Thornton, marleau, pavelski, and boyle are all UFA's after next year. Clearly dougie will not throw in the towel until he sees how next year's team is shaping up. If they stink next year, then it will be a firesale, but that means that dougie could concievably go shopping this offseason for a good young UFA and sign him long term. There are a handful of 27 and 28 year old UFAs that should be good for the next 5 years. Nathan Horton could be a nice replacement for patty/jumbo. Bozak is around too as well as mason raymond, Viktor Stalberg, and Bickell. Nothing spectacular there, but if they got horton at 5 yrs, 25M and raymond for 4 years 14M, as well as stalberg at 4 yrs 12M, then you'd have 3 reasonable forwards all 27 this summer, all entering their prime. Its obviously a big downgrade but it lets dougie begin the "reset" without being completely useless.
I dunno, but either way, this offseason and next season will surely be interesting with jumbo, patty, boyle, and pavs all UFAs and cooch as an RFA. That's a whole lot of wheeling and dealing coming down the pipeline and big decisions for dougie.
I dunno, but either way, this offseason and next season will surely be interesting with jumbo, patty, boyle, and pavs all UFAs and cooch as an RFA. That's a whole lot of wheeling and dealing coming down the pipeline and big decisions for dougie.
