Been busy for a while, but some general thoughts on what’s been going on:
1. The Trouba trade is good for us from a timing POV. A very big obstacle for rebuilding teams is that building a defense has a — totally — different time frame than what building a line-up has. There are exceptions, but if you look through 20 solid top 4 Ds, odds are that like 15 of them only really established themselves in that role when they were older than 23. And quite a few later than that too. This also applies to guys like Hedman. They just take time to first get into the league and once in the NHL to become solid and able to play long tough minutes.
Hence getting Trouba really helps us from that POV. Skjei, Trouba and TDA. The vets are history sooner rather than later. Our future on the blueline is a bit thin even Trouba. Remember that we haven’t had room to even start to brew any wild card and the likes. Fox should play. Hajak maybe got a little too much praise for his short stint, but hopefully he can ship in. K’Andre Miller is a project but has so much potential.
Then there are risks with Trouba. It’s not easy to play defense for a rebuilding team. You get exposed. This doesn’t change much just because we didn’t give up a ton to get him. But from a timing POV it’s a huge add.
2. Gorton has done a tremendous job working the phones to line us up for the moves we have made and hopefully will make. It’s such a hard league to get things done in, and almost exclusively the talks on these moves started years ago.
The flip side of this is that it’s time consuming. I am not sure how many hours there is left for Gorts to run our AHL franchise etc. Hold Drury’s hand. Implement an analytics section. I am not sure how ‘executive’ JD is, but hopefully he can chip in.
I’ve called out Gorts for a lot of things over the years, but he deserves a ton of credit for how he has gone about the trading part of his job.
3. There are a lot of buzz out there, but it’s important to not get too high expectations. Even if something is discussed, there will be 10 serious discussions — at least — for every deal that actually is made.
In addition, sometimes maybe stuff reported are portrayed as being more than it actually is. Some — like bbkers and bobob — do a great job just putting out there what they heard, others maybe pick up a tidbit or circumstance and make it out like it’s bigger than it is. We all know the type, all of a sudden they’ve heard everything and anything, often a few hours after someone like Dreger reported it, and it’s stuff that they only would have info on if they talked regularly with a bunch of GMs around the league that was spilling the beans to them; McKenzie and scouts and GMs and what not are calling them for advice and to compare notes etc etc etc.
To be clear, I don’t mind seeing any report, I can value it myself and if nothing else it gets the imagination going. It’s the opposite, I want to get them. But to get that, we need to be a bit sober and don’t run away with these things. Otherwise there will surely be a backlash because quite many can’t take seeing a report they don’t like or that doesn’t happen without bringing out the oil and feathers.
4. Expect lists to be upside down on draft day. I was listening to McKenzies podcast the other day. He talks to his old buddies. They are of course CHL oriented, that’s where McK got to know them. Why is Kravtsov what 60 at one point, then 10 at the draft? They aren’t supplying lists from the organizations finihsed products to McK, and even if someone do, it gets drowned by the others. Further more, McKenzie massages the list and he is just not in the know anymore. He says it himself, he don’t watch these kids. He said that he got a full time gig following the NHL and don’t have time for it. Listen to him talk about these kids, it’s all size, size and then some more size about the forwards. The NHL teams are going in the other direction, and look at the Wheeler redraft — the impact is huge. I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible for. Big forward to do well, but more often it’s the non-big guys that thrives. In addition, teams are all over the place it seems like this year.
