There aren't many criticisms of this mgmt team, but the construction of this defense absolutely is a valid one. A blind man could see this would be our weakness going into the season, and its only been exacerbated with severe regressions of certain defenders and now this injury. How mgmt allocated their money on defense at free agency is looking to be an error.
Gillis once said you need at least 8 NHL calibre defenseman. I don't think we even have that when we are all healthy. We have one top pair and a bunch of bottom pair defenders, some playing at an AHL level. We are not one top 4 defender away, we need at least two.
On the one hand, management definitely took a huge risk going into the season with the D core we have, and that 1 injury basically sink our team. Especially risky when we don't have a timeline for Demko's return.
On the other hand, how many top 4 D changed teams that we missed out on? A quick glance at the UFAs, looks like Roy, Walker, maybe Zadorov, Kulikov, Pesce, Montour, Tanev, maybe OEL? Some of them probably wouldn't sign here (Roy, Kulikov, Pesce), some of them you want nothing to do with their contracts (Montour, Zadorov, Tanev), I'm sure nobody wants OEL back. So really, its only maybe Walker? The rest of the UFAs are depth guys that won't move the needle. I don't remember any top 4 D being traded over the summer either, even though Kovacevic played a little bit of that in NJ to start the year when they had lots of injuries.
I think maybe management could've been more proactive in acquiring a top 4 D, but that is easier said than done. You don't want to locked into a horrific UFA contract out of desperation, but everybody is looking for top 4 D and nobody are trading one unless you vastly overpay. It was a tough situation for Allvin, I can kind of understand why he was banking on the Soucy-Myers pairing to be as good as last season. It blew up in his face completely, yes, but I can understand his reasoning behind it.