without getting into Florida taxes being lower so they lose less money, the fact that they can literally stay in tampa on vacation and so on and so forth.

Where taxes are lower, more neighbors have no health insurance and give us pandemics. Where taxes are lower, we seem to get what we pay for. Agree on the whole "beach" thing, though. My guess is, with a life expectancy around 80 years, where any of these guys plays for the next two or three years is not their biggest worry. They're probably just hoping to stay healthy and keep playing sports for fun.