I don't think Lou is scared of anything personally. Think the man believes he has a solid team that underachieved with about 11 million in cap space.
This is very true. Also, our team is signed short term. The team didn't go into the offseason with a ton of holes, it was "we have 14 forwards signed on with roles defined, if we could upgrade one of these guys, that'd be great". Defense is pretty clear, Lou did an excellent job of adding a number 4 dman and a young one at that. Almost universally loved.
We went into last season confident we were a playoff team that could win a cup. Insert the weirdness and excuses here and it didn't work. We need a top end talent up front (hard to do) and a top 4 dman on the left side (accomplished) and here we are. So lets see.
To expand on this:
To judge our team short term and long term by position in my opinion, on roster building towards a stanley cup and being a consistent winner.
Goaltending -
Sorokin is a franchise goalie who is 27 and has 2 years left. Varly is 34 and a starter in his own right, probably around 18-23 amongst goalies if you ranked them which gives us the best tandem in the league. I think the outlook here is Lou wants Sorokin long term (duh) and what makes him comfortable is Varly who I'd bet we sign after this one expires and we have no replacement in the pipeline anyway. Romanov is friends with Sorokin too so that made that trade that much better.
Defense -
Pelech and Pulock are 27 and 28, both signed long term and a top pairing. Noah Dobson is probably going to be the top dog next season and hopefully now gets signed long term. With those three we're going to be set for a very long time. Romanov fills a need on the left side, while being offensively inept he is very good defensively and a strong skater. With Dobber on his right we don't really need an offensive powerhouse either so it works out. Young and keeps us competitive long term. Mayfield makes our defense hard to play against and is a top PKer in the league, with Dobber and Pulock long term deals with big tickets I think this is his last season as he could make 4.5-5 on his next deal as he has been making peanuts. Ideally maybe you keep him at 4 AAV but I think he goes wherever the money is and Hutton is on his heels. After romanov, Aho and Salo are there to fill in and let's see. Pipeline wise Odelius could be solid. That's it though, Bolduc needs a sick bounceback year for me to consider him anything. That's why Romanov was great, there's nothing comin through the left side so he fits that long term.
Offense-
Down the middle we have Nelson, Barzal, Pageau and Cizikas all long term. All have their roles and all fill it well. A strength of the team. In the pipeline we have Raty and he will likely be a winger to start but down the line he could replace Nelson maybe. Wingers are kind of the issue, short term we have Lee, Palmieri, Parise, Beau and Bailey. Long term we have Bellows (fringe), Wally (shows promise but not a top 6 winger yet) and then Holmstrom and Dufour. That's why wehave so many average middle six wingers, there's no prospects knocking on the door and no top end talent. Whether it's pick #8 or #23 or #32 in the draft, if we have it I'd like to use it on a winger. But by the time Parise's deal is up we can insert one of the young'ins, Bailey and Beau too for Holmstrom and Dufour or whoever steps up. There's opportunity knocking.
The gut of the team and the gut of a successful team is goaltending, defense and down the middle. Ages of these guys are 27 (Sorokin), 22, 22, 27, 28 (Romanov, Dobson, Pulock and Pelech) and then 25, 30, 29 (Barzy, Nelson and Pageau).
