So...
I'm in a weird mood rn. But I think this needs to be said as a guy who grew up a Caps fan (95-96ish) and followed a mediocre team who became the worst team in the league for a few years until we drafted Ovi. When I started following the Caps, the team played hard but was mediocre, made the playoffs every year as a low seed and lost to the Pens in the first round every year (funny how things repeat through time). But then the GM blew up the team.
1) Our rebuild will take much longer than a year. AFAIK we haven't discussed this at length but it needs to be said. The rebuild needs to happen until the draft picks from next year's draft become impact players. It's not a matter of 'maybe Shane Wright becomes the next McDavid' because even if he becomes the next McDavid he'd still be only 18 and not really have a supporting cast (see Eichel in Buffalo).
My guess is we could / should be amazing 3-5 years from now. Kind of like how Anaheim and Detroit (maybe) are right now after being horrible for however many years prior. We need a team that everyone agrees has good young talent, and atm we haven't even drafted this talent yet. Of course after we draft them they still have to mature. A core based around Chych, Keller and Schmaltz? Please. Other than last year's Chychrun, complementary players at best. And FWIW I think Keller has been much better this year. Still not even close to a top line winger on a contending team (e.g., Rantanen, Guentzel, Pasta, Kucherov etc).
2) Everyone is talking about tanking for Wright. Imo we didn't tank for Wright. Actually, we traded our good players for draft picks. If you all recall, we got good value for our trades too. The Kuemper deal, DVo etc, the 2nd rounder we got for taking GhostBear's contract and the great return for offloading OEL's contract... I mean we have 3 first rounders and 5 second rounders in what's supposed to be a great draft AND a GM who has shown in the past he knows how to draft (see STL's team). That's 1 out of 8 of the top 64 ppl in what's supposed to be an amazing draft. Frankly, it's absurd (in a good way). Seattle wishes they had done the trades we did.
3) Imo, it's a bonus, rather than a requirement if we get Wright. Even if we finish first (last?), it's still only a 25% chance, those are not great odds. As our former 'top 5' GM said, hope is not a plan. But we don't need to get lucky, either way we have 8 picks in the first 64 next year in a strong draft. If we get Shane Wright even better, but we don't need him if we draft well.
All right I'll get off my soapbox. Most importantly though I feel that unless we took some sort of extreme action we'd continue to be a borderline playoff team who'd be lucky to get bounced in the first round unless we randomly caught lightning in a bottle (e.g., 2012). And as a guy who's seen franchises like WSH, PIT, COL, TB etc go through something like this and come out potentially dynasty-level at the other end, I will continue to be optimistic as long as our top end prospects like Dylan Guenther continue to have amazing twitter highlights.
And by the way, imo Dylan Guenther is currently our only top end prospect, I'm not hoping Hayton becomes worthy of his top 5 pick (but if he does that would be great). I'm hoping / looking forward to the unknown draft picks in next year's draft ending up as good as STL's early picks during the years of Bill Armstrong. Because we have Bill Armstrong on our team now.
Ok I'm done good night =p
