I remember when I wanted to trade JVR and almost everyone here said we must keep him as our "own rental". Most fans have zero patience but yeah, one more good draft year would have been good.Agreed. IMO they needed one more good draft year after getting Matthews (only Liljegren the next year?). Then they wouldn't be scrambling for mid to low tier adds every deadline ever since. Instead they chose "accelerate the rebuild" and lost their chance to build properly and win anything of note.
I've also said it many times - I could make a pretty good argument for NEVER adding at the TDL. Really the only time it makes sense IMHO is when your window is closing, and you have 1, maybe 2 more shots at the cup and that's it. But doing it every year, year after year starting before your core players have even hit their prime yet the way we've done is pure madness. But again, most people here don't have the patience and people say we gotta do it because "everyone else does it" and "you gotta go for it because you may never get another chance".
Imagine what this team could be if we traded Marner after losing to MTL in the playoffs, and kept all the picks we traded away at the TDL over the years. Breaks my heart.