The rebuild was maybe one player short. Given all the bad luck around Fox, Monahan, Bennett, Valimaki...I thought the rebuild was pretty decent. Bad luck derailed the cycle to some extent. And to some extent it was bad asset management. And to some extent it was poor coaching hires. And to some extent, the team blew up while it was at its best.
The big mistake was not knowing when to rebuild and start the cycle anew. Signing two 29/30 year old "franchise" players to 8 year contracts instead of realizing it was over was the real mistake. Bennett was gone. Johnny was gone. Monahan was gone. Tkachuk was gone. Markstrom was playing poorly. Why shouldn't the team have rebuilt at that point?
And even if you thought Huby and Kadri were good replacements for Johnny and Tkachuk and wanted a couple more kicks at the can under this current cycle...fine give it a season. And if you thought maybe they just had a bad season...fine give it part of a second season. Want to give it another 15 games? Fine.
But by game 30-40 of this season, there's zero excuses. They will need to sell Lindholm and Hanifin. They need to try and get value for tanev. Accelerate the rebuild. At the end of the day...what they get for Iginla, Regehr, Jaybo, Hanifin, Lindholm will pale in comparison to what top-5 draft picks will be. So just get what you can and start sucking harder to get those picks.
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