I'm basing my analyses of the rest of the season on one of the worst game they played all year.
Most of you were on the buy train because we were so high in the standings. I was ok with what we did but wanted a soft sell all year long. Some wanted to add even more, despite having next to no assets and little idea of who we could actually get who would really make us better and not just give us more of this...had we done that I suspect we'd be fairing not much better and we'd be down one of our 1st round kids.
I guess it's just funny for me seeing the 180 here after 1 particularly dog shit game (on the heels of a big comeback win) has everyone afraid the sky is falling.
I was on the sell train all year up until the time the WJC guys left for camp. Sell off all graduating vets for what you can get for them and go from there. Sort of what the Petes did.
Once the first week of December rolled around, I flipped. I was on the “all in” train. But when I say “all in”, I mean pull out all the stops. Move an 07 or two plus high picks to add what we needed. A couple veteran D and a couple veteran inexpensive third liners to provide leadership. If we didn’t do that, then sell off graduating vets. I pointed to Brzustweucz, Sop, and Mesar.
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was what we did. Moderate, inexpensive buy in an effort to preserve all the futures. That is truly the closest you can get to standing pat without actually doing so. We are a young team that needed veteran depth leadership both for the third line and especially on D.
Adding players who’s best will come after this year wasn’t what I expected. Sale had a good WJC but looks to be comparable to what Mesar was last year - an import still finding his way in the league. I figure if he’s returned next year, we’ll get out of him what we’re getting from Mesar this year. But that won’t help this year’s team.
Savard is a good add but we needed a veteran 04 D as well. If that D was too expensive to acquire, then a hard decision needed to be made on the third OA slot. What could a Connor Punnett have added to our back end, had we gone in that direction instead of committing to Mitch Martin? Martin is a beast and will be just that in the post season. But if we can’t keep the puck out of our net, and/or have to play rookie D way more than we should, because our vets are gassed or hurting, on what we hope is a deep post season run, what Martin brings may not matter.
Are we going to have to score 5+ goals a game to win in the postseason? It looks that way based on our play so far this year.
