You got a huge cap hit in Lauri Eriksson, Matheson is making too much money to be a scratch (what I mean is try and trade him), and try this in 2022-23 instead.

Rust and Zucker are easily worth 1st round picks alone.
Even high ones.
They don't have to take on cap dumps.

@LucasVollmer09 I agree with you on Matheson, but I don’t want to give up a good pick or prospect in order to move the contract, so my thoughts were to have him on the roster during the rebuild, and when the team starts to get ready for contention and you need the cap space he only has somewhere around 2 years left on his contract and it is a lot easier to move. Also, I am building this team to go along with mike Sullivan’s coaching strengths, he is better with players that will play hard and play his system right like the current Islanders. I feel like this team would perform better than the current team is now.

I added the dumps in order to get a little more value in the trades and to get them to go through because neither Edmonton nor Vancouver have the cap space for those deals without a more valuable piece being moved, Eriksson only has 1 year left, and Neal has 2, so they won't hurt the penguins because they will be rebuilding in those 2 years.

either way, Rust and Zucker alone are worth a 1st. and to take a guy like Lucic back teams are requesting probably a 1st in this market.

I think the 1st round pick from edmonton is in play but savoie isn't. I would throw benson or jones in there in place of savoie though.