I mean, if you can trade 20 for Cernak, you can trade 14 for Cernak. The difference there is more a matter of degree than a matter of doing it or having it on the table or not. I'm open to the possibility of trading back from 14 though it's not my preference as of now. My thinking is that when you go through a rebuild, there are certain benchmarks you need to hit before you start moving these types of assets for now players and we're just not there yet. I don't think we will be there until we have at least Celebrini at the very earliest but more realistically at least two gamebreakers but ideally a gamebreaker up front and a gamebreaker on the back end.
I think the only thing that's going to convince you with the way you see things is the probability of leveraging that pick for a better future result than what Cernak can realistically provide our team with the talent we're probably going to have in the short and long term future of the team. I just don't see Cernak being a guy that you do this sort of thing for when he's not a core addition. You can draft core players at 14 even if that specific pick hasn't hit on that very often there are core players past that pick that have been core players like Hertl. Even with how certain pundits now view our prospect pool, the team still needs to make meaningful additions to hedge their bets. Right now, the future of our blue line looks something like Mukhamadullin, Thrun, and Cagnoni on the left side with only Fisher and Havelid as top-100 picks on the right side. Realistically, most of those guys aren't going to make anything of themselves. They need blue line prospects and that pick is in line with acquiring a pretty solid one. If all that's on the board by the time 14 comes up is snagging someone like Jiricek, I can at least understand trading down but trading off the pick entirely for a now player when our lineup would look like this with him is probably not the most effective way to leverage that pick...
Eklund-Granlund-Zetterlund
Zadina-Celebrini-Kunin
Bordeleau-Sturm-Kostin
Smith-Studnicka-Carpenter/Bailey
Ferraro-Cernak
Thrun-Rutta
Mukhamadullin-Burroughs/Emberson/Benning
That sort of team even with certain reasonable additions like Will Smith or a free agent or trade because of needing to spend cap is probably better than last year's team but not playoff competitive. Cernak was bad on a playoff team in a depth role. We'd almost certainly ask him to play higher and it's not likely to yield positive results with his specific deficiencies, the team's specific deficiencies, and the talent that's going to be around him. A player like Cernak is not someone we need to have right now and we can bide our time on acquiring him if it makes sense somewhere down the line to do so because 2nd or 3rd pairing defensemen that are solid defensively are typically in good supply. When this team potentially starts competing three years or so down the road and Cernak hits 30 and his NTC opens up to a 16 team trade list, his contract then has 4 years left with likely a much higher cap. Then it may make sense to take a run at him but now? Still too early while we're trying to develop a new core.
