Management Thread | Who needs draft picks Edition

[JohnHodgson]

I'll also maintain that a re-tool in 2014 would have worked had it been executed properly.

Don't screw up the Virtanen pick, don't lose patience on McCann, don't target the wrong Ducks defender, and don't pointlessly blow money on a goalie and you're looking at a 2016-era Canucks team with a core of Horvat/McCann/Nylander/Boeser/Shea Theodore/Tanev ... with the Sedins in a support role and, more importantly, $20M in cap space to bring in another impact piece or two.

This is why I stopped supporting Benning after the Kesler/Sutter trades.

Sbisa over Theodore???? Anaheim lost Theodore anyway. We could have had hometown top pairing dman for a long time but naaaa. Jim Benning babyyyy

 

[4th line culture]

In the cap era? Very few, if any.

People who want to say Pittsburgh. They had generational players in Crosby and Malkin and hit on Guentzel in the draft.

Murray's, Fleury, letang, rust +

 

[canucksfan]

I would not be surprised if they traded away the 1st round pick if it is outside the top 5

anything is possible with this management group lead by chairman of hockey operations - Francesco Aquilini

I have been pro rebuild for a while now but I have warmed up to trying to compete. The division sucks and how often does a Hughes, Demko, EP combo come around? Jimbo really screwed up the team with shitty trades, contracts, and prospect pool. The problem lies in getting rid of a minimum of two bad contracts. If they can't, then they are screwed.

The team either needs to start a full rebuild or compete. They can't be in the middle.

 

[credulous]

i get the argument that "we can't wait to rebuild" but i just don't see how you can be competitive enough to convince pettersson/hughes that the team is on the upswing given the situation

i know many think that this is just a temporarily embarassed playoff team and demko will inevitably play like a top 5 goalie next year and they'll get out from under boeser, myers and maybe even oel through buyouts and no/low-cost trades and sign a bunch of free agents but i just don't see it

i think there's a chance they make the playoffs next season if they get lucky with injuries (both by pearson and poolman remaining on ltir and by no one else getting injured) and they manage to hit on their free agent signings but the cap structure of this team is still awful even if you ignore oel, myers and boeser. 2024 and they need to reup pettersson, hronek and maybe beauvillier and then in 2025 they need to reup kuzmenko. sure myers and boeser (and maybe beauvillier) will be gone by then so they can afford them all but what do they put around them?

the system is no help. beyond hoglander, podkolzin and maybe kravtsov there's nothing really that projects to hit in the next 2 seasons and there's no one that has the kind of value to bring back much in trades. you can get a decent player if you're willing to move the 2023 and 2024 firsts maybe and hoglander, podkolzin and lekkerimaki maybe get you something but beyond that it's all table scraps

the canucks have the skeleton of a decent team between pettersson, kuzmenko, miller, mikheyev, garland, hughes, hronek and demko but they aren't a real team as long as they are relying on bargain shopping on the nhl trash heap. go look at the teams they are chasing in the west and it looks really bleak. los angeles go 10 deep at forward and 7 deep on d with players that would instantly be the canucks best players outside that core. seattle and las vegas are the same. edmonton and calgary aren't quite as deep but they're a lot deeper than vancouver

you can't win in the nhl as a 1.5 line team with only two credible defenders. vancouver is basically gambling that they can find 6-8 solid nhl players to fill out their lineup without actually having the cap space to sign free agents, a system capable of producing nhlers or the assets to trade for cost controlled assets a la tampa bay

maybe if they had started last year they had a shot to convince pettersson this team was rising but i have to think he's intelligent enough to see through any attempt to "trick" him into thinking this team is legit

 

[4th line culture]

How many of the canucks own draft picks are playing on the team? And how does that compare to the top teams in the league?

 

[arttk]

"The idea that if we tank hard now we’ll be fine in 2-3 years is super optimistic. We would need to hit on a lot it picks for that to be true."
Is what you originally said. Can you name a team that has been successful without hitting on a lot of picks? Rebuild or retool you need to hit on lots of picks

That’s a weird question to ask considering you don’t ask within what time frame. Every team that has on the cup nailed on a lot of picks over a really long period of time.

