One thing I don't like is that we always get into this binary of "well we don't wanna be Buffalo and they suck because they rebuilt, but we can't be Edmonton, they rebuilt to get all that elite talent, and we can't do that" and we end up just talking in circles.
Odds are, we're probably not gonna be Buffalo, and we're also not gonna be one of these teams like Edmonton that ran into Gretzky and Lemieux part 2 because they just happened to.
Why can't we be Dallas? They never tore it down but they keep finding elite players because they have the right infrastructure in place. They have a franchise defenseman in Heiskanen, and then they developed another f***ing one in Harley.
Meanwhile what are we doing? We got Adam Fox and went "that's it." We just resigned ourselves to the other five guys being nobodies. We drafted EJ Emery to be a safe stay at home guy. We committed to Borgen to be a safe stay at home piece. It wasn't we tried and it didn't pan out -- that you could sell me on. We resigned to it. Adam Fox is our defenseman. That's it. We're not even gonna try.
I don't care what anybody says, you absolutely cannot convince me that they're not just locking into Miller, Soucy, and Borgen as the guys they're going to war with.
The Rangers never have top players because they just accept not having top players.
Dallas has problems, I'll grant you that. They're not the best team in the West. Their top guys aren't Edmonton or Colorado's top guys. I'll believe Hintz is a Cup-winning 1C when I see it. Rantanen is a flawed star player that shook loose and I'm wary of the ones that shake loose.
But you know what, they're not torture to watch. They'll go into the playoffs with a chance and a good goaltender, and hopefully you get the RNG to go your way. That's what we've been telling ourselves we've been doing but we're not close enough to even do that.
Again, you could sell me on "look, the true upper echelon is hard to come by and not everyone gets McDavid, Mackinnon, etc. which takes some luck." That's probably the boat Dallas is in but I would trade places with them in a heartbeat. They have a decent shot at it and they're going to do what they can to augment what they have.
What are we doing? The reason I rail on the Miller trade so much is because he's a flawed, aging 'top center' that we're papering over the hole with because "ah well, we're never gonna have one." And then we'll take another Othmann at the draft who is "for sure a third liner!" and just accept that we don't have it. Meanwhile, Dallas will take some f***ing guy 25th overall or whatever the f*** and he's a PPG player before he's 21.