I agree with that. Question is at what cost though.
One of the things I hated about JR was how he tossed away draft picks/prospects to try and fix previous problems and or seemingly as throw-ins in deals (pick to LA for the ASTEW, Alt (2nd round pick) to take Boucher off our hands, Dumoulin in the J. Staal trade, etc.. That's the type of thing I did NOT want Francis doing, even if it meant the team was worse this year..unless it was a later round pick.
On the flipside, JR was also able to successfully get rid of mistakes by taking back different players that might fit better. Tlusty for Paradis, Spacek (less than 1 year left) for Kaberle, Loktionov for Ruutu, Liles for Gleason, etc....
I have to think there were options for RF to take on a contract from another team that might also fill a hole in exchange for Ward. While not ideal, it still would be better IMO.
I completely agree, and this is the type of thing I've been hoping to do with Ward the whole time. If something like this isn't available (or something easy like giving up a 7th rounder), I'd rather keep him. This team's pipeline is bare. Like, bad. HF ranked us as the 2nd-worse in the league. For a team that hasn't made the playoffs in however many years, that's bad. Really bad. Like "not fixed through free agency/cap room" bad. Yzerman's got Drouin, Vasilevski, and a number of other good, young players. We're excited about Brock McGinn. Personally, if I'm running this team, I'm building through the draft. That's how LA has built. That's how Chicago has built. The cap space thing is nice, free agency can be helpful, but that's to take a good team to becoming a champion. Yeah, moving Ward would be good. But we're not going to be a Stanley Cup champion in the next two years. Meanwhile, we might be in five or six if we stop trading away our draft picks for help now, and start actually developing young talent. You're telling me Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe couldn't be decent top 9 NHLers if we had developed them right? By the end, JR had completely lost confidence in this organization's ability to develop talent, and rightfully so. That's why we went NHL-ready forward in the 1st round, then NCAA players for the rest of the draft. Anyone that's not ready for this team by the time they're AHL-eligible is done. Even Murphy hasn't made the jump yet, and I personally haven't seen much from him to suggest he's improved since his first time making our roster. Meanwhile, look at LA, look at Chicago. Someone gets hurt? Let's pull up Ben Smith from the minors. Gearing up for a playoff run? Look, actual assets to trade for Marian Gaborik!
This team's pipeline, or lack thereof, has been the reason for this team's failure over the last 7 years. And that doesn't happen overnight. We could trade Ward and send a 2nd rounder to Calgary, and that would probably buy us enough cap space to sign just enough free agents to finish 9th in the East and draft 14th. Not the worst thing in the world if you draft well. But I'd rather take it slow. My patience isn't running thin, as far as being a good team goes. My patience is running thin as far as putting things in place to BECOME a good team goes. I think we're on the same page there, Vagrant. But I don't think giving up picks to get rid of Ward is all we'll need to do, if we want to go the "be good now" route. We'd have to rip off a lot of teams and actually make ourselves a playoff team this year. We need to be acquiring picks, not giving them up. Realize that Calgary picked 3 spots ahead of us. They're about as good as us right now. They're burning the phone getting picks. They're taking ON bad contracts. Buffalo's becoming as bad as they can be to get McDavid/Eichel next year. Improving is slow. LA was bad for awhile, so was Chicago. We've been bad long enough to be good, and we even draft fairly well, we just don't actually develop the prospects. We need to develop prospects. That should be our plan. If Daniels isn't gone, we better have a complete overhaul of that process.
Anyway, that's the "plan" I'd like to see. Put something in place that gives us the ability to actually develop kids. I haven't seen that yet, but, save for firing Daniels, I don't think there's anyway I could. So I'm going to be patient. You keep comparing what we're doing to what Yzerman is doing, but Yzerman's been there for more than 3 months and had a decent pipeline to work with. We've got literally nothing. Our free agency moves and dealings in the trade market this summer mean next to nothing to me. That's just me, though...
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