WeThreeKings
Demidov is a HAB
They aren't stuck in between. They started a rebuild two seasons ago when they fired Bergevin at the end of 2021. Since that day we have picked 1st overall and 5th overall with our own picks. We drafted Mesar in the 1st round of 2022 as well, and picked two players in the 2nd round that year. They also used additional picks acquired through the rebuild to acquire Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook.
In addition to that, we are still selling what we can, we have 4 picks in the first 3 rounds this year, 6 picks in the first 3 rounds next year and 22 picks in total over those drafts. That's without what will be acquired in the trades coming up this year.
The product is still inferior because you don't see players from drafts in your NHL team 2 years out of it very commonly. Those guys have to develop into NHL players and then develop as NHLers first. Perspective is needed to really understand what a rebuild is, what it looks like, how long it takes and what that process will look like.
I don't see how it would feel like we've blown our opportunity to rebuild properly when we are in year "3" (I say 3 in quotations because it's really 2.5 since Bergevin had part of the first year and made dumb moves like Dvorak). You'd need the biggest luck of all luck (Pittsburgh getting Malkin, Crosby, Staal and Fleury in successive drafts) to get out of a rebuild in 5 years.. typically its' 6-8 years. So there's plenty of time for the rebuild to go properly.
The other part of your post I'd like to highlight is 'talent going to teams who already have talent', isn't that kind of showing that what Hughes, Gorton and MSL are doing is important too? That having talent and putting it into a losing culture, with no expectations and no attempt to do anything but accumulate draft picks and surround them with bad coaching, weak development structures and give them nothing to help them out when they are close to the play-offs, is a bad situation?
I could care less if Columbus, Buffalo and Ottawa pick 1-2-3, those teams have picked in the top end of drafts with multiple top round picks forever and are still worse than us. There's a belief in some of the formulated core already and that will grow as we add more talent and develop more players. There's no belief in those other rooms and they're just loser orgs, frankly.
It's not really a recurring theme if you're going back to the 90s and early 2000s. This team has shown over the last few years way more pushback.. in fact the team pushed back many times in their cup finals run, as well.
Gorton knows they need to address toughness and I don't think they've ignored it at all. They just picked Florian Xhekaj because of that element he brings. I don't think there's a lack of toughness with guys like Guhle, Struble, Xhekaj etc. on the back end.
I don't know what happened in this particular instance but it looked like everyone was unsure of what happened more than they didn't want to get involved.
They are saying they didn't see what happened.. it might be an excuse.. but I have a big problem with Pezzetta who is useless on a good day, doing nothing when he got back out there.
This is completely untrue and I'd welcome you to watch an Ottawa Senators game or a Toronto Maple Leafs game.
Time to tell Pezzetta to do his f***ing job or fire him into the sun.
