Roster Building XXV: Winning Rantanen's Undying Love

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Just gonna leave this right here...

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Posted this on the game day Op but thought it would be more relevant to roster construction page (interesting that we are going to sign Hall):

I am frustrated at the team's performance this year but I do understand RBA's approach because of the team's current roster makeup. It's hard for RBA to get orange juice out of lemons.

His challenge is that most of the roster is dominated by lunch pair guys versus skill players.
Staal-Martinook-Robinson-KK-Jost-Carrier-Rosolvic-Hall (at this point in his career he is just a higher end lunch pair guy), all D men not named Ghost (love Slavin's D game but he is not an offensive skill guy).
5/6 of our D is just not creative in zone and are just wall protectors (Morrow is different and we need that creativity).

That leaves Aho-MR-Jarvis-Svetch-Blake as the only true high end skill guys (with Blake probably a couple of years away from completely putting it together) and with Aho and Svetch under performing we get the year we are having. Necas red hot start masked the team's underlying core issues.

The other missing part is that outside of Carrier our lunch pail guys are not consistently physical and outside of Staal-Martinook-Carrier are easy to play against most nights (Robinson has retrogressed since Necas trade). Carrier getting hurt has been more impactful than I thought originally (but then again he has an injury filled track record so should it be a surprise?).

Right now, I give Tulsky a D in roster construction. We are just too small on D, our G's have not been improved and there are too many lunch pail guys on the roster. Plus, it's a roster made up of a bunch of nice guys with no toughness on the roster.

Short of some trade deadline magic this roster is not Stanley Cup Competitive with a Divisional exit.

btw: I'm waiting for but expect Burns to be team oriented and go to RBA and say drop me down in the pairings Coach.
 
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With The Athletic article that came out today, which absolutely scorched Dundon and the front office, I do wonder just how many agents are going to be willing to work with us in free agency, especially if there's a pool of money that most teams now have in order to sign good players. We keep saying that even if Rantanen doesn't sign here we'll fill out the cap, and we very well might, but are we going to get any of the top end talent that we think we will? Just because we will have a pool of money doesn't mean others will want to sign here, and that's historically been a big issue for us with high profile players, even with Dundon, to the point where it sometimes feels like agents take joy in stringing us along before screwing us over to have their players sign elsewhere.
 
I'd add that losing Drury as 4C (and sometimes 2C) was a loss as he provided an advantage versus other teams and was good from the dot. With Staal's play slowing down the last few weeks, our C performance has been very mediocre.
Not only that but when we had an “extra” center he was the best value add in for a trade as he’s affordable and still maybe had some growth to his game in a bigger role on a different team. He’s a perfect throw in to get a deal done. We don’t really have that any more when moving forward.
 

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