I would take that Isles trade which makes me think you're severely undervaluing Marner here.

I also get what you're going for here, but I think you're still way too top-heavy. You have Ryan Reaves & Chris Tierney playing every night on the 4th line, and with a 20 man roster, you're putting a lot of faith in some guys with heavy miles on them staying healthy. Tanev's 34, Marchessault's 33, Pageau, Schwartz, & Oleksiak are 31, and while Pulock is only 30 on Opening Night, he's missed 20+ games with injury in 2 of the past 3 seasons.

I think there's a middle ground where you maybe send out Marner for some solid if not spectacular roster pieces and pass on Tanev and Marchessault - treat 2024-25 as more of a transitional year where you try and retool instead of trying to rebuild a ship that's currently sinking (to mix some metaphors.) Sign an RD2 like Dumba for $2-3M, let Schwartz be LW2 and sign a 3rd liner for $2-3M, keep some cash in reserve to add at the deadline if the guys put everything together. Then next summer you're losing JT's $11M and hopefully seeing another small bump in that cap - NOW you do the full overhaul.

OTT declines