Gusev, Johanssan, Johnsson, Palmieri, Butcher, Subban, Moore
I'm Instead of looking back at some of these, we should look at who they're drafting as well. The players I left above were brought in for either a veteran leadership status (including Boyle who I left out) and to bring offense to a team that was lacking it (and still is).
I feel you can see what the team is attempting to do with their drafting in the past few years, since they seem to have a type. They're collecting smaller skilled high offensive upside forwards and defensemen who can move the puck.
In the past three drafts the defensemen have been
Bernard - 6'3" 205lbs
Okhotyuk - 6'1" 194lbs
Misyul - 6'3" 184lbs
Vukojevic - 6'3" 212 lbs
Mccarthy - 6'1" 198 lbs
Mukhamadullin - 6'2" 170lbs
Edwards - 5'11" 176lbs
You can definitely say that they're aiming towards a certain type and size of defenseman. Since odds are if half of those guys make the show you did a good job drafting, hitting on one or two of them will be great. Obviously we all saw Bahl who is 6'6" 216lbs, and they also have Walsh (6'0" 185lbs) in the system. They also targeted Siegenthaler (6'3" 210 lbs). So you have a ton of these huge defensive defensemen in the system, some of which have offensive upside but it doesn't matter since you have smaller offensively skilled guys like Smith/Walsh/Butcher to pair with these guys to try and bring back something like the good old days of Stevens/Niedermayer and Danekyo/Rafalski and stuff like that. Granted it's unlikely that even with these players we'll have that HoF backend like we used to, but I feel that thought process and design is pretty clear.
On the front end they appear to be gathering as much skill as they can get, especially with guys like Goose and Johnsson. Some work out, some don't, but gathering skill is a good thing since you can keep what works and discard what doesn't. I assume once the skilled top 6/9 guys are settled in we'll see them dealing other assets to fill in holes in the lineup, or you can allow guys to play lower in the lineup like Parise did when he broke into the league, and Holik and so on down the line. The annoying part (for everyone) is that it's just taking a lot longer than we would have liked, obviously.
I dunno, to me there appears to be a blueprint that I believe they're following so it's easier for me to sit back and think okay, maybe Mercer will click and earn a spot out the gate this year and we can see our top 6 start to solidify, or we add Luke Hughes to the stable of big bodied stay at home stable we have to get another high skilled d-man to pair them with eventually. I feel there's a lot of promise to the foundation being built, but we're still a bit away from seeing the fruits of our labor.
Sure would be nice for management to shore up the gaps with vets this year and make the team competitive though because I'm also sick of playing the Lotto at the end of every year.
For the record, I personally enjoy hearing Jim's takes on things because I think it does bring a bit of balance to my perhaps a little too optimistic point of view. I'm all about the discussion.
