I shared with you "why Verbeek did what he did", but you're still refusing to accept that path. There were two options for Verbeek when he came onboard:
1. Keep the UFAs and add more talent such as two top-6 forwards and a middle/bottom shutdown veteran D.
2. Reset the team and build around the current youth as well as farm team.
I preferred option 1, just like you. We found our next core, a couple of youths established themselves last year in Terry and Zegras, but we needed NHL depth because our prospects were still a year or two away from the NHL. The team proved it can be successful, but was lacking serious depth. Our next step was to follow what the Kings did last off-season when it signed top-6C Danault, traded for top-6RW Arvidsson, and signed elder D Edler.
Murray's a tinkerer, loves layering, and roster balance (which includes physicality). In 2019, the start of the rebuild, when Manson went to IR and deemed to be out for weeks, Murray quickly traded for vet RD Gudbranson and his $4 mil contract to make sure the team had NHL support. Last season, Manson was sent to IR during All-Star break when Verbeek was hired, but Verbeek didn't seek to find NHL level help replacement for Manson like Murray did years ago.
In keeping all the UFA's and acquiring more top-6 with middle-to-bottom-6 defensive D, the cap situation becomes vastly complicated. Murray's known how to juggle the cap and keep talent ever since he was hired on to fix what Burkie did with the cap and no talent pool.
Verbeek, in obvious retrospect, did not want to deal with the convoluted cap situations of vets a decade older than the youth group and sprinkled in with intermediate FA's/traded players to take the next step of contending. Again, Verbeek deals with a strict rubric of age-to-term ratio. That's the pattern that Verbeek has found to be successful and can't he doesn't want to deviate from it. That differs from Murray, who loves tinkering as well as try to pass things forward for the organization.
When Verbeek, in his own words, "
blew up the team," at the trade dealine, it was profound to me. It ran contrary to what
he said when he was hired:
"This team doesn't need to be rebuilt; they're in the middle of their rebuild, so this is a great opportunity to take this team forward and turn them into a contender," Verbeek said during his introductory press conference.
Verbeek reset the team back years and it would be a long way back to contention. I said this at the TDL because there's no way we can replace #1D and 2nd pairing shutdown D. They don't grow on trees and our prospect college D haven't even made it to the pros yet, which Murray raved about two off-seasons ago as potential trade capital.
Once I accepted we reset the rebuild back to year 2/3 (which I think it's year 1/2 now), I just bought into what Verbeek is trying to do, which is to build around Zegras and Drysdale, that age range. Verbeek was gifted a top-5 farm team as well. The only way to land a top pairing D is through the draft or by packaging top prospects with picks. Verbeek might be trying to achieve both by amassing loads of picks.
