Willy has been entrenched on the wrong side of the Saros conversation from the jump. He was dogmatic in his view that Saros/Askarov was the tandem needed because Rinne/Saros transition proved successful. He refused to believe Askarov would be ready for starting time or that Saros would have any ability to decline with age. He also dismissed the idea that Askarov would become unhappy in the event of a Saros contract or that not giving him NHL games would give any opportunity for vexation.
While the Rinne/Saros transition was about as ideal as you could expect, you can't use ideals to build a team. You have to allow room for all the other occurrences/possibilities to play out...which is exactly what happened.
As a team, we have consistently found goaltenders, even when we had secured starters. There are several current NHL goaltenders that have come and gone on to be solid starters/high end backups that passed through our system or pipes over the years. It made sense at the time to trust that development strength and stick with the guy we had clearly highlighted as a high-end talent in Askarov. Assigning an unrealistic trade value to Saros at the time, to me, was one of the biggest mistakes. I understand he was valuable, but teams trading for him were absolutely factoring in the possibility of decline, age, and contract much like we should have. I know hindsight is 20/20, but in this case, many had the foresight to say none of these things made sense. I wasn't vocal about some of these things, but I felt strongly about the return expectations in a Saros deal. He may not have gotten the franchise changing deal they wanted, but a strong trade for assets or a proven player would have changed the course of where we currently stand. Now, his value is minimal bordering on negative value, and we'd be lucky to return much for him aside from clearing his impending deal.
<-- real development looks like this
