[GreenLantern2814]

They have precisely 0 impact players under the age of 25.

It’s over. It didn’t work.

I understood wanting to give Iggy/Kipper every opportunity to cash one in, but this group?

Winning is accomplished with young star players. Contract status be damned - young elite talent is what moves the needle.

They don’t have any of it. They don’t have anyone coming.

Start thinking of Coronato like Sven - our first noteworthy offensive prospect in a while (since Tkachuk).

Zary and Pelletier are middle six guys at best, which is fine - they’re mid-20s picks, typically one of the weakest parts of the draft.

I wrote in another thread this team has no core, no centre - it’s not built around anything, it’s just a collection of reasonably talented guys, but no true franchise players.

Huberdeau is starting to give me Kessel vibes in that he’s undeniably an elite talent, but he can’t be your best player.

I wouldn’t stress too much over that, though. The floor is still $61M, you gotta pay somebody, and having someone like Huberdeau lead a rebuild is something I could easily get on board with. He strikes me as a good mentor type, based on what little I’ve seen.

They don’t have that many guys under contract past next year - Huberdeau, Kadri, Coleman, Weegar and Andersson, plus Markstrom. And if you’re tanking, nothing wrong with Markstrom gassing it every other night.

Kadri and Huberdeau is a solid pair to shield the kids and allow them to grow.

But don’t commit to this group like it could win anything.

It can’t. The goaltending isn’t good enough. At this point, it’s probably too late to even call up Wolf and hope he gets hot.

But Markstrom/Vladar is not getting them out of round 1, if it even gets them that far.

Selling high on Lindholm and Hanifin, who you didn’t even draft, would add at least two 1st round picks + 2 A prospects. Throw Toffoli in there as veteran scoring presence, you’re probably looking at least two seconds for him, if not more.

That could change the course of the franchise so quickly. They’d get worse in a hurry, which would give them a better chance at the top-2 picks you desperately need to build a contender in the NHL, and the young kids we already have would get seasoning.

I have zero expectations that will happen.