PeterSidorkiewicz
HFWF Tourney Undisputed Champion
That is not quite the right question, IMO. If we lost those players the franchise would definitely be worse off. But the question is whether we have the means to add to it in order to build a contender.
Yes, the young players will grow and take on increasingly large roles with the team. Hoffman is pretty much at his ceiling given how fantastic he has been and factoring in his age. Ceci is up and down and could become more consistent. Stone is already one of our best forwards, but he can definitely put up bigger numbers. Ditto Zibanejad. Lazar is further away, but he will likely develop into a pretty good player.
Considering where we are at the moment, will all of these internal upgrades make us a contender or a playoff bubble team? Hard to say right now. But one thing I am pretty confident about is if we cannot spend on a decent supporting case, this young group will not get much further than the current group.
I think my main point is that we we're retaining all of our important pieces. Drafting and developing is easily the most important factor into franchise success. If we keep retaining what we draft and develop then I think we will head into the right the direction and be a contending team eventually.
It's the exact formula of how we became successful previously for over a decade. I admit it seems like we are spinning our tires a bit and I wouldn't mind a fresh voice in management while continuing to do what we're doing, but the doom and gloom for the state of our franchise, sorry I just don't see it.
But, as I've said a million times we are NOT UFA players in the market, never have been, and never will be. Of course every once in awhile we might nab a big guy, aka Kovalev and Gonchar, but our entire franchise history has been about developing within, because it's what we need to do to. When it comes to UFA we've always been a let the dust settle and see if there's anything worthwhile afterwards.
So this guy who cancelled his season tickets or whatever because of Melnyk, he kept his season tickets during the Bryden era why exactly? Because we were good? Is there some link between Bryden and the Sens being good as opposed to Melnyk and the Sens being average to mediocre right at this moment?