It's just that a youth movement until 2026 at the earliest seems like it will only be an absolute last resort and likely be considered a failure on their part. I'd bank on them doing lots to avoid it, even if it becomes abundantly clear otherwise that the team no longer has what it takes. They have neither the inclination nor I think the patience for that sort of on-the-fly restructuring. And IMO they also believe they're obligated to Ovechkin to have their shit together so that he doesn't have to sit through that.
He is better than Carlson so in a trade for Karlsson with Carlson I would be okey with it. Its only one more year and having Karlsson would improve the PP and also help Ovi. He is 3,5 million better than what Carlson have been the last few years.
The last time we saw Tom Wilson, it was a considerably neutered version of the player most of us loved, i.e. v.2 in your descriptions above.
Would you have said at this point a year ago that Karlsson is $3.5m better?
Carlson is already a negative asset and worth a bag of pucks. 32 year old who have lost his PP ability and defence gets Worse every game.
novacapsfans.com
I think age matters much more when your team top 6 is past their primes and much older than your average team leader. I don't think anyone would have a problem if we had few older 4th line grinders raising the average age up.
I doubt we'll see such an arc but I'm also not sure if we can rely on their structural integrity being any better 2-3 years down the line. Such an arc is too complicated and not without risk or assurance of it paying off in time. This may be the last season where it would be feasible to load up on picks that maybe could be fast-tracked just enough to be in the league while 8 is still around. But I doubt that's overly appealing in the here and now compared to more aggressively trying to make the playoffs. They generally do not do delayed gratification. More likely it just...stays flat. Stays just about where it has been post-Cup. It's just about trying to compete every year minus much in the way of prime younger, developing assets.
I am not expecting any kind of a sell-off, since mediocrity seems to be the governing business philosophy for Ted's sports franchises. So I would subscribe to the bubble team prediction.
A key to all that cap flexibility, as with the upcoming summer potentially, is remaining disciplined and not blowing it on whatever happens to be more conveniently available at the time if it doesn't altogether meet their needs. I'm not sure they'd execute with the level of discipline needed so it's hard to bank on cap flexibility as the solution. It could be but there are limitations within that to where internal solutions still need to be considered the prime method toward improvement. Until that becomes a stronger primary source for them again it's hard to believe they're on the right path. They can try to fast-track it, sure, but it likely comes with some costly compromises in the process.
I haven’t seen anything that tells me this team would go 7-3 in a 10 game stretch, much less the rest of the season
