Isn't it kinda sad/hilarious that the "rebuild" essentially amounted to 1 single core piece. Lafreniere. Fox willed himself here, traded two 2nd rounders. Don't have to rebuild to make that move. Schneider and K'Andre were drafted with picks that landed in playoff range. Kakko is a question mark. Chytil would probably be a great 2C core guy if he wasn't made of glass. He's the type of player where I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he became a star at 25/26 years old if it wasnt for injuries... what's the chances he ever plays a full season once in his career? Perreault and Emery are also picks in playoff range. Othmann was a 16th OA. The majority of our core are guys that came pre-rebuild, free agent signings and pieces that could've been acquired without a rebuild. Tremendous
More sad than hilarious, but the team is run by people who don't understand how to build a Cup Winner. Owned by a guy with no patience. Team culture cultivated to tell the fan base not to have patience.
We were supposed to spend time at the bottom so we could acquire the necessary talent to win a Cup, not just get back to the playoffs so people could see entertaining hockey again. We should have continued to stockpile assets. We were well on our way to doing so, even if guys like Lias and Krav busted.
But we mismanaged a lot of key assets because we told ourselves we needed to keep them when it was more obvious they should have been dealt or dealt earlier or for different returns (DeAngelo, Buch), and to make matters worse, then we convinced ourselves that we had to compete for the sake of certain players' primes, whose primes weren't worth planning for (Kreider, Zibanejad, Trouba, maybe even Panarin). And we traded away tons of picks to fix these "win now" misses.
I said many, many times we were a
few young stud forwards short. Turns out with Lindgren declining and Robertson and Nils busting, we are short a few defenders too.
And now we are getting dangerously close to wasting the primes of the players who do matter, like Fox and Igor.