I love podcasts too, and I definitely listen to them way more than the mainstream media, but I do think people tend to overstate the importance of the opinion of a podcast host (as we see here with Axl). To me the opinions of John Hoven, Dennis Bernstein and Jesse Cohen carry no more validity and their arguments no more cogent than many members here that I have enjoyed talking hockey with for two decades.
Why should what Jesse Cohen or John Hoven says carry more weight than what RJ or BigKing says? Maybe Axl can answer.
This is the whole "Fantasy Football Expert" thing, just because somebody like Matthew Berry was first to the game and able to monetize it and grow his own brand and following doesn't mean his opinions are any more important or likely to be correct than your 11 college buddies in your FF whatsapp chat.
As far as Fiala and PLD, bad moves that were made because of a bad bigger decision. Had Fiala been a consistent point-per-game guy and PLD been a 70 point center the Kings may have been able to make it to a conference final spot one of these years. The Kings weren't winning a SC with what they had at C, and since Blake failed to draft and develop any of the guys he used massive draft capital on into even a 2C, and his refusal to gamble on Eichel made it so he had to go outside the organization for that C and for more scoring.
Most teams aren't trading scorers that compete, play defense and are good in the room, that is why the ones that do hit the market either have red flags to their game/attitude (Fiala/PLD) or just don't want to be with their current team (Eichel, Tkachuk).
