i think the miraculous job allvin has done tells us something about talent level and expansion.
bitd, pre-san jose expansion, you could rebuild an entire d corps in one year. and it would just cost you draft picks and spare parts. you just had to find a team with too many dmen, because talent exceeded roster spots. in one year we got lumme, diduck, murzyn, and babych for a late 2nd, a 4th, and spare parts and goons. the only player of note we gave up was brian bradley, who was barely an NHLer before they added three new teams (and two more a year later) and we got him for goon craig coxe.
ditto burke’s core. ohlund was our guy, jovo was a marquee piece in a superstar trade. but you couldn’t get a salo now for a peter schaefer, say a hoglander. but ottawa had too many young dmen and he was expendable. ditto mccabe, who was part of a blockbuster, but after the trade the islanders still had kenny jonsson, rookie bryan berard, very raw and young chara, and aging out former top five pick scott lachance. and because of our abundance on the blueline, we likewise gave up aucoin for dan cloutier. so in the early days of the nashville/columbus wave of expansion, there were still more than enough guys to go around.
i won’t go through the gillis years but i feel like then we struggled just to have enough guys. ehrhoff was a gift but ballard cost us and hamhuis was a right place right time UFA.
but we effectively gave up a 1C and a high end 2C for hronek and mp3. direly needed and i think it goes to show that if you aren’t developing your own dmen, there aren’t enough out there to fill the gaps with.
i don't know if it's a function of true talent level and expansion specifically, but moreso that defensive players (and goalies, but that's a different topic) haven't kept up with the development of offensive players. this is not a ground breaking suggestion, and it might even be the causal explanation of statistically observable goal scoring increases since the dead puck era. obviously there was the offensive drop around the second cap era lockout with the jamie benn 87 point art ross year, but it's been a pure upward trend of offense since.
noted this in another thread, but the isles currently adding every available "marc-andre bergeron" type - tony d, perunovich, boqvist - in a couple week span is an interesting test of this premise. pp specialist zero defense offense creators had a legitimate role for a while, and were valued parts of a roster. that role has basically vanished as most teams have their top pairing d on the first unit powerplay and/or run a 4f1d set up. quick scan of the scoring leaders - looks like only jackson lacombe and ghost bear are guys leading their teams' defense in scoring while not essentially playing top pair minutes. but as the salaries for the do-it-all 70 point pp qb's go up (ie. noah dobson), is it actually worth putting those players in those positions in a league where offense is easier to come by? like, the much harder thing to find might be a ken danyeko like fridge that can hold a pk above 85% for a season.
to that point - the best pp unit between 93-94 and 03-04 was the 95-96 penguins at 26%. since 15-16, and not including this season, 14 teams have passed that mark, with the highest being last year's oilers at 32.4%.
meanwhile, between 93-94 and the first lockout, 96 teams had a pk% of 85% or better. in the last ten years, just 17.
there's another broader point about how there are seemingly fewer defensive-only stalwarts at forward - lehtninen, draper, maltby, malhotra types - and the selke doesn't help with that perception as it only goes to the best defensively of the barkov/kopitar/bergeron superstar tier players. ftr, auston matthews was third in selke voting last season lol. maybe that's totally erasing guys like danault, but he didn't even get a selke vote last year.
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all that to say, i'm pretty optimistic about the shift allvin has made to add defensively capable players on our defense. we have a 100-point+ defensive engine in hughes to build around. the offense should come. and you can always add a boqvist or brannstrom and they can play the role something like 60-75% of the way if given the right minutes. facing mcdavid, draisaitl, mackinnon, makar... you simply cannot count on a juulsen to provide 75% of a tanev or m-petey, ever.
