It is clearly not true, because we just went over how all these key goals were scored by players we could afford with our cap allocation.
If it is so clear then maybe someone needs to build that depth before these guys contracts end or get old.
That's what we've been doing, through efficient UFA signings, signing overseas guys, signing non-drafted guys, building back up our prospect pool, etc. Our best players just completed their age 24 season, and are likely to be here performing at a high level for the next decade, so let's stop panicking like we've got a closing window.
What team has won with 4F taking up 1/2 the cap?
Considering how little of the NHL's history the cap has been around, and the fact that for a lot of that time, the cap was rising significantly and there were back-diving deals artificially lowering top-end cap hits, and the incredibly unique situation it is to have 4Fs worth signing to that much in the first place, this doesn't really mean anything or say anything about our ability to win. Everything hasn't happened until it has. Teams win with all kinds of different cap allocations, builds, play styles, etc., and varying levels of dead/wasted cap. You could find some random, unique quirk for any winning team, but it didn't prevent them from winning.
If goaltending is the issue go get a Rask Price or Vasilevsky.
You don't just "go get" top tier goalies. They don't get traded.
ELC has everything to do with cap allocation, you need guys that are pulling well above their cap hit, the best source of that is a steady stream of talent on ELC/bridge deals. One of the reasons that drafting was not good after Matthews was picked is there were not enough picks.
We've made 35 picks since Dubas took over (out of a default 35 picks), and our prospect pool has gotten exponentially better. The reason we don't have much ELC depth on our roster 2018-2022 has nothing to do with cap allocation. It's because the picks that would be helping an NHL roster in 2018-2022 would be picks made in 2014-2017, and our drafting during that time was not good. The future looks much better in this regard.
Lou signed Marleau but I'm sure Dubas knew about it when he signed Tavares, When he signed Tavares it was evident that he was going to have cap issues...that's on him not Lou.
Actually, no it wasn't. The cap was supposed to be rising rapidly in the upcoming years, and while Marner was clearly an upper-echelon talent, he ended up putting up one of the best pre-signing ELC seasons ever. Tavares took up the cap space of players that were departing after the 2017-2018 season, not Marleau's cap space.
Also, carrying significant amounts of open or dead cap and making our team worse during a competitive phase is not an option, whether we had Tavares or not. That's way more stupid than trading away what would have been a late 1st in order to actually utilize our cap space and not put ourselves at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Lou signed that contract knowing the 3rd year would be extremely problematic, but he didn't care because he wouldn't be GM anymore. The consequences of that contract are on him. And again, the sequence of events that led to that pick being 13th overall were abnormal and caused by a rule change post-trade. We don't know who we would have picked, and even if we had picked Jarvis, he wouldn't have done anything in 3 of the 4 years, and exchanging Tavares for him would have made us worse off in all 4 years.
There were other players available later that pick could have been used on, Guhle, mercer, Lapierre Barron.
All of those players combined have 0 career playoff points, for the record. Even when cherry picking prospects, it wouldn't have helped us.
Traded a 1st a Durzi to get Muzzin (now Muzzin is overpaid and getting old)
Traded a 1st to get rid of Marleau
Threw in a 3rd in Kadri trade- mainly cause he needed Colorado to retain
A 1st and 2 4ths to rent Folingo again no cap space so extra picks on 3rd team to retain
A second to dump Ritchie
traded down to dump Mazarek
2 2nds and third in GIO. (needed retention again)
The Muzzin trade was a great trade, and he has been outstanding and has helped us immensely here for years since we acquired him. Far more beneficial to our team than what was traded away.
Marleau trade has been addressed. An unfortunate necessity caused by Lou.
We got back a 6th in the Kadri trade, so there was no loss of pick, only loss of slots.
Foligno was expensive and the rare significant rental we have gone after, but that draft was also fairly weak to start with, and then got both worse and more random due to Covid disrupting development. We only sent one 4th to the 3rd team for retention, for the record.
It was not "a 2nd to dump Ritchie". It was a conditional 2nd/3rd to dump Ritchie and acquire Lyubushkin - who probably would have cost only slightly less than that himself.
The Mrazek trade is again a trade where we did not lose a draft pick. We lost a small number of relatively insignificant draft slots.
It was two 2nds and a 3rd for Giordano and Blackwell, and we are getting two additional years out of Giordano at a steal of a price.
A competitive team cannot hang on to every single draft pick. That's an unrealistic expectation. Retention has also become relatively common over the past few years, as the flat cap has squeezed competitive teams. This is not unique to us, and also has nothing to do with our specific allocation. We are a team that is going to utilize the full cap regardless, and this retention has not even cost us significant draft capital.
You're also ignoring the times when we have gained draft picks back.
We picked up an extra 3rd in the 2018 draft by trading back 4 slots.
We picked up a 7th round pick for Carrick.
We picked up a 7th round pick for Gordeev.
We picked up a 3rd round pick in the Zaitsev trade.
We picked up a 4th round pick in the Sparks trade.
We picked up a 5th round pick being the 3rd retaining team in the Lehner deal.
We picked up a 1st round pick in the Kapanen deal.
We picked up an extra 3rd round pick in the 2020 draft by trading back in the 2nd.
We picked up a 3rd round pick in the Dermott trade.
We picked up an extra 5th round pick in the 2022 draft by trading back in the 3rd.
We picked up a 3rd round pick and a 7th round pick in the Murray trade.
We can go back and forth forever on each individual move involving a draft pick, but again, we've drafted 35 out of the 35 default times over the past 5 drafts, and our prospect pool has improved considerably. We've also picked up non-drafted prospects, overseas prospects, and cheap and efficient UFA signings to give us ELC-like effects on non-ELC players.
you lose guys for nothing because you can't afford to pay them or have to trade them away before they get.
That's called being a competitive team in a flat cap environment. You act like this is unique to us when it's not.
The 2018-19 team that had Kappannen Johnsson, Kadri, Hyman, Marleau, Brown had more depth than todays version
Debatable. They had different kinds of depth, and those players still had difficulty producing in (or not getting suspended from) the playoffs. Sacrificing our most important players and overpaying to keep these complimentary pieces wouldn't have helped us. And even if we go by the belief that we have less forward depth than we did in 2018-2019, I'm not sure why this would be a surprise to you, when since then, our best players have shifted off of their artificially lowered ELCs, and we've shifted resources to improve from one of the worst defensive teams in the league to one of the best.
The way this typically works for competitive teams, especially through a flat cap environment, is to have ELCs there to help replenish, but the problem is we didn't draft well during the time that would be helping us now. There's nothing we can do about that other than fill in the depth in more creative ways and draft well since - and we have.