 

[canucksfan]

i get the argument that "we can't wait to rebuild" but i just don't see how you can be competitive enough to convince pettersson/hughes that the team is on the upswing given the situation

i know many think that this is just a temporarily embarassed playoff team and demko will inevitably play like a top 5 goalie next year and they'll get out from under boeser, myers and maybe even oel through buyouts and no/low-cost trades and sign a bunch of free agents but i just don't see it

i think there's a chance they make the playoffs next season if they get lucky with injuries (both by pearson and poolman remaining on ltir and by no one else getting injured) and they manage to hit on their free agent signings but the cap structure of this team is still awful even if you ignore oel, myers and boeser. 2024 and they need to reup pettersson, hronek and maybe beauvillier and then in 2025 they need to reup kuzmenko. sure myers and boeser (and maybe beauvillier) will be gone by then so they can afford them all but what do they put around them?

the system is no help. beyond hoglander, podkolzin and maybe kravtsov there's nothing really that projects to hit in the next 2 seasons and there's no one that has the kind of value to bring back much in trades. you can get a decent player if you're willing to move the 2023 and 2024 firsts maybe and hoglander, podkolzin and lekkerimaki maybe get you something but beyond that it's all table scraps

the canucks have the skeleton of a decent team between pettersson, kuzmenko, miller, mikheyev, garland, hughes, hronek and demko but they aren't a real team as long as they are relying on bargain shopping on the nhl trash heap. go look at the teams they are chasing in the west and it looks really bleak. los angeles go 10 deep at forward and 7 deep on d with players that would instantly be the canucks best players outside that core. seattle and las vegas are the same. edmonton and calgary aren't quite as deep but they're a lot deeper than vancouver

you can't win in the nhl as a 1.5 line team with only two credible defenders. vancouver is basically gambling that they can find 6-8 solid nhl players to fill out their lineup without actually having the cap space to sign free agents, a system capable of producing nhlers or the assets to trade for cost controlled assets a la tampa bay

maybe if they had started last year they had a shot to convince pettersson this team was rising but i have to think he's intelligent enough to see through any attempt to "trick" him into thinking this team is legit

I tend to agree. Management has to have an outstanding off-season even into get the team into a playoff spot, let along go deep into the playoffs. We obviously don’t know if FA is willing to buy out OEL, if there is a market for Boeser or Myers, etc. I was disappointed they didn’t get rid of cap space before the TDL because now they will be pressured to do so this off-season. If the team can get rid of cap space I wouldn’t have an issue with competing next season and maybe into the following season. However, if they can’t get rid of bad contracts then might as well start the rebuild.

Edit: what I don’t understand they are trying to get rid of Miller but he’s an important piece to the team that should be competing if that’s the goal.

 

[arttk]

i get the argument that "we can't wait to rebuild" but i just don't see how you can be competitive enough to convince pettersson/hughes that the team is on the upswing given the situation

i know many think that this is just a temporarily embarassed playoff team and demko will inevitably play like a top 5 goalie next year and they'll get out from under boeser, myers and maybe even oel through buyouts and no/low-cost trades and sign a bunch of free agents but i just don't see it

i think there's a chance they make the playoffs next season if they get lucky with injuries (both by pearson and poolman remaining on ltir and by no one else getting injured) and they manage to hit on their free agent signings but the cap structure of this team is still awful even if you ignore oel, myers and boeser. 2024 and they need to reup pettersson, hronek and maybe beauvillier and then in 2025 they need to reup kuzmenko. sure myers and boeser (and maybe beauvillier) will be gone by then so they can afford them all but what do they put around them?

the system is no help. beyond hoglander, podkolzin and maybe kravtsov there's nothing really that projects to hit in the next 2 seasons and there's no one that has the kind of value to bring back much in trades. you can get a decent player if you're willing to move the 2023 and 2024 firsts maybe and hoglander, podkolzin and lekkerimaki maybe get you something but beyond that it's all table scraps

the canucks have the skeleton of a decent team between pettersson, kuzmenko, miller, mikheyev, garland, hughes, hronek and demko but they aren't a real team as long as they are relying on bargain shopping on the nhl trash heap. go look at the teams they are chasing in the west and it looks really bleak. los angeles go 10 deep at forward and 7 deep on d with players that would instantly be the canucks best players outside that core. seattle and las vegas are the same. edmonton and calgary aren't quite as deep but they're a lot deeper than vancouver

you can't win in the nhl as a 1.5 line team with only two credible defenders. vancouver is basically gambling that they can find 6-8 solid nhl players to fill out their lineup without actually having the cap space to sign free agents, a system capable of producing nhlers or the assets to trade for cost controlled assets a la tampa bay

maybe if they had started last year they had a shot to convince pettersson this team was rising but i have to think he's intelligent enough to see through any attempt to "trick" him into thinking this team is legit

I am not going to pretend to know at what kind of trajectory the team needs to be on to convince Hughes and Petey to stay on.

