Quote:
Originally Posted by bigrangy
^I disagree. I thought going into this season that the window would be most open this year.
Smith and Gio are not getting younger. Smith will need to be replaced and none of the kids are ready yet. Giordano will still be great for a while but in 3 years it could be very risky. There should be a replacement ready to go but there are no guarantees.
Backlund is still cheap and starting to go past his peak, Monahan, Gaudreau, Hamilton are all in their prime.
The only impact players that will (probably) be better in the future are Bennett/Janko/Tkachuk and they're playing at high levels already. Everyone else is in their prime or on the decline. The time to win is now.
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I'm in this boat as well. There's an urgent win-now window over the next handful of years while Giordano is still an elite defender. Once he takes a step back, our D core looks a lot worse until we find our new #1. Lots of potential ways that could happen, whether that's Hamilton taking a step forward in his defensive play, Brodie rediscovering his game from 2 years ago, or a guy like Valimaki or Andersson developing well.
That said our forward group should be set for years to come. A young core of Gaudreau-Monahan-Ferland-Tkachuk-Bennett-Jankowski all 25 or younger is going to be excellent to build around for the next 5-10 years.
But the way I see it, we're done rebuilding. We've got good players in every key spot and the majority are signed to long-term deals. And although our core is mostly young, they're not so young that you can expect massive year-over-year improvements anymore. I don't want to be looking back 5 years from now wondering how we fell short in 2018, the same way I look back now at some of those teams from 2006-2010.