Quote:
Originally Posted by Monahammer
I hate that "took a shot at it" narrative. Sure, they sat on their hands, but there were 2-3 obvious other moves they could have made to drop further.
Look at how the team fell apart when down one extra defensemen for stretches. You exit one more defensemen and one more forward pre christmas this year and we'd be using our top 10 pick. That would have been a real "took a shot at it". Instead, they pretty much did what they always do, tried to fill the roster with some underperforming vets, made a trade for mid roster players, and played on. Clearly, they're still not allowed to say "that R word".
Not building the franchise properly now just means we will have to do it later. And the Wolf's too good to let it happen later crowd need only go look at John Gibson for a test case.
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It's not a narrative, it's a fact.
They took a shot at it in the offseason. They were pretty much a cap floor team and moved out a lot of pieces the 12 months prior without really adding any players or major UFAs.
They were a team that missed the playoffs 2 years in a row and had moved out Toffoli, Zadorov, Lindholm, Hanifin, Tanev, Mangiapane and Markstrom without adding any major pieces in UFA to replace them.
On paper they were much worse than the team that finished with the 9th OV pick last year and most pre-season predictions had them finishing bottom 5-7.
Once the season started and they were in a playoff spot they weren't going to crater their own season, especially with no major pending UFAs to move.
Sure they could have moved Andersson or maybe Coleman. But really that's it. Kadri didn't want to be traded. Huberdeau was still untradable. They shouldn't be trading Weegar. Backlund re-signed to be captain.
The only real logical move they didn't do was moving Andersson, and I think they should have moved Andersson going back to the 2024 draft.
But honestly I think they just would have went and signed another dman then in FA and probably doesn't change this past season much anyways.
To me not moving Andersson was more of a failure in terms of not maximizing the return for the asset, not some failure in not committing to a tank.