I tried listening to the episode of "Frankly Speaking" when Trotz was the guest. Honestly didn't get through much of it because I can't stand listening to Seravalli, but i heard enough. Their whole strategy was to bring in "proven winners" to insulate their young guys (sound familiar?) and to keep spaces available for said young guys. The problem, IMO, was obvious: what young guys? Is he talking about Tomasino, Evangelista, Parssinen, L'Heureux? Those guys are as mid as mid gets.
They literally have no young guys in the system that move the needle enough to be considered a lock to be future core pieces. Actually, their AHL goalies look pretty good, but both are in their mid 20's and stuck behind recently minted Saros.
They had oodles of cap space and future draft capital, but instead of using their position to take advantage of desperate/impatient GMs , they signed some absolutely head scratching contracts of their own.
They should have delt Saros, ran with Askarov/Lankinen and monetized the bejesus out of their cap space until the duchene dead cap peak was in the rearview. It's too bad they outperformed expectations last season, because the hope it gave was false and now they've painted themselves into a corner.
