we miss leo k
Joined: Feb. 2018
Posts: 6,014
Likes: 5,131
I'd be fine giving Nichushkin term on that deal if he wanted. Ideally 5x$5.5M, takes him through his age-32 season and you're hopefully not getting stuck with too much of his decline on that. Grit your teeth and kick in the 6th season if that's a dealbreaker for him.
I just have the gut feeling that Lou isn't going to just dump Bailey's deal out of a sense of loyalty to him - say what you want about it but Lou loves his "good soldiers" and I can't think of any current Islander who fits that bill better than Bailey. It means you basically have to choose between Reilly or Soucy to play LD2 and then cycle in Salo/Bolduc?/The Ghost of Andy Greene into LD3. That pair can be sheltered if necessary - maybe double shift Pelech a couple times in the 3rd with Mayfield if you need that tight defense. You can free up the rest of the money you'd need to carry Bailey's contract by sacrificing one of Czarnik/Bellows and giving Dobson like $250K less (it's early and I am too tired to do accurate math right now.) I don't love it, but Bailey has shown some life skating with Pageau & Palmieri, so let that ride and see if it can keep momentum going next year.
Also, lol @ finding and trading AnDong Song's rights - is that dude even playing anywhere anymore? HockeyDB has him MIA since 2017-18 in the USHL.