Quote:
Originally Posted by Classic_Sniper
It’s a process to become an elite team and we’re still in the middle of that process. We still have a lot young players who are still learning, we still have holes on this roster and we still have bad contracts to finish up before we can start moving towards elite status IMO.
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We don't have a lot of young players. We have a fairly normal amount of young players for a top level team. Only one player on our top six and one defensemans is on their ELC, and the rest are all at about their prime. We're also a cap team that's traded away a significant portion of their draft picks to be competitive now.
There's not likely to be the kind of internal growth that's going to push this team to a higher level, and we don't have more resources to spend.
Saying that this team isn't designed to go for it now is to say this team will never go for it.
The only significant upgrade options are
a) completely fleecing another team on a hockey trade
b) superlucky drafting
c) coaching change.
The rest is tinkering and hoping for a good run at the right time. That's not to say that tinkering and patience are terrible options, that's really the basic status of most teams.
But if you don't think that Gulutzan is a top coach, then I think it's fairly obvious we should try to upgrade, because not trying to find the best possible coach for the team would be throwing away a chance to be better.
I think it's fairly obvious Gulutzan is not a top coach on the NHL level. It's debatable whether he's a bad coach (my opinion, he's pretty bad) or a mediocre coach. If he's bad not getting rid of him is just stupid, because bad coaches can have longterm detrimental effects on the development of a team.
If he's a mediocre coach it really only comes down to the question of whether an upgrade can be found.
But really I don't see any reason to let a mediocre coach wait out his contract in the situation we're in, which IMO is clearly a team that's supposed to be going for it.