I will say I have liked his picks. I can be objective on that. I havent liked a single FA signing outside of Teravainen, his contracts have mostly been awful, and trades have seemed weak. I am not fan of the coach either
Judging his UFA signings is silly. He needed to sign players to fill out a roster that was made to be among the worst in the league. You don't get your pick of the litter when your team is set up to be bad.
They went with the old Cubs rebuild strategy, a lot of short term deals to flip for assets, cap dumps and signings to get to the cap floor, they were intentionally awful because they need to get as many blue chip assets as possible at the top of the draft...this was their strategy going in and they've stuck to it, and should for another year or two until most of the high picks in pipeline are in the NHL...KD has mostly avoided the really bad UFA mistake, and hopefully he continues that this summer
He's had some absolute home run moves - Dach for Nazar, Rinzel in the last 1st, some really good value picks like Lardis...its way way too early to judge his work, NHL prospects take a long time relative to say the NFL or NBA where they're drafted and immediately hit the active roster. His intention was in the right place with the HC job with Carle but you can't force him to leave Denver. If he had him looking at houses then KD made a hell of a pitch.
Brodie was straight up awful. No getting around that but his contract won't prevent them from being able to do anything. I think the thought behind the 2nd year was that KD knew that the team had no vet Dmen on the roster going into this year other than Murphy and Jones. He probably would have rather given another year to Martinez but he probably indicated that he only had 1 year left to play.
Bertuzzi contract is fine, he's a 3rd line player, who scores 20G, that's what he makes.
I respectfully disagree. Bertuzzi was exactly the player they thought he would be. Slow, streaky, and scored 20 goals. He'll be better on a team that has the puck more and hopefully that's this year with the added speed around him. Brodie was terrible and there's no getting around that.
ins are missing Nazar, Rinzel, Moore, Korchinski, Spellacy, Ryan Greene, Sasha Boisvert, 25 TOR 1st, 26 FLA 1st, etc
I was strictly talking roster players in this scenario. That is what KD had brought into and off the roster. All those guys you mentioned were made with picks we acquired through trade and have just started their careers. Knight was a roster player we got in return for a trade. That’s why I added him. We have no idea if most of those pieces even make the NHL or play a significant role
Not sure what the issue is. The only guy in that out category he got nothing for was Strome because the whole league thought he sucked ass. Everyone else he got at least a 1st round pick for with Dach and Debrincat yielding picks in the top 14. He wasn't trading them for immediate help because why would you with where we were in the rebuild?
If you're going to include the outs then you should include the complete list of ins, whether they're currently on the roster or not, its intentionally misleading to leave off players like Nazar, Korchinski, Rinzel, Moore etc, they were core pieces for some of the players moved out
If you're not sure about Nazar at this point, I don't know what to tell you. I'm also pretty sold on Rinzel too. The rest, let's see but some will definitely be NHL players. And if you remember 2022, the Hawks sure weren't that great with all of those 'outs' on the roster but would be too good to get Bedard. Other than Strome, every other player was traded for a longer term asset.
honest question..you say "After this offseason, that goal will change to getting into contention so the kind of free agents and deals will be different." so if we dont land 1 of the top 2 guys in draft (Schaefer or Misa), then we don't go after top free agents like Marner who is 28 and legit 100 point player.Based on rumor mill its looking like we will let Donato walk who was our top goal scrorer..how do you propose this team is any different than last yr? they objectively are worse. Thats my whole point of my KD rant is yes I like his draft picks but everything else he has done has literally not improved the team whatsoever in going on 4yrs now. I love Bedard, Nazar, Moore, Lardis, Rinzel, Levshunov...but at some point you have to bring in some younger veterans via either trade or FA to upgrade the roster. The talk on Bedard leaving isn't just coming from thin air there is absolutely truth to his frustrations and not wanting to continue to be on suck ass lines. I love how people on this board throw out well the players has to want to come here...no shit...so then its wait until Kaprizov next yr (hint why would he want to come here) I here lets tank for McKenna- ya I want him on the team he is flipping amazing...but its still the draft and ping pong level luck so that's not a sure thing..tank a season and end up drafting 3 or 4th again and this team will still have not improved. Meanwhile you could have gotten Marner, trade the 3rd pick for a veteran type guy and start building your way from the basement.
