As long as they get equivalent value back, whatever
But they can’t continue the trend of taking these players in the first round, and then trade them away for second round picks 24-36 months later
Huh? Trend?
They traded precisely one 1st rounder for a 2nd (Lias) since the rebuild started, and that was after three years. And while the relationships with VK and NL have been shaky, they are still both in the organization four years later (50 months and counting). You can't just go around making two exaggerations in one sentence (number of occurrences and timespan). Not to mention that it was our last GM, not this one. It's demonstrably just not as bad as you think it is.
What we're seeing now is the problem with amassing a slew of high picks in short order. If Lias wasn't a headcase, then maybe Chytil wouldn't have had the room to grow that has benefitted him. At the end of the day, Cuylle is an acceptable consolation prize. Not ideal, but the dropoff in "value" has more to do with "misjudging this kid's mentals," and less to do with "failing to maximize trade capital." We picked a 2nd round kid with the 7OA. We've done far worse. LOL There's a small upside that Cuylle is younger, which buys an extra three years before he "wonders where he fits on the team because there are so many good wingers here already."
VK had a spot last season, but he was too impatient to grab it. After Blais' injury, I honestly believe that VK would have been a better fill-in top-6 guy than Vatrano. Yet, he felt squeezed out because of the wing depth ahead of him. While we may have patched things up for this season, he now has to watch out for kids on the wing coming up behind him as well. Othmann, Cuylle, Sykora, Berard... It's going to get interesting.
Back to Nils, there's a spot for him this season where if there's an injury to Foxy or Troubs or even a case of the yips for Schneider, then we'd obviously be lucky to have him. Very similar to Kravtsov last season. Our top pair is still pretty young. Trouba might be the youngest "oldest D on their team" in the NHL. Key is straight freak. Our top 4 is young, has been set for 2 seasons, and should be set for 2 more.
We have to find a 3rd pair out of Schneider, Lundkvist, Jones, and Robertson. Nils has the slight edge in age and experience that Turk prefers, so he should come into TC revved up and ready to show coach what's up. Like, the odds are against all 4 of those kids having long NHL careers anyway, so there's no reason to vote yourself off the island first, y'know?
If Nils is traded for some magic beans, I'm still okay with running Schneider with a platoon of Jones and Robertson for two years and never seeing Hajek again, at least. We're obviously better off keeping Nils in that mix, though. He's a different look to Schneider as Robertson is a different look to Jones. We currently have a young, talented, and balanced top 8 D.
Skinner, Scanlin, and Emberson all have some modicum of promise, so they can solidify the farm and be nuclear contingency options over dressing Hajek for multiple games in the worst case scenario. We didn't really draft any notable D in the past couple of drafts, and Schneids is literally the only D we drafted in 2020, so we don't have any young bucks challenging that top 8 D for that next couple of years like we do on the Wing.
Lundkvist should really just bet on himself and play this season out. He has a real chance right here, and it would be unfortunate if he wanted to be a #5 elsewhere rather than be our secret weapon #6.5 for a season and go from there.
