3rd year on Myers is definitely tough. I can imagine what happened though:
Myers had offers from other teams with a total value of $10-12 million. He was willing to take less to stay but either the AAV would be too high on a 2-year or they had to give him that extra year. They looked around at possible replacements and decided there was nobody that could offer them what Myers provided last season that was going to come at a palatable price. They didn't foresee Myers immediately taking a step back like he has, and really didn't expect Soucy to be awful like he has.
Now they're in a situation where their entire planned bottom-4 of Myers, Soucy, Forbort and Desharnais are performing at level somewhere between unplayable and poor. I'm willing to give all 4 guys and the coaching staff a lot more time to figure things out. The entire team including the forwards look out of sync defensively, whereas last season team defense was a major strength. You can somewhat hide the deficiencies of "trees" if there is good structure around them. But if we've turned the calendar and things haven't improved much, I wouldn't blame anyone for saying that the whole situation was a Benning-level failure by management.
And even if they do settle down, it's hard to argue that it still wasn't a miscalculation given the goal of the team this year was to be more dynamic on the rush offensively which means they would also have to be more dynamic defending the rush and all of that is very tough to do with a defense that lacks mobility and puck-moving ability. I think it's obvious we need one less tree and one more Hughes/Brannstrom type that can legitimately play in the top-4.