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Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
All the signings you mentioned were stop gap players that were meant to help lead a young core.
We needed a somewhat legitimate starting goalie We had Ramo and Berra...it was bad. The Hiller and Elliott signings were meant to give the team some stability on the back end while they learned. Engelland was signed for the same reason, and honestly he turned out far better than expected. Raymond was a guy to fill out a lineup and provide some goal scoring for a couple seasons. It's not like he was part of the long term build.
Frolik was actually a very good free agent signing to provide veteran leadership and show the young guys good work ethic and systems play.
Don't acquire Hamilton? Don't acquire a top pairing offensive defenseman who was 23 at the time (I think) to add to a young core? What the #### are you smoking? It was a great move then, and it would even be a great move now at this point in his career. It didn't work out for chemistry issues, not because he wasn't a good player. It's fine because we parlayed that into Lindholm and Hanifin...again, good core pieces.
Troy Brouwer was an obvious mistake. It was dumb, but it had almost nothing to do with hinding a rebuild. In fact, one could argue that acquiring a bad free agent helps a team to remain poor enough in the standings to get a higher pick.
Mistakes were made, and there was a lot of transition in management during those 3 years, with the Feaster/Burke/Treliving team having not a single clear vision. I take your point that it could have been done a little better (and I do stress "little"), but to say this team has not tried a proper rebuild is, to borrow a phrase, "intellectually dishonest". You may not have liked the results, but they did try it.
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That Hamilton trade never would have happened had they structured the 2014/2015 roster properly - that's the key bit. They would have been drafting a lot higher because they would have missed the playoffs.
They shouldn't have been worrying about providing stability at that time. They should have been constructing their roster to suck. Ramo + Berra (or worse) should have been who they ran in net.
Their mission for 2014/2015 should have been to sell/suck/stink it out of the building. Their approach was wrong, and it's what started the entire path that they then went on.