Salary Cap: 2014-15 Cap / 2015 the Summer of the RFA D

[FirstRowUpperDeck]

I wonder how Nil is feeling about his pickups of older, name players.

Gonchar didn't work out well.
Lindback didn't work out well.
Horcoff has had moments of good play and has worked out marginally well for nothing much given up.
Hemsky feels like a bust - but in reality, only topped 20 goals once in career, so why should we expect him to be a big scoring forward now?
Not sure how Demers will work out.
Rynnas gets an incomplete
Eaves is okay in a "scale up the lineup" role, but the answer to nothing moving forward.
JN1 left over pickups like Cole are marginal. Fiddler okay, of course.

Meanwhile, Nemeth and Klingberg have worked out fantastically, save the big injury.
Oleksiak and Jokipakka have worked out marginally well.

There are a lot of teams (think Devils right now) with big name older players that will never be better than mediocre. Going back to the '99 Stars, yes, they got UFA guys over a three year period to win a Cup, but there was no salary cap then. You could argue astute trades for Sydor and Zubov had a bigger effect. Not sure how Gainey managed to fleece other GM's like that, and to be sure, the UFA like Hull and Belfour filled glaring needs and were final pieces.

He probably means it when he says his best options on D are to go with the kids. Unless someone like Shea Weber or Seth Jones comes available (older and a stud, or younger with stud talent) I don't see moves. I really don't see many of that UFA crop that are worth overpaying on D. Obviously, Boychuck would be top of the list and a few others.

If he passes on ridiculous trades or contracts for good, but not great D men, I am more than okay with that. We will live with growing pains in year 2-3 of the rebuild. Hey, we lived with no forward progress for five years. As long as we see progress (iffy right now) we can last a few more years watching the kids grow.

 

[Satan]

Horcoff has been a fine acquisition.

 

[FirstRowUpperDeck]

We ragged on him until a nice PO run. But, sure, he is fine.

No one thinks that picking up a nice vet presence on the fourth line will start any parade planning. I guess I am saying, I don't see any of the UFA D available that would put us in parade mode either, and that doing something just to do something is bad.

All moves should have a "building something" feeling to them. Sequin and Spezza were sure that. Probably should have added Hemsky to the list (will edit).

We need to keep making moves that get us clearly better players, especially on D. Not easy, I know. In Nil we trust.

 

[FirstRowUpperDeck]

One measure of how bad our D is that we already just pass the puck to Klingberg as the only one who can reliably bring it out of the zone. The whole team looks to a rookie with 10 games of experience. Sometimes I feel like they panic when he is NOT on the ice.

Ditto on Nemeth. We feel like our shutdown capacity went out with his injury, even with only a dozen games of experience.

All the other guys don't bring enough of anything, and they sure don't bring it consistently. Their upside is second pair if playing at their best (yes, AG and TD were our first pair last year, but would they be on LA, or CHI?) Their downside is 31st in team defense in a 30 team league when playing like they are collectively playing now, with inconsistency, penalties, turnovers.

Beside Ground Hog Day as our official movie, maybe Poppin Fresh ought to be our Defensive mascot?

Trying to laugh through the tears a bit here. As bad a stretch as we have seen lately, including most of the last six years. Seems like the big losing streak that takes us out of the PO's happens a bit earlier every year.