I know what we got aint gonna work. Miller looks like every vanilla d man we have. We need a righty and I woudl argue we might need one even if we added a Hamilton or similar

I don't think we need a righty. We have RD - Severson, Subban, likely draft picks Clarke or Hughes, and Smith and Bahl both have experience there.

We need 1-2 shutdown d-man, that can lock things down in 2-1 games.
And we need a higher zone breakout success rate, so we can complete in 1-2 games.

Adding Risto doesn't help either, but he does lead to more scoring opportunities for opponents.

I think PK is picked in the XD, if not at TDL for sure!
Clarke or Hughes are at least 1-2 yrs out
Smitty likes the rights side and has played with Bahl, so far its worked but it really what we want at this time?
Yes a shutdown D is in order, but who?
Tennyson and Carrick are not the answers! I like what they have done but we gotta moved on. I am looking for a place holder for this upcoming year, Risto is still better than anything in-house (which is nothing) and lower down the lineup is going to make him less of a liability. I'm ok with other options but we need some bigger and better guys. What does UFA market look like or a bad contract attached to a decent guy

FWIW I did find this

Hard to see from my phone. Is that just for club elected arbitration though and not a QO? Interested in seeing the entire rule.

Here's the page

Right on. So arbitration cases have a percentage threshold. If they don't go to arbitration, then it could be whatever value but the QO needs to be at least the combined salary. Thanks for the link brother.