Drury didnt really empty the draft pick coffers for nothing when the team has made multiple deep runs into the playoffs, and you just mentioned 3 NHL ready prospects he drafted. Id say the only bad rental deal he made was the conditions on the Andrew Copp trade. The guy wasnt good enough to give a 1st rounder and a young bottom 6er for
He traded away a ton of draft capital and got back only rentals. We didn't re-sign any of those players.
I have no problem trading draft picks and prospects if we are getting back good players who will help us for a long time. But when we trade those things for extremely short-term fixes, we're just hastening the eventual collapse of the team. If we had won a cup, that strategy could be excused, but we didn't.
Too many people operate under the false belief that we have a limited window to win and therefore advocate for moves that help us only within that limited window. If those are the types of moves we are making, then the idea of a limited window becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that doesn't have to be the case. We can make moves that help us in the short-term without sacrificing the long-term. We can make moves that might hurt us a bit in the short-term but will help us a lot in the long-term. It's okay to take small steps back in order to take larger steps forward in the future.
Trading Panarin, for example, would be an example of this type of strategy. We could get a good return for him. Waiting until his contract runs out and then either re-signing him or watching him walk to another team does nothing for our ability to compete long-term. Would we take a hit in the short-term? Probably. But we aren't that good of a team right now anyway. Does it matter if we become slightly more mediocre in the short term?
People think it's a binary. We are either in buy mode or sell mode. Smart teams both buy and sell when doing so will benefit the team. Smart teams are willing to sacrifice short-term at one position in order to improve both short and long-term at another. Smart teams maintain a strong farm system, enabling them to trade older players and replace them from within for cheap.
I'm not saying we should never rent a player, that we should never go all in on a season, but we have to be much smarter about it. We have to have a better balance between the short and long term in terms of team building.
what's this about drury coveting raantanen? is he even that good? necas looks much better in col.
Where are you seeing that? If that were the case, I'd imagine we would have heard something about it before he was traded to Carolina. It's moot now.
