I don't think anyone is saying that Chiarot or Petry or Copp or whomever are elite players, but we are being hyperbolic here by calling them the 'worst' or 'trash' or... whatever. (Full disclosure: I want many of these guys to be shipped off as well so we can move on into our next phase of development).
But I think we are seriously overvaluing the UFA market of defenseman and what is or isn't available. Its not typically as simple as:
"Go get an top pair D, Stevie! What's wrong with you? You're so stupid!"
Even pointing to other free agent D signings in the open market, rarely is it as simple as:
"We should've paid Roy 7 for 49! We really needed him!"
Time and time again, we've had numerous incidences and follow up backstory to any NUMBER of things that may include or preclude a player wanting to sign with us. We see the numbers are go 8 > 7, make it happen! You never know what else is baked into it and you think "Well, I WOULD do it for more money, obviously they would.", until you end up with a Trouba situation and it has literally nothing to do with money, and everything to do with family, or you have Mike Babcock as your head coach and no amount of money would compel a player to sign with you any more than you would take a job with a poorly run company for a boss you know you hated.
I'm not saying that specifically with Roy, but this idea that it was just as simple of "Do your job and offer more and sell Detroit!", sure, to a degree, but there's a lot we don't see and you can't assume he's being negligent.
Look, I HATE the Petry Chiarot pairing, it really just looks fundamentally broken and how that pair operated on a deep MTL playoff run is entirely beyond me and I cannot wait till be can sunset both of those players because trying to ask them to be a 2nd pair today is just horrible to watch.
That being said, I don't know if literally any of the other options out there are better for us at this point or were ever better. Good defenseman are in short supply in this league and trying to acquire them takes time and patience. You can dip into the free agent market, but what D in his prime (26-30), who has options, and knows he's going to rack up a big contract is going to sign with a bottom dweller like Detroit in 2019-2022? - they often don't. And the ones who do, aren't ones that you generally want.
So to get the D we needed, Yzerman focused on drafting them: Seider, Tuomisto, Johanson, Sebrango, Wallinder, Edvinsson, Buium, ASP, etc. and he's tried trading for them repeatedly.
We acquired Nick Leddy: who was fine, but a lot of this board claimed he had negative value, and was our worst player and needed to be cut, etc. etc. We traded for Staal and Petry as veteran stopgaps, and even traded Leddy for more draft capital and Walman, who we all loved until we traded him away again.
The issue here is that the options to add players for low cost that are better than Chiarot or Petry, or Holl, etc. - are few and far between. And yes, we could dump all of these guys (which I could be talked into), but know that they replacements for them are going to be considerably worse. Like, whoa, worse. Like a return to the Stecher, Oesterle, Gustafsson levels. Those are the guys who would sign for cheap and short term, looking for a role and shot and they would get utterly caved in.
Our path forward here is still on the back of Seider, Edvinsson, and ASP. It will be finding cheap, complementary players and prospects through whatever channels we can, but getting bottom pair and depth D doesn't seem to be our issue. From a Defense standpoint, and I'm happy with where we are? No, I would've hoped we could've gotten at least one 2nd pair D to help give some stability there and a clear mentor to accelerate some of the younger prospects development (like being able to run Johansson there, or call up Wallinder to let him work out a bit more with better support). Am I surprised that this is the state of the D? No, this is about being patient in the long game and hopefully catching a good trade or an undervalued asset somewhere. And I certainly don't blame Chiarot or Petry, or Holl. They are what was available, and it's not up to snuff but i can say that there isn't anything out there that I can see that is much better. Or if it is, it'll cost us an arm and a leg to get (1st Rders, Prospects, etc.)
