I know the season is young but I just don’t see “it” with this core.
Suzuki is too slow and not engaged enough on a regular basis. We are extremely thin up front on talent coupled with a lack of identity and no physical presence on any line.
Extremely thin on the right side of our defence (with no help in our pipeline) and our goaltending is extremely inconsistent. Not to mention I have seen no noticeable improvement in our D zone coverage in the last 3 years. We are as clueless in our own zone as ever have been, which is troubling to say the least.
This rebuild is at least 2-3 years away.
Rebuild has 2-3 years to go for sure, but the right D isn't as thin as you say. Reinbacher and Mailloux will both be top4 D at worst.
I'm also not the biggest Suzuki fan, but you can't deny he has skill. With Caufield, Slaf and Demidov, we'll have a very good top 4.
We'll see how much production we can get from Dach. And there's Hage.
And Dobes and Fowler at G.
I wish we had at least 1 top-notch game breaking offensive talent (outside of potentially Demidov), but we have very good tools coming up everywhere else.
We'll have to look at improving coaching at some point in the next 2 years.