Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Well that was cheery
I don't like this core either, and I do think big changes are needed. But no team with Tkachuk, Mangipaane, Lindholm, Andersson, Valimaki etc needs to rebuild.
It's retool and reshape time though.
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If that is your core and group of best players are you really any better than any other team?
Maybe it’s semantics (retool vs rebuild) but IMO that group of players isn’t enough to carry a team.
Trading Gaudreau or Monahan will require some kind of sacrifice. You might be able to acquire a better player, but their contract won’t be as favorable and they will be older. You could trade for a high end prospect, but will require patience. Or you could trade for a trove of draft picks but even more patience will be required.
As Flames fans, we look at the Iginla/Nieuwendyk and Brett Hull/Ramage & Wamsley trades as situations where the team giving up the veterans did well for themselves. But those trades are unicorns IMO and I’m just not sure it’s reasonable to expect that high end a prospect in return.
I think you have to look at Gio and Backlund too. If you can find guys like like Ryan on the UFA market, trading Backlund wouldn’t hurt that much.
So my point is, which I’m not making very clearly, is if those guys are your core I think you’re looking at something like a rebuild which will require picks and or prospects to pan out as hoped in order to be competing for championships.