One move away?

I just took a big picture look and went over all of Burke's recent moves. For the first time in a long time, it was easy to slot players into their spots – a clear definition of top 6 and bottom 6. I don’t see any players in the top 6 “by default”. The best part is they’re all under 25 years old. Based on the players he has brought in and the players he re-signed, Burke seems to have positioned himself to trade Kaberle for a top-line left winger, which, other than filling in the 6/7 defensive spots, is really the only missing piece at this point.

Bobby Ryan is atop my wish list, but obviously that’ll be a tough acquisition. But there are other options. For the purposes of this post, let’s just assume it’s Ryan and that he’d sign a contract identical to Kessel’s deal. I’m also assuming Grabovski will be moved (possibly as part of a Kaberle deal) and Finger demoted to the Marlies.

On D, I imagine a guy like Aulie will be given a shot at the #6. Overall, the top 5 will be playing heavy minutes this year. I don’t imagine we’d need to spend more than $750,000.00 on filling the #7 spot.

Based on all that, here’s the way I see our lineup looking on opening night:

FORWARDS
Bobby Ryan - Tyler Bozak - Phil Kessel
Nikolai Kulemin - Nazem Kadri - Kris Versteeg
Colby Armstrong - Christian Hanson - Luca Caputi
Fredrik Sjostrom – John Mitchell - Colton Orr/Mike Brown

DEFENSEMEN
Dion Phaneuf - Luke Schenn
Carl Gunnarsson - Mike Komisarek
Francois Beauchemin - Keith Aulie/Other

GOALTENDERS
Jonas Gustavsson
Jean-Sebastien Giguere

SALARY CAP NUMBER: $59,257,500.00

More importantly, that is a young, fast, playoff team.