Quoting: Caerii
I think Faber's contract won't be an issue as that's when the worst of the buyouts drops off. Kaprizov's contract only requires an additional 3-4M from where he's at now, so that's easy (Zuccarello's 4M drops off that same summer). I haven't done a deep dive to see how much cap space we're actually projected to have in the summers of 2025 and 2026, so I can't really say for certain what the cap space looks like those years. Should have a few guys on ELC's in the next year or two though, which helps with cap space and highlights the importance of not trading 13th overall picks when you get them.
Point is I don't think Spurgeon's contract is an impediment to extending anyone they want to between now and the time it ends in 2027. The only guys who are going to command big money between now and then that aren't already making big money are Rossi and Faber, and it sounds like Rossi may not even be here for his next contract. Plus, you trade Spurgeon, and I'm not sure we're a playoff team anyway unless you can immediately replace him. We'd pretty much be watching last season again.
Still, signing free agents generally requires overpaying them with both term and AAV. That's basically what Fletcher's entire tenure was, and that resulted in jack. Great teams are usually home grown, they lock their guys up to lower AAV's than they'd get on the open market, and they have a few ELC guys playing like non-ELC guys. You build through the draft if you want to be a great team, not through free agency.
Fletcher's downfall was that he traded picks to get **** players (Hanzal, Stewart, Moulson, etc). Or the putrid Tuch+Haula to Vegas for expansion protection. We are still feeling the ramifications from some of those trades.
I think the issue not being taken into account is that you are not making your team better. You're treading water. Not good. Not bad. Perfectly Minnesota errrr I mean mediocre.
Look at all the top teams. Plenty of them have key free agent signings. I mean, look at Dallas: Marchment, Pavelski, Duchene, Smith, Steel, Suter, Hakanpaa, etc. Florida: Verhaeghe, Rodrigues, Mikkola, OEL, Bobrovsky, etc.
You don't have to go crazy. Like I said, if we could get Boeser, Frederic, and Perbix, I think we are sitting pretty. Maybe we don't need to trade Spurgeon for that to happen. But I have more of an issue with Spurgeon the player than his contract. I doubt that his two surgeries suddenly made him better. He's still a limited midget that has to rely on "smarts" that can be bulldozed and taken advantage of by bigger players. He doesn't play well in the playoffs. These things might be fine if the rest of our dmen were 6'3" bruising dmen. They are not. Our defense is so soft.