Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
^^^theres no such thing as a cup contender without elite players.
The easiest place to find them is the top of the draft.
You don’t need to build the entire roster out of them.
You do need at least one.
When your two best players walk in the span of four weeks, you should see the writing on the wall and blow it up.
Colorado, Tampa, Tampa, St Louis, Washington, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Chicago, LA, Chicago, LA, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh.
Those are the champs since 2009.
The way forward is spelled out clearly. Franchise players from the top of the draft are required for contention.
Boston DID blow it up, when they traded Joe Thornton. It gave them the cap space to sign Chara, they traded their Calder winning goalie Raycroft for Rask, and when they drafted Kessel, they didn’t hoard him like a fairy tale dragon, they sold him to Toronto for Tyler Seguin ++.
Asset management.
Which leaves St Louis, and if you wanna look at the least likely champion of the last 15 years and say “that’s our plan”, that’s 100% your call, but it’s not a great plan.
Draft a core. Develop them together. Bind them to each other, the team and the city. Supplement them with a Huberdeau/Hossa/Niedermayer/Chara big ticket signing.
This team doesn’t have a core.
Their best centre is a bottom-tier #1C without Tkachuk and Gaudreau. He’ll soon be 30, and due to make $8.5-9.5M, doesn’t work with Huberdeau, and they couldn’t win when he was in his 20s making half the cash.
They currently have one home-grown defenseman - with all the money and emphasis on defense, how are we not producing D like Carolina?
They’ve never developed a goalie.
I just don’t see what we’re protecting here. Nobody can possibly have a strong emotional connection to this roster, and there’s no intellectual case to be made that they’re better than they’ve shown.
In a 32 team league, they’re 16th in goals for, 16th in goals against.
Because of course they are.
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