All I can say is if you rebuild that’s like almost 100% chance they are gone.

If you try to build something then that % is definitely lower.

I just feel weird that there so many of you that think you need to rebuild and draft everything to even have a chance. Like the objective should be a consistent playoff team for the next 10 years. Within that 10 years, if you can get like 1-2 nhl players from the draft/ college FA per year and then at some point you will have enough depth to go all
In. Like if you are lucky and have a draft like Dallas did in 1 of those 10 years then you will be a contender for multiple years. Ironically that’s the path that Tampa, Pitts, Was, St. Louis, Dallas, Boston, Carolina took. Like what NJ did is almost unrepeatable. They lucked out winning like the draft lottery 3 and drafting 2nd OA once and 1st OA twice and they happened to tank in the right years as well. If they tanked at the same time NYR did and ended up with Laf and Kakko we wouldn’t be singing their praise would we.

 

[4th line culture]

I am not going to pretend to know at what kind of trajectory the team needs to be on to convince Hughes and Petey to stay on.

All I can say is if you rebuild that’s like almost 100% chance they are gone.

If you try to build something then that % is definitely lower.

I just feel weird that there so many of you that think you need to rebuild and draft everything to even have a chance. Like the objective should be a consistent playoff team for the next 10 years. Within that 10 years, if you can get like 1-2 nhl players from the draft/ college FA per year and then at some point you will have enough depth to go all
In. Like if you are lucky and have a draft like Dallas did in 1 of those 10 years then you will be a contender for multiple years. Ironically that’s the path that Tampa, Pitts, Was, St. Louis, Dallas, Boston, Carolina took. Like what NJ did is almost unrepeatable. They lucked out winning like the draft lottery 3 and drafting 2nd OA once and 1st OA twice and they happened to tank in the right years as well. If they tanked at the same time NYR did and ended up with Laf and Kakko we wouldn’t be singing their praise would we.

Didnt Pittsburgh and Tampa do the same thing as NJ? I thought crosby, fleury, and, Malkin were all top 2 picks?

That’s a weird question to ask considering you don’t ask within what time frame. Every team that has on the cup nailed on a lot of picks over a really long period of time.

If they have to hit on a lot of picks no matter what they do why bring it up as a negative for a rebuild?

 

[arttk]

Didnt Pittsburgh and Tampa do the same thing as NJ? I thought crosby, fleury, and, Malkin were all top 2 picks?

They did their rebuild once and then started to build around them. They never did another rebuild in the middle of Sid and Malkin’s time there. They didn’t say ah f*** not enough depth, I guess we gotta rebuild again.

If they have to hit on a lot of picks no matter what they do why bring it up as a negative for a rebuild?

I didn’t say it’s a negative. I am saying it’s near impossible to rebuild in 2 years.

 

[4th line culture]

They did their rebuild once and then started to build around them. They never did another rebuild in the middle of Sid and Malkin’s time there. They didn’t say ah f*** not enough depth, I guess we gotta rebuild again.

Probably because they went to 2 straight finals winning 1. Then 2 more cups years later. They weren't a basement dweller. Do you really not see the difference?

 

[andora]

A lot depends on where the Canucks pick. IF they somehow manage to get 1st or 2nd overall pick then I think Miller is dealt for picks before his NMC kicks in.

