Quoting: Bbpagewolf
How could anyone have a problem with having both Pasta and Terry on the same team? In today’s NHL, you need two top lines to compete. Teams with one top line and one good 2nd line win playoff series, however teams with two top lines and one line that would be a 2nd line on any other team win Cups. Pasta and Zegras together would be insane and McTavish and Terry together would be nasty as well, or you can put Terry with Zegras and Pasta with McTavish. Either way, you have two nasty duos right there. Also, Strome…a goal scorer?? Please. As much as I like the guy, he’s a passer, not a finisher. The dude couldn’t hit the net if his life depended on it and if you don’t believe me, there’s a compilation vid on YouTube of all the missed nets he had this season with the Rangers. I suggest you go and watch it. Besides, Strome would do just fine being the “3rd line” center playing with Vatrano and Perreault. In fact, there’s a lot of potential for good chemistry between that threesome. Strome is the perfect passer to feed the puck to a guy like Perreault who has the ability to become a strong middle 6 goal scorer someday, and Strome and Vatrano obviously played together for the Rangers and while they weren’t on the same line much, the familiarity is there and I do think their styles can work well together. I do agree that Michael Bunting is a big risk and this coming season is going to be a big year for him to try and prove himself, but if he does have as good of a year as he can possibly have, then he’d be a great line mate for Zegras and Pasta. As for Sanheim, the Ducks left side on defense is more quantity than quality to me. We really don’t know if Vaakanainen or Benoit will really be much of anything and by the time Mintyukov is ready, Cam Fowler will be an UFA. The rest of the left D we have, I don’t see becoming much of anything so Sanheim is a nice pickup as far as I’m concerned.
I have a problem with both Terry and Pasta for what it does to our long term cap situation. Frankly, I am not wildly high on Terry as our 1RW, and think Strome will be a perfect fit at 2RW, Terry either needs to show last year wasn't a fluke, or we should look at using him as trade bait to land the big fish we want. Strome as a 20 goal scorer, 50 point player is perfectly suited to the second line. At least if Terry is going to be 2RW we should get him down to a 6-6.5 mil AAV.
The Strome trooper narrative is overblown, its from Rangers fans who are the worst in the league only after Leafs fans for any of their players having the slightest error. He is a good scorer and good setup guy, I think he goes great with McTavish's ability to put pucks in the net, and is a great secondary threat himself. None of your second line are particularly good setup men. You have a sniper with two crash and bang scorers, you would be relying on the defense to be the primary setup guys.
I didn't see Fast on the first blush, I think that's not a wise use of cap space and is overkill for the 4th line. The amount of term you have locked huge sums of cap up to could prevent us from signing our own young star talent unless the cap moves 10+ mil within two seasons after this ACGM.
Drop the Bunting and Fast signings, take 2 mil off Terry's deal, and get Sanheim or another defensively minded 2LW for ~4.5 AAV. For 1LW target Meier, Bertuzzi, Jeannot, Sharangovich, or maybe see if Ross Colton plays himself out of Tampa's budget this year and they can't afford to keep him.
Maybe an idea would be to use Rico and picks to pry a potential star young LW RFA from a team who is in the closing of their compete window.