Making the playoffs does not boost young talent that is not ready; time and practice does. Yes eventually playoff experience matters, but it matters when the team is, as a whole, ready to win as a group. Then getting that experience matters.
This team is no where close to ready. It does not have enough talent in the pipeline at forward yet. Getting 3-5 games of playoff experience for 19 year old Kaapo Kakko is nearly meaningless, as he’s not ready to absorb it. Same as it is for other future cornerstones like K’Andre Miller, Vitali Kravtsov, and Nils Lundkvist who did not even make the team. On the flip side the experience also is not particularly relevant for guys who have played in and won series’ before like Kreider, Zibanejad and Panarin.
Who exactly needs this experience so badly? Fox? DeAngelo? They can’t pick up this experience next year or the year after?
Way more important than experience is obtaining talent. And if you ever need proof of this, it’s that a team of aging journeymen are so often bad whereas a team of young kids scoring tons of points are so often good. The experience is necessary for the talent, but you have to have the talent first, and then the experience is a natural acquisition afterwards. Meanwhile it’s no use trying to turn McKegg or Fogarty into experienced contributors: you’ll still get crap.
Get the talent. This team should have kept that in the forefront of its mind this trade deadline. I don’t think signing Kreider sinks them but they have to be smarter and more creative because they need to parlay some of their remaining redundant assets into futures.
