Yeah now consider what year the 1sts are and what it does to your ability to contend this year
I didn't say it was bad value. There's no reason, however, to cope your way into thinking you did better than how you started
One look at our defense knowing 40 year old Burns is playing top line minutes despite having some of the worst metrics in the league, and Orlov anchoring the 2nd line despite being a turnover machine, is enough to tell you we were very honest about not contending this year knowing that we have Nikishin and Morrow coming in next year. This was always going to be a transition year. Even when we traded for Rantanen, it was always about being able to sign him long term, which when we did our due diligence before the trade, we were told he was interested in doing that.
There is no way we can anticipate an agent or player lying like that. You have to take them for their word. To hear that he came in and immediately said he won't sign here and then played like absolute dogshit while here, very much causing issues in the locker room, they did about as well as they could to get out from under it.
And at the end of the day, its likely we sold high on Necas and bought low on Stankoven. Is Necas the better player, probably, but he was a terrible fit here, and we ended up with a guy who fits the style we want to play. And then we ended up with 2 1st rounders and a fully bought in Taylor Hall as well. Things could have ended up much worse for us.
Oh, and after all this news comes out, if I'm Dallas, I'm worried that Rantanen will become a petulant child and locker room issue if things aren't always golden. Given what happened in Carolina, you know he's the kind of guy who needs his ass kissed 24/7 or he's going to bring the locker room down with him. And now he's extended 8 years at $12m.
There's an article on Finnish YLE.fi today (I don't know if it's ok to link it here) today, where Rod is quoted saying that immediately after Mikko arrived he said 'there's four teams I can agree to play on and Carolina isn't one of them'.
Then he continued by saying it's not a hockey reason it's a family reason.
Now it's pretty ridiculous here to argue the semantics of the word family. Maybe he's planning to marry and make kids. Maybe the partner/fiancee is already pregnant. Maybe it's the partner's career prospects or whatever. Who the heck cares. He was straight and open and said this doesn't work for his family. Carolina got to recoup some assets.
His girlfriend hated Raleigh. It really is that deep, especially when Rantanen mentions her by name as part of the reason they liked Dallas before his first game there.