With my Nylander critic and doubter hats off, I’m wondering how a new WN contract would impact the team’s cap structure and competitiveness moving forward.
I took a quick look at Capfriendly and it showed that the current cap hit for all forwards stands at over 58 mils, and if I’m not mistaken that’s the highest among all teams. In theory they can fit in a new Willy contract even before the Tavares and Marner contracts run out in 2025, but major compromises on the depth will have to be made.
This current core 5, Matthews/Marner/Tavares/Nylander/Rielly have been producing to a reasonably well level over the years, but the still still hasn’t achieved anything with significance, I.e. playoff success. Two major have been the lack of forward depth and weak defence/goaltending.With a motivated Willy the offence may get a little better but his effectiveness will be neutralized playing against playoff calibre teams.
‘’This conundrum has supported my theory and criticism of the Duba/Shanahan’s blueprint from the day this core was formed, that this blueprint is flawed because of the imbalance of talent between forwards and d men. If they resign Willy and can’t trade Marner, the same problems will even get worse because they just don’t have the necessary trade chips or cap room to remedy these deficiencies.
This is a classic example of “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. Miracle will have to come in the form of either Woll becoming Carey Price or a rookie d man in Cale Makar clone bursts into the scene. Baring these miracles, can we really expect this year’s playoff result will be different ?