I would have paid that price for Chychrun without blinking, simply after seeing Power and Joki get abused and single-handedly lose that game last night. Also would have liked to include Rosen as a centerpiece, as I think he's the most likely of the big four to bust.
But I'm also not heartbroken over missing out on an oft-injured, LHD who we don't know much about as a RD, a guy who has been putting up his nice analytics far from the fire of competitive hockey, (and whose personality I've never liked and doesn't fit with our group in my mind). He'll be a perfectly hateable Sen and I hope we kick his ass here the last game of the season.
I think Adams is planning to target the losers of this year's pretty unprecedented arms race at the draft and beyond. A few of those teams, strapped for cap, will retreat and look to recoup some futures to buy back some of the farm they sold. We are in an incredibly strong position to selectively build a decade of contending rosters with an almost maximum amount of cap flexibility and stream of arriving futures. That's exciting to me, it's why I follow the sport on a site called Hockey's Future.
That said, we desperately need to make the playoffs. We have to. Because the Buffalo sports fan has lost it's mind thanks to the largely two decades of ineptitude we've been stuck with. Trading for a brand new fanbase to replace our terminally shot cohort is going to take a lot more than a few conditional firsts.
theathletic.com
I figured a 4th or 5th.
