Sixth-oldest roster in the league and they're only heading into their fourth season of existence. And you obviously know more than me when it comes to prospects but based on what I've read, they don't exactly have a great farm system yet (though I guess their AHL affiliate is pretty damned good FWIW).
And Lighten Up Francis' choices when it comes to goaltending has been spotty at best, both in Carolina and in Seattle.
In hindsight...why not just, y'know, pay Sprong $2 million to score another 20 goals on the 4th line? Was it really worth the cap savings going to Yamamoto and his eight goals?
I believe that Francis has a long-term plan, which led him to cut ties with all their offensive depth, but considering all these blokes were getting 1-2 year deals tops, it looks really bad in hindsight IMHO. Then he fires the coach due, which seems like to be like a rash and impulse move to try and bring in your boy from Carolina. If they truly saw that Hakstol was the problem he would've been gone the first week when their season ended, not in a random time between the playoffs and offseason. This differs from the Sharks, which seems like they fired him based on the player exit interviews, which can explain the weird timing on that one.
I actually really like their most recent draft and they do have some solid depth pieces which should turn into NHL prospects like Wright, Evans, Winterton, Firkus, Nyman, Goyette, Nelson, Sale, Dragicevic, Wisdom, and Price, but you're not getting any star potential here. All these blokes are going to do is add some solid depth for sure, but nothing like we're seeing from Makar in this Jets series. They ain't a bad drafting team overall, they take risks, value the analytics, and have gotten some good value picks like Firkus in the second round, Wisdom in the seventh round, Price in the third round.
