I think the vision was add as much skill and speed as possible. Which is funny since some of the more skilled adds - Subban, Gusev, Butcher - are very slow. I think they haven't added much mental speed to the team, however. Like every other team in the NHL, they could really use a player like Ekholm, prime Greene/Vlasic, etc. Someone with good risk management but skilled enough not to suppress the transition game.
I'm a pro-Shero fan. Acting like the Hall, Palmieri, Mojo and Subban deals are no big deal is flat out being stubborn. Results matter, but you do those deals every day of the week. And he's had some success with the bargain bin in Gibbons and Noesen. The Mueller and Grabner deals were not great, to say the least. The Maroon trade was. I think that's an objectively good record for trades/waiver experiments.
It's too early to judge the drafting. And if you don't feel that way, you should acknowledge that only now are we seeing the fruits of a slight Conte recovery with Blackwood, Coleman, Wood and Severson. I hate the McLeod pick. That being said, Bratt, Boqvist, Smith, Zetterlund, Talvitie, Anderson, etc. and quite a few more - these guys are still in the mix, still growing. We've given ourselves a good shot at not having to spend on depth players for a long time. We'll see how it works out.
This team plays a dumb brand of hockey. How much is Shero and how much is Hynes, we won't know until we make a change. In general, I think the NHL has actually gotten dumber but more physically gifted at the average and insanely skilled/intelligent at the top end. The failure of this staff is thinking that you can take those top-end approaches and apply them to an entire team of widely-varied hockey IQ. There's a reason people harp on structure and habits so much: you can't count on people being self-starters, even at the NHL level. So if they have poor judgment, take the judgment out of their hands and have them play with better structure.