I dont think hes moving either way.. but a top 3 pick would be a cheaper impact player versus trading the pick for an established player

 

[credulous]

i'm not a 'burn it all down' fanatic. i don't think the canucks should be pursuing a path of not even trying to compete

what i do think is that they should be trying to preserve and develop asset value so that when they've accumulated enough they can make a push to being a real team instead of the kind of unserious franchise that we like to imagine edmonton is. i think the end result of the path they are on now is a small number of good to great players signed to big contracts, a barren system, a string of playoff misses/early exits and an endless quest to find just one more player to maybe get back to the promised land

a team like tampa or toronto can afford to overpay for assets because they're already at the top and they can see a precipitous drop on the horizon. if they wait they lose. a team like vancouver is going to do that and then find oops no third line or oops not enough defenders and they're going to bank on i dunno sheldon dries or christian wolanin to save them. it might work once or twice. they might get lucky with some pro scouting finds and make the playoffs occasionally. they'll also never ascend to the level of the elite with that plan. you can't operate like you're a single move from relevance when you're ten years into irrelevance and still 7th last in the league

i'm not even saying the hronek trade is a fatal mistake. it was too much to give up for a player who probably isn't good enough to make the difference here but it wasn't fatal. what will be fatal is if they keep thinking they can cobble together a team from some spare parts that were left over after the rest of the league got done picking them over. they need to commit to actually drafting, signing, trading for and most importantly developing young nhl talent that they can recycle into even more nhl talent in the future

building a team from a loser to a winner isn't about filling arbitrary slots on a whiteboard. it's about making sure you have more talent in the future than you do right now

 

[arttk]

Probably because they went to 2 straight finals winning 1. Then 2 more cups years later. They weren't a basement dweller. Do you really not see the difference?

Not enough depth due to no cap because Malkin, Sid, Letang, MAF and a couple of guys on big contracts and no prospect in the pipe. It’s kind of same f***ing shit.

I’ve said I am not fundamentally against a rebuild. I am just saying Petey and Hughes will not stick around one and it is near impossible to do it in 2 years. What part of that does not compute for you?

 

[4th line culture]

Not enough depth due to no cap because Malkin, Sid, Letang, MAF and a couple of guys on big contracts and no prospect in the pipe. It’s kind of same f***ing shit.

THEY F@#$%@ING WON THE CUP. It is not the same as keeping a team in 27th together. Keeping proven winners together makes sense.

 

[4th line culture]

I’ve said I am not fundamentally against a rebuild. I am just saying Petey and Hughes will not stick around one and it is near impossible to do it in 2 years. What part of that does not compute for you?

Everything rides on the playoffs next year eh? Petey is 100% gone if they miss?

 

[arttk]

THEY F@#$%@ING WON THE CUP. It is not the same as keeping a team is 27th together. Keeping proven winners together makes

Jesus Christ you are thick, nobody is saying to keep this team together.

like I said, what part of you can’t rebuild fast enough to keep Petey and Hughes do you not f***ing understand?

 

[arttk]

Everything rides on the playoffs next year eh? Petey is 100% gone if they miss?

You can’t read what I wrote already.

 

[4th line culture]

Jesus Christ you are thick,

Its winter weight.

nobody is saying to keep this team together.

Whole new team this off season to keep pettersson, got it.

like I said, what part of you can’t rebuild fast enough to keep Petey and Hughes do you not f***ing understand?

In your opinion, which let's be honest, shouldn't be taken very seriously.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

Dp

 

[mriswith]

i'm not a 'burn it all down' fanatic. i don't think the canucks should be pursuing a path of not even trying to compete

what i do think is that they should be trying to preserve and develop asset value so that when they've accumulated enough they can make a push to being a real team instead of the kind of unserious franchise that we like to imagine edmonton is. i think the end result of the path they are on now is a small number of good to great players signed to big contracts, a barren system, a string of playoff misses/early exits and an endless quest to find just one more player to maybe get back to the promised land

a team like tampa or toronto can afford to overpay for assets because they're already at the top and they can see a precipitous drop on the horizon. if they wait they lose. a team like vancouver is going to do that and then find oops no third line or oops not enough defenders and they're going to bank on i dunno sheldon dries or christian wolanin to save them. it might work once or twice. they might get lucky with some pro scouting finds and make the playoffs occasionally. they'll also never ascend to the level of the elite with that plan. you can't operate like you're a single move from relevance when you're ten years into irrelevance and still 7th last in the league

That sounds cool and all but what about throwing away the rest of 24 y/o Pettersson and 23 y/o Hughes' careers to go all in on making the playoffs over the next two years instead?

That sounds way better.

 

[Grub]

Do you really believe giving up a top 20 pick and a top 40 pick in what is being touted as one of the deepest drafts in a decade is a good idea for a team with next to no prospects and next to nobody (other than Hoglander) ready to jump up to the NHL?

