I don't even know why the Hextall argument is getting re-hashed again. He did a good job at first and I think he didn't get enough credit for how well he handled the losses in the expansion draft. He then did a terrible job at the end, which was capped off by him trading a 2nd rounder for a $5 million Granlund after getting lucky with getting out of some of his other bad deals.
His 2022 off-season and 2022-2023 season is what killed any chances of this team contending. He let Rodrigues walk despite ERod wanting to stay, which has been an absolutely disastrous decision with how solid of a middle-6 guy ERod has been since. He kept Kapanen at an inflated price even though Kapanen was rapidly falling off as a player. The only depth guys he added were Poehling and Archibald, both of who didn't even hit 15 points. Now add on regression from McGinn, Blueger and Carter and it was a miserable bottom-6 situation that was entirely of Hextall's doing.
He was so focused on making changes to the defense to make it more physical that he completely botched the bottom-6, and I'd even argue the changes he made to the defense made the team worse and hurt the bottom-6's ability to transition the puck. And none of this even includes his magnum opus mistake with the Granlund trade, after luckily getting out of the McGinn and Kapanen mistakes.
So yeah, when someone says "the only reason this team fell off in 2022-2023 is because of goaltending injuries", it's very easy to see how bullshit that is.