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Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
I'm not sure that is a very good example to use. The Islanders did everything humanly possible to resign Tavares and were not expecting him to leave. They were extremely disappointed when he left and it did leave a significant hole in their team. They survived for a couple of seasons, but now they are being exposed for not having the talent to back up that loss. Mange that situation right and they would have had some more bodies in the pipeline that could be helping a struggling team right now.
Pietroangelo was a situation like Tavares, where the Blues were not expecting him to walk. They tabled a number of deals and did everything they could to keep Pietroangelo in the fold. When he did walk, they went out and grabbed Torey Krug to replace him. The loss of Pietroangelo was also minimized when the Blues did some good succession planning and used the loss of Bouwmeester's salary to sign Faulk, having another top talent on the blueline to make the loss not quite as impactful. Then when the big salary walked, they backfilled it with a capable player in Krug. The loss of Pietroangelo was still substantial, but good asset management by the Blues made that bearable.
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Thought I would circle back to this. In both cases, Tavares and Pietroangelo, the players left their teams to go to cup contenders with heavy paydays. Where does that scenario exist for Gaudreau? Philadelphia? Hell no. New Jersey? Promising but haven’t proven anything.