If the Canucks had been competing for playoff berths the last few years I would probably understand their impatience to take the next step to jumping into the playoff picture.

But we're talking about a bottom 10 team here. A roster and salary that is poorly structured and relies upon Petey, Quinn, and Demko to cover up for nearly all of their errors and piggy-back the team to wins. Are we really looking at 25+ minutes a night for Petey / Quinn and 65+ starts for Demko just to possibly sneak into a wildcard spot next year? Sounds like a recipe for more injuries to me and not a sustainable strategy as shown by the results the last handful of seasons.

This team needs to chill for a few years and buildup some organizational depth before taking yet another plunge. 40 and 43 will still be relatively young at that point.

I would agree if we don't have Quinn Hughes or Elias Pettersson in their prime years, I don't think we have the luxury to wait for this Top 20 and top 40 pick to develop properly which will take 3+ years. As a poster mentioned we don't have that luxury when Hughes becomes a UFA and Pettersson needs to be resigned. A 25 year old top 4 defensemen is what this team needs right now, besides if we want top end talent we still have our top pick this year.

We have our #1 Center we have our #1 D and we have Demko still signed quite cheap. Then you have the supporting cast of Miller, Kuzmenko, etc.

People forget that the window is not as long as they might think. We still see Pettersson as this young dude but the guy will be 25 this year.

We always see that 2010-2011 as that team of veterans and old players... but people forget that those boys were still young, Alex Edler was 24, Hansen was 24, Kesler 26, Dan Hamhuis 27... even Horvat would be older then these guys right now.

 

[racerjoe]

i'm not a 'burn it all down' fanatic. i don't think the canucks should be pursuing a path of not even trying to compete

what i do think is that they should be trying to preserve and develop asset value so that when they've accumulated enough they can make a push to being a real team instead of the kind of unserious franchise that we like to imagine edmonton is. i think the end result of the path they are on now is a small number of good to great players signed to big contracts, a barren system, a string of playoff misses/early exits and an endless quest to find just one more player to maybe get back to the promised land

a team like tampa or toronto can afford to overpay for assets because they're already at the top and they can see a precipitous drop on the horizon. if they wait they lose. a team like vancouver is going to do that and then find oops no third line or oops not enough defenders and they're going to bank on i dunno sheldon dries or christian wolanin to save them. it might work once or twice. they might get lucky with some pro scouting finds and make the playoffs occasionally. they'll also never ascend to the level of the elite with that plan. you can't operate like you're a single move from relevance when you're ten years into irrelevance and still 7th last in the league

i'm not even saying the hronek trade is a fatal mistake. it was too much to give up for a player who probably isn't good enough to make the difference here but it wasn't fatal. what will be fatal is if they keep thinking they can cobble together a team from some spare parts that were left over after the rest of the league got done picking them over. they need to commit to actually drafting, signing, trading for and most importantly developing young nhl talent that they can recycle into even more nhl talent in the future

building a team from a loser to a winner isn't about filling arbitrary slots on a whiteboard. it's about making sure you have more talent in the future than you do right now

Like it or not, the team is serving two masters. The kind of have to if this plan is going to work. This season, which never mind the standings in the teams stated goal, in team building has been somewhat successful, even with a few of the mistakes they made.

They wanted to get younger and they have. They wanted to get faster and they have. They wanted to improve the prospect pool and they have with guys like Aman, Raty, and other signed UFA's last year. They wanted to improve the team structure, and while it is early it looks like they have. This latest move filled another goal of improving the defence.

Don't get me wrong they have a long way to go, but there is clear improvement in many areas when talking strictly about team building.

I think the teams mistake is being to interested in the past at maximizing value and not being more aggressive. I don't think you need to be as aggressive as some, but they should have moved cap in a winger the last year... and not just Dickinson.

 

[Bojack Horvatman]

This is what I profoundly disagree with. This is *absolutely* the time to be making moves like this.

We have a set of very good young players. We have another maybe 2 years to make something happen with this group. Either you aggressively back these players and try to open a window for them to be legitimately competitive or we should be trading them right now at maximum value (which no team would ever do with this kind of asset). And if it doesn't work, then you trade all of Pettersson/Hughes/Demko/Hronek in 2025 and kickstart a full rebuild. You've lost 2 years and after we've already lost 10 ... whatever.

