Yes, it works both ways, that is my point - we're long shots regardless. And that's not a pessimistic view based on our current outlook, its simply an acknowledgement on how difficult it is to build a cup winner. 4 teams have won in 8 years. Meaning if you go back to the summer of 2008 there were 26 GMs trying to put together a 2 year, 3 year, 5 year or 10 year plan to win a cup and they all failed.
The odds are against Luc and Blake, the odds are against Doughty and Kopitar in LA or elsewhere getting another cup, and the odds are against us as fans of seeing another in the next 10 years.
But there's a notion on these boards that we can't win unless we trade Doughty and Kopitar and we're therefore mailing it in if we don't trade them...and that is unequivocally false. As you said, the Pens were going nowhere prior to the trades you listed and the coaching change. There were "Should the Pens trade Malkin?" threads for years. But they didn't need a treasure cove of assets to make those deals. Kapanen and a first, Sutter, Perron.....honestly underwhelming compared to what they got back. Every team in the league has that kind of value.....the hard part is making the right trades, drafting the right 3rd rounders, and getting lucky. That's what separates the 4 from the 26.
I'm not interested in seeing Doughty or Kopitar traded, not because of some inability to let go of 2012 & 2014, not because of some misguided Lombardian Loyalty, but because we have Hall of Famers in the prime of their careers fully capable of winning championships if the right pieces and right amount of luck comes our way.
We traded Luc, we traded Blake, we traded Gretzky. We won 0 cups with the players they returned.
