Do you remember the careers of Lindros and Giroux? How they never built enough around either of them?
They're running down a path to do the same thing with Michkov. Sprinting at a pace that Usain Bolt would sweat over.
Well sure, but they did get LeClair to play with Lindros. Oddly you can also remember that as good as Lindros might have been, Forsberg won the cups. Maybe staying the course there instead of the big trade would have brought a bigger reward eventually? Hard to say.
For this management group you have to maybe accept that they see this as year 1. Michkov's rookie year as their starting point. It maybe caught them by surprise coming earlier than expected. The plan was tear down and ditch the slackers, build a strong team culture, and then insert the talent (Michkov plus). It's likely a longer time frame than we would like but the tanking alternative has been shown to fail miserably. Rebuilding your culture after tanking is hard. Buffalo still can't get out of it.
If you tank you really have to get it right and you often don't. Would I like more high skill talent added? Sure. Absolutely, but I'm not too worried about this year. There's still some trades to be made (like Risto maybe) and the goalies need to evolve and Michkov has to learn English and adjust to the NHL. NEXT year I expect improvement and then every year after that. If not, then it's a fail.
Ultimately you know the Carter Hart situation screwed this team. With good goaltending we would have made the playoffs last year. We might be Washington. Left with what we have though it's a who knows what every night and sometimes the team falls apart because of that. Just have to hope Errson or Kolosov eventually develops.