Army publicly said the prospect pool was full now. I’ll have to find the interview to find his exact words. He basically said they have replenished the organization from a prospect view point and now it’s going to the next phase of getting some into the NHL and building a team around them
Unless you are talking about another quote I'm unfamiliar with, here is what he said (the bolded is mine):
"Moving experienced players along for youth is way easier than moving youth along for experienced players. You have to accumulate as many puzzle pieces as you can, and then at some point you have to start making the puzzle. Right now I think what we've done is, we've accumulated enough assets now. ... We're getting in that team-building mode now where we expect to compete.
If it's not fitting in with our puzzle, we have to move pieces along to find better fits."
If it turns out we aren't competitive this year, I don't see anything in that answer to suggest that building our puzzle couldn't involve moving the vets that aren't fitting for more futures assets.
Again, I know that Army is publicly setting the expectation that we are competing. But I'm not convinced that the public sales pitch aligns with the internal expectations. We didn't sell out the home opener. They haven't sold out the Saturday game against the Leafs that is less than 3 weeks away. They have every incentive to sell optimism right now even if internally they expect to fall a couple notches short and sell at the deadline.
Taking his statements at face value, I'm certainly not convinced that the front office is so married to a vision of competing now that they wouldn't switch gears if the team underperforms those expectations. And again, Army's tenure has a public expiration date. If internal expectations are to complete for playoffs (and ownership shares those expectations) then Army very well may lose some sway behind the scenes this summer if we miss the playoffs by 15+ points.
2022/23 was a 'win now' year until it very much wasn't and we sold 5 rentals at the deadline.
I am pretty far from convinced that the plan is to simply let Leddy, Faulk. Saad, Binner, Faksa, and Joseph simply play out their contracts and walk. I think it is much more likely than not that at least a couple of them are moved in the next 18 months and moving guys like that generally means you are getting futures in return. Army might do what he's done in the past and flip those futures for 'current' help, but that doesn't mean we're just done accumulating assets.
