Counterpoint: we are now 10-6-3, with Coronato, Wolf, Zary, Pospisil with plenty of runway to improve, help on the way with Pelletier, Honzek, Gridin, Basha, Parekh, and Brzustewicz, four 1sts in the next two drafts, and what looks to be a whopping 30M in cap space next year. Our laneway for improvement is hilarious, and while I don’t think we keep it up 10-6-3 is a 99 point pace.
I agree with this and love seeing our young core lead the way. I absolutely love how Conroy sold off our 6 expendable vets last year to let our young guys take on big roles while accumulating picks and prospects. He has done an incredible job.
But it’s funny to hear you saying this, because I vividly remember last year when you thought that we shouldn’t trade Marky, and that by trading Marky we would be tanking. I believe your exact quote was “A Vladar-Wolf tandem will be an arduous tank until Wolf gets years of experience just to be able to take a starters load, let alone start to excel at it. There won’t be much of a competitive team when you start allowing an extra goal per game like we currently are when Markstrom doesn’t play.”
I only bring this up to reinforce the idea that we need to continue the youth movement, but we don’t need to absolutely tank and hit rock bottom for a rebuild, or retool, or whatever you wanna call it. We have 4 firsts the next two years, some extra 2nds and 3rds, and we have some young guys (Wolf, Zary, Coronato) showing legit potential as top of the lineup players.
Are we gonna be a contender this year?
Probably not, but let’s keep letting the young guys flourish and accumulating picks and prospects, because with the right asset management Conroy can build a legit contender with the pieces we have. We just need to put all our assets towards that high-end C. In Conroy I continue to trust
