First, let me preface this by saying this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to a single game. This observation has been slowly building since the start of the season.
To me, this is how our current depth breaks down (not in any order):
Top liners
Gaudreau
Monahan
Lindholm
Tkachuk
Second liners
Backlund
Third liners
Mangiapane
Fourth liners
Bennett
Ryan
Lucic
Czarnik
Jankowski
Reider
Our top talent isn’t top enough (and our bottom talent is too bottom) to hide the tumbleweeds that are just blowing through our middle-six. We need another top-six guy really bad. We couldn’t land Zucker or Kadri in a trade, and we didn’t have enough room to just sign anyone, so our only hope was that Bennett would finally step up to the plate.
I don’t know what we’re going to do, but it’s crystal clear to me that we need to move someone pretty significant out. Nobody wants Frolik, and Brodie’s off the table because Valimaki’s on a table. I don’t envy the mess Treliving is in with this roster.
Hate me all you want, but I almost feel like this is a pretty good season to write off and draft high. Dump some s##t off the books at the deadline, throw a gigantic pile of darts at the draftboard and then beg Hall to come and play for his home team. Even that doesn’t sound overly spectacular to be honest.
