Are you just not reading my post? I said I want to draft 5th overall next year, not 3rd and not 13th either. Belchetz is probably who goes 5th anyway.
But why? Wouldn't you rather have a 25% chance at McKenna, a 20% chance at Verhoeff and a 55% chance at whoever the next best player is? Isn't that far more likely to increase our expected odds of winning a Cup over the next 10 years than the confidence our young guys will allegedly gain by finishing 28th instead of 32nd?
If finishing last guaranteed drafting 1st overall, sure, I'd see the argument. But I'm not risking demoralizing and upsetting Celebrini with another year of this shit.
A late '26 1st is absolutely a lot more valuable than a late '25 second.
I don't care about the playoffs, but I also don't think we're going to go from "bottom of the barrel with top 3 picks" to "actual contender" without middle years, and no team has consistently been a bottom feeder for 4+ years and also built a winner. Closest is EDM and I know how you feel about that build and management team.
Absolutely, but the window keeps sliding if you keep adding one really amazing prospect who needs 4-6 years to come into his own and you only get 50-75% hit rates on them.
We have to account for the possibility that a top 5 pick or two might fail to become an impact player. Like maybe we end up with Martone this year and he never puts it all together. If it's Celebrini, Smith and Askarov leading us to a better spot in the standings that's one thing but otherwise I don't think it's smart to try and rush the process by signing a bunch of old expensive free agents who will demand a premium to play in SJ. We have a limited window as a basement team and need to maximize it by accumulating as many potential core pieces as possible. By all means bring in this year's version of Toffoli/Wennberg/Goodrow type vets and maybe even trade picks for a defenseman or two rather than settling for cap dump deals but any improvement should primarily be driven by the young guys.
I've lost faith in NJ's build and have started to look at them as more of a cautionary tale. Hischier and Hughes is not enough to build a Cup winner around. Lots of good players on that team, they'll probably make the playoffs regularly during this window but nobody is scared of facing them. They need 1-2 more elite players and it's almost impossible to get those outside of the top of the draft.
Yes, we definitely do absolutely have to account for the fact that every rebuild has a Turcotte, Drouin, Jost, etc. So far (fingers crossed) it doesn't look like any of Eklund/Celebrini/Smith are that guy.
I am concerned about the awful defense this year and want bullets in our trade gun so I never have to watch a defense that bad again
I'm in Denver and I think they've done it right, so I always look to the Avs. They hit on Byram too (good enough during the cup run anyway), they got incredibly lucky with Makar, but that's what it takes - before that, they were trying to build around their young core of MacKinnon, Landeskog, Rantanen. Freak of a year to draft 4OA. Lots of players brought in to try to build the necessary depth, and some high picks shipped out (Duchene). picked up Toews, lost Jost to mediocrity, got a great hit with Nichushkin (until the coke problem), had to add a 2C with Kadri and are still trying to solve that problem with the Nelson trade because Middelstadt didn't work out.
Colorado got lucky with Makar, frankly. It doesn't matter how "well" you do it if you don't get lucky. Rebuilds need luck, full stop.
I dedicate this song to the number of top 4 defensemen we had before we traded Walman
I would tweak this slightly.
just looking at the next 2 seasons. 16 total, 9 this summer.
Having four top-50 picks this year and four top-60 picks next year creates a TON of opportunities for Grier.
Nemec is not a popular guy in New Jersey right now. Some recent lowlights of Nemec posted below.
I think both teams did well here.
Well, you're getting Good Walman. We got a version of Walman that performed like a legit #1D for about 20 games at the beginning of this season before he regressed into what he is. Don't expect too much and Jake will be just fine.
