Rangers would do Monahan for a second probably. Conditional perhaps. Not a guaranteed first tho for sure

That’s enough value for Z imo. Still not sure ANA makes a move like that which pushes out the rebuild even farther unless they really like who’s sitting there at 6

I belive the Ducks will gonna sign a big offensive free agent next season (Reinhart for example) and Gauthier will likely gonna comes in the big league. And my big feeling about the Zegras case is that I belive Anaheim aren't really sure about his future and they don't really want him anymore on their future offensive core. They decided to extend the maximum for Terry, but Zegras asked the same type of contract, and the Ducks forced him to sign a bridge deal. Why they didn't extend him with the same type of contract than Terry ? Why they decided to add Gauthier and get rid of Drysdale (who is likely the best teamates of Zegras in the Ducks organisation) ?

And don't forget that the Ducks have a great reputation to always developping somes tallended players in their organisation, even when the team is competitive.

Maybe they do. But FA’s have been very expensive to get to play in ANA of late (see Gudas, Killorn). Thats unlikely to be how ANA builds their core imo

And that’s a ton of conjecture on Zegras. We have no idea what Verbeek thinks of him as a long term fit, but Cronin has clearly been a very big fan. Verbeek noted early on that he wasn’t huge on handing out long-term deals in general. On top of that, Zegras had a lot of growing up to do coming out of last year both in his defensive game and general maturity. Even with the productivity I would’ve been hesitant as well. He’s made good strides this year though. I don’t at all buy the rumors that he’s on the block unless Verbeek gets an offer that can’t be refused

We traded Drysdale because we are up to our eyebrows in young puck moving defensemen, and Mintyukovs emergence as a PPQB made Drysdale expendable. We bought Gauthier to bring in more scoring. Zegras lead the team in points last season. If you need more scoring, why on earth would you trade away your best forward? Even with Gauthier coming in, and if we buy Reinhacher, we just push Killorn to 3rd line, and trade Vatrano or Strome.

Terry only was signed to 7, not 8, Zegras no doubt wanted a Caufield type contract, Verbeek wanted to see more before committing that in kind of money to him. Zegras is the first of the young guys to come off his ELC, overpaying on that contract sets a bad precedent for everyone coming after him, and then we may as well be the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Caps decline. They have enough cap space to retain 50%.