I'd keep Murphy. I don't mind the Jiricek pick, just don't think he'll be ready in 2 years and that would be two rookies on the right side.

Jesus Christ that seth jones contract is gonna be awful in 4 years

Hopefully Bowman is GM somewhere in 4 years because he loves to re-acquire players and overpay to get them i.e. Panarin for Saad 😔

Luckily it will expire right around the time the salary cap might start to matter for the hawks

It's pretty unlikely that Jones contract becomes a serious problem at any point. It might be a little difficult to navigate in the final years, but nothing unmanageable. Most of these kids will never get anything close to $9.5M contracts, and the ones that do probably won't within the next 6 seasons, aside from Bedard.

If the kids arent getting extensions to make the Jones contract at least a little bit of a problem in the next 7 years, then the rebuild was unsuccessful. All these first round picks, you'd hope the average on their first extensions after the ELC is around 5 million (Bedard and Demidov become stars and make upwards of 8-9 mil, Nazar/Korchinski/Moore/Rinzel all a bit lower). Throw in a upper tier free agent signing, in this scenario its Rantanen, if these guys arent forcing an issue to at least make some tough decisions, then we have an issue.

Jones deal is 6 years left after this current year finishes in the next 2 weeks. A bucnh of the guys you mentioned haven't even signed ELC's yet. That plus the cap rising, we shouldn't be pushing the cieling by then. I get what you are saying and would agree but I think your timing is off. Demidov wouldn't even be eligible to sign a 3 year ELC until 2025, a top pick in the 2025 draft won't sign until 2026, NAzar, Rinzel, Moore, etc are all still in college. I get that they will all be signed and starting second deals by then but all these guys in their early 20s starting 2nd deals won't push us to 90+ mil in cap. Like you said Bedard and (hopefully) Demidov sign big deals right away but all the other guys are more than likely bridged. Look at a team like BUF for example who is probably a few years ahead of us. They have guys like Power amd Dahlin entering a big 2nd deal, and a bunch of those forwards are coming into 2nd deals soon but the 9M Skinner contrcat with 4 years left is a non issue. BUF will have plenty of cap down the line to sign all these guys (22M, 36M, 46M in the next 3 seasons), and they are already paying Dahlin 11M, Power 8.3M, and cozens 7M not to mention the rest of their roster.

All this to say the Jones deal is expensive but still a non issue. He's not worth his contract or what we paid but he's still a top pair D regardless which we need anyways.

Like @Wadejos123 said, your timing is off. The only point at which the Jones contract has any chance of becoming even a little bit of an issue is in the last 2 or 3 years of his deal. Even then, it should be more than manageable. But chances are, when most of these kids sign they will need a year or two in the AHL, which leaves the team a much smaller sample size from which to base their second contract on. Which means they get bridge/prove-it deals. Some of them will even slide a year or two, extending their ELC's to 5 years.

Also, Jones has been good. Stop feeding the bull$hit machine about him being bad. He is fine, he is here, we need to get over it and move on. His contract has become part of the plan already. KD and his team have had, and will have, plenty of time to plan accordingly.

The Seth Jones hate is so annoying. I understand fans of other teams trying to poke fun at us, because we did overpay both in the acquisition and contract, but the hawks fans I don't get it. It's like they don't watch the games (considering we aern't very good, they probably don't) because Jones is still good. If he made 8M and the 1st we sent didn't end up being Jiricek no one would care

Exactly. Some fans don't know how to check their bias.