Yeah Im against trading it. I honestly don’t think we have that good of a pipeline if I’m asked to look ahead and make a prediction about where each guy ends up slotting in the NHL realistically. We talk about having major pieces but under Jarmo we didn’t see them develop all that well. Now we have new management. Returns on development under Don and Co. probably aren’t going to be determined for myself for a few years. Jarmo was terrible at trying to draft pieces that slot onto the roster down the road. I sensed he’s just drafted them because they were “BPA” in later rounds without determining if they made sense. However, Don came in and identified a clear organizational weakness: right shot defenders who can lean into defensive projections. He didn’t just grab one, he made up for lost time by grabbing many. That’s a win. No more of these random, undersized playmaker picks who, true, do typically overshoot their draft slot, but are next to impossible to project to an NHL roster, particularly when you keep drafting them over and over.
For example on high end / top pieces: Elick I don’t have current belief he’s a top 4 defender. He literally has problems with the puck on his stick. I’m saying this in terms of literally possessing the puck. He’ll fumble it without being pressured, he’ll totally misfire on pass attempts, and he won’t always make the best decisions with it. That has to change, because for as projectable as his mobility and physicality are, you won’t want him on the roster if he’s this much of an issue with it. Keeping in mind he’s a big physical skating RHD and he didn’t go in the 1st round. We know GMs absolutely covet these players so it makes me wonder a little bit.
Little bit extra to Elick and his puck handling. It was pretty bad at development camp. In drills, he was losing the puck constantly. Even would lose it with absolutely no pressure. Fumbled it in front of the goalie in one drill and scored an own goal. No pressure from “opposing players”
Our core should be built around Fantilli. Honestly, I think some of the current players who are good might just not be here when we finally compete because they won’t make sense age wise.
Don did go from saying "This is a 4th pick overall... we hope we're not picking this low again so we had to get this right" to basically saying we’re going to preserve our assets and we know where we’re at. Granted this was after Johnny but wonder if he realized in the process it wasn’t as good as initially determined.