But the media and this entire board seems to think the super ultimate best thing to do is to sit on our star players and hoard 2nd and 3rd round draft picks and then somehow magically profit when those picks do nothing to help the current core, and then be left doing the full blow-up in 2025 anyway when those guys force their way out. It makes zero sense and seems to be based on nothing more than draft pick FOMO.

I think it’s because this market never got a true rebuild despite a decade of losing, so when shit is still hitting the fan they still want a rebuild even if it doesn’t make sense right now. We should of absolutely done a full rebuild sometime around 2014. That makes sense. As does taking a longer term approach in 2018. I know that’s not how you would build a team, and you would argue that execution was the problem, but a longer term approach like Winnipeg or New Jersey was completely viable at that time. I also thought it would of been viable in 2021 if we lived in a fantasy world where Benning was fired and our owner wasn’t a moron. Take a step back for a year or two while the bad contracts expire. Try to build for a window starting in 2023 or 2024. Sell what doesn’t fit that window, sign short term deals to flip at the deadline, trade Horvat and Miller if they don’t want to stick around. Again you may not agree with that direction but it was completely viable as Pettersson and Hughes still had lots of team control. It’s what Detroit is doing now. It isn’t viable now to take a step back with Pettersson a little over 2 years away from being UFA eligible. It’s too late now. That we will be able to rebuild quickly, keep Pettersson and Hughes, and in 2 years we will be like New Jersey is right now is fantasy.

And don’t get me wrong I completely understand people’s frustration. I’ve been frustrated too. It’s been a long decade for us Canucks fans, and I too was looking forward to having an extra first in a deep draft. Not having a deeper prospect pool over the years to better fill out the team and be able to add like New Jersey sucks too. Having to turn a mediocre team around to keep a star player is not an ideal situation, which has caused many GMs to make stupid, short-sighted moves in the past. I think management has made a lot of good moves though, even if they have shot themselves in the foot once or twice.

Another flat start next year and I think we have no choice but to rebuild. Fans are hungry for a rebuild, and won’t accept more pushing for the playoffs and not having success.

 

[Bleach Clean]

I see this repeated a lot, and it's just an exceptional false equivalency to say that because it was a bad idea for the worst management in NHL history to try building around two 35 y/o players in steep decline that it's a bad idea for better management to try building around one of the better young cores in the NHL.

The other one is 'they've been doing the same thing for 10 years!' and no they haven't. We tried keeping an old dead core alive for several years, accidentally accumulated some high picks in the process, and then for 1 offseason (2019) kind of built around those young players by adding Miller (good) and Myers (bad) and it actually worked fairly well for one year. Then absolutely no more building around the young core happened beecause they were bit in the ass by all the dumb deals they signed 2015-2018 and spent the 2020 offseason being gutted and the 2021 offseason converting those bad contracts into OEL in the worst deal in the NHL in the last decade.

Very little building around this core has actually happened. It's mostly just been dealing with Jim Benning's mess while the core rots on the vine.

I can't speak to what post, specifically, you've seen with regards to re-tooling around the twins and re-tooling around Pettersson and Hughes, but it's only a false equivalency if the two players are used as the basis for the rebuild/re-tool decision. Nobody is comparing the two sets as equivalent. They are used as examples of the poor rationale GMs use to decide a course of action.

It's actually the lack of understanding about how difficult it will be to re-tool around those key players that's the crux of the issue, not those two players themselves.

I've seen you post a few more points that I wish to address as well:

Timing: The right time to re-tool is determined by, first and foremost, the likelihood of its success. If the re-tool has a 10% chance of being successful, it's horrendous management to try and force it and bank on the exception to the rule. What you're advocating works against probability, not for it.

The 2 year window: What's the template for this 2 year turn around? I remember you mentioning Seattle, which was not a re-tool. Maybe if we ground the discussion in an example, we can better gauge the likelihood from there.

On Picks: You've stated that collecting picks for their own sake is video game based GMing. Or that it's draft pick FOMO. You can't pick players unless you have the picks. And good players on ELCs are the most valuable commodity in the league so... Cost controlled assets are necessary to create a valuable roster.

We disagree on rebuild/re-tool, fine, but to categorize the need to rebuild as "pick FOMO" is beneath you. We can't on the one hand say that to master the cap, we need valuable contracts, and then say people want picks for their own sake. No, it is instead for the potential value the good young player adds to the roster.