I don't particularly think there's ever a lot of bargains in FA. But they did do little things like flip Lyubushkin for more than they paid. By and large, they've limited their long term commitments, and focused on loading up the system. There was not a lot of realistic FA options for them in recent years, and they didn't have the assets to do much more than sell at the deadline.
I understand that we're talking about a bad team but overall been disappointing in UFA from him.
Well, a lot of guys with true upside don't get moved. Maybe you're talking about a roll of the dice on a failed youngster somewhere else? That's fine, but there's probably a lot more Newhook type outcomes than ones that actually pay off. Hell, Vaakanainen who they just shipped out was one of those.
I'm talking about moves like for example NJD going and getting 25 year old John Marino, or 26 year old Ryan graves. Guys who have had success, but are still potentially on the way up, not the way down.
NJD for example built a quality dcore from virtually nothing before the prospects had arrived.
Went out and got a hamilton while being shit.
Went and grabbed marino while being shit
Went and grabbed graves while being shit
Went and grabbed siegs while being shit.
And that's what helped take them out of the basement when they had a quality goalie season for once.
I don't think there's as many of those types of moves to be had as you seem to think. If it were that easy, a lot more teams would be getting out of their bad contracts (and there's plenty who need to). There's a reason why so many teams are up against it, you can't just send off a pick to unload every expensive guy ... at some point you'll just run out of picks which you also might prefer to use to go get TDL acquisitions.
You don't need to take every cap dump.
But there are a lot more teams looking to clear cap than actually do. They don't because the cost is too prohibitive. (eg Oilers ending up buying out campbell).
But if you're gonna take on bad cap like trouba and not even get picks, why not undercut other teams in the pure dump market like campbell?
I 100% respect not taking on cap dumps. But if you're gonna not take pure cap dumps, don't trade for shit contracts and pay for the privledge
By the time they need the cap space if the young stars blow up, much of the veteran deals will be expired. They don't have albatross contracts running for another 5 or 6 years.
If the window to start competing is another half decade down the line sure. And it doesn't mean you can't make good moves in the meantime
You make it sound like rebuilds from rock bottom are a piece of cake, but they're really not. No one really makes the jump until they have multiple young guys explode into stardom ... but that doesn't typically happen until you start getting to around 23-25. Right now the bulk of the Ducks' youngsters are still years from that. Hell, Carlsson hasn't even exited his teens.
Nobody said it was a piece of cake.
But it isn't some ridiculous expectation to expect a GM to effectively make trades and signings.
This is a bad trade.