While they were there, Elvis got on a Zoom call with the players to congratulate them.

Hartley was the coach of Latvia’s senior program for 5 years and still has strong ties with a lot of them, including Artis Abols (current HC of the team at the WJC), who was AC to Hartley.

For further reference, if we only consider goalies who played at least 10 games this season, the leader is Connor Hellebuyck @ 0.928 SV% & 2.06 GAA.

He leads both categories.

For reference, the leaders of these 2 categories right now in the NHL is a 3-way tie between NYI’s Marcus Hogberg, VGK’s Akira Schmid and MTL’s Jakub Dobes.
0 GAA & 1.000 (shutout) in 1 game both for Schmid and Dobes, 2 games for Hogberg.

Of note:

56th in SV% and tied with both Elvis and Jet is Jeremy Swayman. He has a slightly better GAA however at 2.93, good for 47th in the league.

Former #CBJ Joonas Korpisalo is 34th in the league @ 2.71 GAA & 50th @ 0.895 SV%.

Who would’ve thought Korpi would lead these 5?

The other 2 that had a positive differential on Friday (Werenski and Provorov, both +1) were minuses Saturday (both -1).

Jenner - Monahan - Marchenko
Chinakhov - Fantilli - Johnson
Dumais - Sillinger - Voronkov
Malatesta - ? - Olivier
? - ?

Werenski - Fabbro
Mateychuk - Severson
? - Gudbranson
Harris

Merzlikins
Greaves

This would realistically leave at least 27- 30M on the cap to add 5 players.

I’d assume Waddell’s priority looking into next season would be to re-sign Fabbro & Olivier in the UFAs (up to them); the rest are quite replaceable.
In the RFAs, Voronkov and maybe Harris should be re-signed, not sure for Tarasov and Pyyhtia.

Doing this would look like this:

The 4 RFAs: Voronkov, Pyyhtia, Harris & Tarasov.
Some forwards will probably come from Cleveland / Junior, 1 or more of players such as Brindley, Dumais, Lindstrom, Del Bel Belluz, Malatesta, McCue, etc, which are less than 1M per on their ELC.
Some UFAs might stick around too.

This leaves 44.655M for Waddell to work with this summer and complete the following lineup:

Jenner - Monahan - Marchenko
Chinakhov - Fantilli - Johnson
? - Sillinger - ?
? - ? - ?
? - ?

Werenski - ?
Mateychuk - Severson
? - Gudbranson
?

Merzlikins
?

11 to add. Only 4 RFAs.

Before throwing rocks at me, consider that IF Aaron Ekblad walks this summer, it would be because of salary (cap issues in Florida).
The team with the least cap engagements this summer is by far #CBJ, so it may be less far-fetched than one might initially presume.

10/9 bonus:

If, by some witchcraftery, Waddell could sign UFA Ekblad next summer, Severson would, to me, become the odd man out, and the pairings would be amazingly balanced.

Werenski - Ekblad
Mateychuk - Fabbro
? - Gudbranson
Harris

I’d even be fine w/ Jake or Jordan as the 5th D.

The key here is knowing if Gudbranson can consistently play 2nd pair minutes when he gets healthy.

If he can, to me, this might be the best option for Waddell to finally solve the D’s inconsistency of the last few seasons.

Pairing strenghts to stabilize.

9/9

However, the easiest fix might be to move Gudbranson on the 2nd pair with Mateychuk (great fit, to me) and sign a rugged left-handed shutdown D to complement Severson on the 3rd pair.

Z - Fabbro
Mateychuk - Gudbranson
? - Severson
Harris

There is a way to make this work.

8/?

Looking into next season, before any trades or signings other than what « seems obvious » (but not certain), we’re probably looking at:
Z - Fabbro
Mateychuk - Severson
? - Gudbranson
Harris

I really don’t think that 2nd pair has what it takes to properly develop Mateychuk.

7/?

This doesn’t look quite as bad as I anticipated (although it lingers until 36-37, 12 years from now).
With the rising cap in the next few years, it might be interesting to instead retain salary until 30-31 and trade Damon.
At 50% retained, A team could perhaps use him (3.125M per)

6/?