Pens don’t remotely have these pieces and you know it lmao.
This stash also wasn't a huge part of their rebuild insofar as I can tell despite not doing too bad
The McDonagh and Miller trade yielded, as far as I can tell, a bunch of guys who are no longer on the Rangers with literally nothing to show for it
The Rick Nash trade was a humdinger that got them Lindgren and K'Andre Miller.
Skjei got them Schneider
Hayes got them Trouba, who hasn't been bad but probably wouldn't still be there if it wasn't for his big old cap hit
And the Zuccarello trade didn't yield anything yet
Four good blueliners is nothing to sneer at but those trades weren't, and maybe I missed something, part of Panarin/Shesterkin/Fox insofar as I can see (beyond clearing cap space). Those are the back in business parts. All their top 10 picks have so far amounted to maybe Lafreniere's breakout year, I think.
Which in one way shows just how difficult it is because you look at all the swings NYR took and how well they worked out (or not). But in another, it shows how irrelevant all the selling can be. One player out of six got them 50% of the meaningful return, and the best bits came from elsewhere.
I feel like the NHL has never looked more like a league where teams can transform themselves through trade and FA than it does right now.
Conversely, watching the fates of some of the teams that got themselves into teardowns is sobering stuff. The Sabres continue to be a fail. The Oilers did finally get McDavid to a SC final after 9 years but given the draft capital the org has had, the undperformance is palpable. They're two of the most blatant tankers we saw in the last 10 years, right? I feel like Colorado are the one team in the league staffed by a bunch of their early draft picks from the 10s that has a cup. It makes me far less invested in "thou must suffer" school of roster building.
And tbh, the whole "what direction they should go" seems tertiary to me to "find an identity and stick with it" and "just f***ing get the right guys in already" (interlinked I know). I'd rather have a meh plan executed competently than a good plan executed badly.