Quoting: Chatfield4MVP
My man I really don't know what to tell you if this doesn't make sense. We are cap limited this year because we can't just trade away all our bad contracts. Orlov, kuzy, burns are eating up like 18mil in cap space. Morrow and nikishin will be free money in 2026. Signing guentzel to 9mil would be tossing this year. That 3mil makes a huge difference in depth. I imagine the trade would only happen with the agreement of an extension.
Let me put it another way since you’re having trouble understanding.
The canes can fit in guentzel at 8x8.5-9.25 this year. It’s not an if, it’s they can if they choose to go away from their strategy of handing out max term deals to 30 years olds. If Guentzel doesn’t extend here it’s not bc they can’t afford the extension due to cap constraints this year, it’s bc they aren’t willing to pay that much to a 30 year old on a max term deal.
Ehlers is a worse player than Guentzel. He’s a good player, but he’s not on Guentzel level. He’ll also be 30+ when his extension kicks in next summer. If the canes aren’t willing to break their rule for Guentzel, they certainly won’t for a lesser player. Which means Ehlers is going to want to go to UFA bc another team is going to give him a max term deal that the canes wouldn’t.
Your main point is that the canes can’t find the extra 2.5-3m for this year to keep Guentzel versus Ehlers while
Remaining competitive which just seems silly. A KK buyout alone literally solves that. There’s a myriad of creative solutions to make guentzel at his cap hit work over somebody like Ehlers without really impacting the depth of the team, and that’s not even taking into account Guentzel making the top end of the team better than Ehlers.