jones and werenski on the 2nd pair are proper roles????? Pelech on the 3rd pair? Tkachuk on the 2nd line?

Tkatchuk plays second line in Calgary... Jones and werenski prob not.

And paying your top two defensemen 5.3 and 4.9 mil?

I wouldn't use the overpaid argument for Matthews and McDavid and then play Ovi - what you can say is that's in not an expectation of an average team to have generational talents in those spots, but then again you have Crosby there, so idk...

I think the issue kinda is that you assume a player should make a certain amount or perform at a specific level, when in reality teams should just accumulate as much talent as possible. Colorado doesn't look at Kadri and say "this is a nice 2C", the say "this is a great player for 4.5 mil that we can slot in on our second line". I think sorting players into categories of "he's a true 1C/2C/3C" etc. blurres the lines between really good 1C's and really bad 1C's. The worst 1C is as close to the average 1C as the average 2C. It's better to think in terms of sliding scales. Kadri is probably around the 30-35th best C in the league imo - meaning he probably doesn't slot in here, most would probably say he's underpaid too...

Werenski-Jones are the first pair in Columbus, you have them at 2nd. Pelech is a top4 D/2nd pair, you have him on the 3rd pair. Rest is fine.

And McDavid isn't overpaid.

I fixed that. And he's not overpaid but I wouldn't want 12.5 invested in one player knowing what it does to the rest of the lineup. Hard to argue the highest paid player in the league is on a good contract.

Ovi has won how many richards? He's worth every penny.

Thats like calling malkin a 2C

Tkatchuk is a 65-70 point guy, great 2nd liner. borderline 1st liner. Could easily replace him with someone else. He's not on the first line on probably half the teams in the league so you could argue it either way.

I think he's saying Ovi's underpaid. I could be wrong though.

Ah, yes, if you won awards previously on your contract you're worth it.

No of course that has no relevance today. If you score 100 goals but your teams gets outscored 3-1 whenever you're on the ice, clearly you're not worth that money. I'm not even saying that's exactly the case, but you're not grappling with the argument here.

I think the whole top six is underpaid. But that's okay.
I think you've slotted players into proper roles for the most part, I don't think the third and fourth line players here are buried down there in the bottom six. However, you can't ice a team of perfectly compensated players, with perfect amounts of ice time, because you would just have an average team. You would need to do something like you have here, where everyone is a bit underpaid, and a bit underutilized. That's just having depth. This is what great team looks like: everyone sacrifices a little bit to win. You can't just bury Ovechkin on the third line, because when inevitably there's an injury to a top six player, he'll show that he's actually Elite and he'll no longer be satisfied with third line minutes.

As for the team itself, I think it's fantastic. It's a bunch of great players on value contracts. The important players are on term. The depth guys are tradable if you wanted to get someone who's cheaper, or a better fit. You can supplement the depth in Free Agency if you want.
My only nitpick is that Theodore should be playing top pair over Lindholm. Otherwise, well done.

I'm still not understanding %100 here, are you saying that OV is not a first line player anymore? Because that's a hysterical opinion if true. How many guys out scored him last year? 2? and he still plays fast and physical as he ever did. You're delusional if that's your thinking here.

Thanks! finally someone understands what I was going for. As for your theodore comment he is paired with Lidholm not above him

Oh yeah. IDK then. I want to have Theodore top pair but I don't want to move Slavin down. And I'm not sure if Lindholm really plays RD.

Yeah. He get's outscored on the ice, I don't know what else to tell you. I still think he has a decent value, but you have to tilt the ice in his favor to take advantage of the parts of his skillset which are elite. I wouldn't pay Ovechkin 9.5m in free agency. He's what, the 3rd highest paid winger in the league? I don't understand how you're going for "proper roles/prices" when that's the case. If you think he's elite, rather than roughly #15, why would you put him in a team like this anyways?

He's playing Theodore on RHD, but I have no idea how a team has "player in proper roles" when you have no less than 3-4 top 20 D-men all being a bit to massively underpaid.

He's irreplaceable. Nobody brings to the game what OV brings to the game. The best pure goal scorer in the league. IDK how you can so wildly undervalue that.