Quoting: sens65
Milano plays like a $3 million player and he's paid $1.9 million, you definitely acquire him if you can.
I see but at the same time, there won't be a ton of spots available for the top-9 (and from my evaluation after signing Sanderson and Pinto to long term deals, about 6-7 M$ in cap space for a top-9 winger and a 4th liner as defense and goaltending is already set)
Top-9 : Stutzle, Tkachuk, Norris, Batherson, Giroux, Greig, Pinto, ??????, ??????
Both-4 (4th line + 13th fwd) : Joseph, Kastelic, MacEwen, ??????
Candidates for the Top-9 : a young top-9 forward acquired for Erik Brannstrom, which would allow Kleven to take the 3rd pairing LD, plus one of the guys below could prove he belongs to the Top-9
Candidates for the Bot-4 : Oskar Pettersson, Zack Ostapchuk, Tyler Boucher, Angus Crookshank, Egor Sokolov, Jiri Smejkal, Parker Kelly, etc
There is going to be cap space, candidates to take a spot and possibly another guy from trading Brannstrom... We might need to sign ONE forward at most. The point is we could do better than Milano and without spending any asset as well. The UFA forward class is going to be extremely stacked next off-season :
https://www.capfriendly.com/browse/free-agents/2025/caphit/all/forwards?stats-season=2023