Most teams would give up 3rd overall, their top prospect, and multiple 2nd rd picks and other prospects/players?
And again, where does that leave this team? Are the Senators 1 Eichel away from being very good again? No. Probably, not even close. What's the short and long term plan? Short term: continue accruing assets, including draft picks and developing prospects. Long term: identify your core out of the work you've done through the draft in the last 3-5 years and use the excess pieces in trade packages for young impact players. We're still in the short term part of the plan and have a huge opportunity to add several high-end assets that will almost certainly increase their value. Next year should be the final year of adding pieces through the draft. When you're done that you can start assessing where your organizational strengths are and developing a concrete plan to shift assets from one area to another through trades. And then we finally arrive at the point where we start asking if adding players via free agency is actually on the table or not.
Adding Eichel now would feel great. But the impact of that trade on the short term progress we've made, I would argue, is actually negative. Especially considering the psychology of the move signalling that the rebuild is over and now it's time to go for it. We're just not there. Not even the most optimistic fan would say we're there.
Eichel is the same age as Chabot with almost as much term left.
He's a franchise player. Teams go decades without getting their hands on a player like Eichel.
The Senators need to consolidate their picks/prospects (trade up/acquire NHL talent/etc) because they cannot possibly sign/developt he amount of players they'll have if they keep every pick over the next two drafts. In the proposal above (basically giving the Karlsson haul to Buffalo), we're talking about Tierney, Balcers, a goalie prospect, and a 2nd. That isn't going to hurt our prospect depth at all.
The only two pieces of consequence would be a 3rd overall pick and Norris. Your post almost comes off like I am suggesting we trade for a player who is at risk of falling off soon like Toews, or Kopitar. Eichel hasn't even peaked yet and has a similar amount of team control to the 3rd round pick. Norris is looking like a great prospect, but he's far from untouchable in a deal for a 23 year old franchise C with term.
Let me reiterate again, I don't in a million years think Eichel will actually be available, let alone available for a package deal of picks/prospects. But in a fantasy land where he is available, budget permitting, we'd be nuts not to give up 3rd overall, Norris, and a bunch of mid tier assets for him. You're talking like if we gave up this opportunity, there's going to be a better time to acquire a 23 year old franchise center.
Eichel being made available at 23 would be the type of thing that only happens once every decade or so. It's not an opportunity where a team could wait for the next time it happens to pull the trigger.
