There has been this undertone of players potentially not accepting and not showing up to the new team in the event of a trade(even if on their list). That was heavily rumored this summer with Trouba. Last week Kreider gave a lot of very odd and specific information about his injury, which some said was an attempt to block teams from trading for him. I could see teams wanting to connect with these guys, even if they were on their lists, just to make sure they were on board and would be willing to come in and give their all in a trade scenario. I can't imagine a contending team risking getting involved in any trade that could get ugly, wouldn't be worth the risk.
I think you nailed it if the intention was to really let teams know they are available.
People ran with the Kreider injury thing for some reason but that story was a nothing burger. I’m not even sure that it was kreiders intention because those answers were the most Kreider answers ever plus I’ve already gone into why nothing he said really means anything.
Im sticking with his name being attached as an attempt to tell the team to get their shit together. It didn’t work and yeah it didn’t really work but at least now you’re sure about what kind of team you have.
This isn’t turning around with out some
pretty major surgery/igor being ridiculous. Playoffs shouldn’t be the goal (and even that’s up in the air, some of the slow start teams behind them have started to play better.)
Identify 2-3 vets you want to keep (add more along the way as you can’t play all kids) and move the rest. At this point a reset is as much about the mental side of things as it is the skill sets of the players.