Why?
Is it, I'd rather watch him play on a very mediocre or worse Caps team than rebuild kinda thing?
Not trying to be argumentative, if its just a case of wanting to enjoy watching your team, even though your team is irrelevant, I half get it.
I just don't really understand why people would prefer this, its like Boulez fans who wanted to keep Beal and not trade him after Wall fell out of the shower in '19 and destroyed his career. The second Wall fell out of the shower that version of the Wizards was done as a competitive entity. They'd never win ---- w/o a full tear down. Some just wanted to watch Beal, and didnt care about contending. I don't understand that thinking but maybe it's just me.
For me, we're either contending like 2008-2018, or we're not and we should be rebuilding, I dont really understand the point of being fine with flirting with the underside or top side of .500 forever.
That's basically been the redskins since 1993, nearly always between a .375-.500 or so record NEVER relevant EVER.
Do you guys actually think we can contend (I 1000% do not), or do you just want to enjoy watching the team play fairly poor to middling hockey instead? Is going back to 2003-2007 just untenable? I just don't get this perspective and never have.
Nats are doing what I want, and I'm very happy about it, Redskins/WFT never do and I'm not, Boulez never do and I'm not, Caps had their run ('07-'18 and then a slow decline) and I'd just much rather have blown it up and started the rebuild in 2019 or 2020 or 2021 instead of 2024-2025. It's just such a waste to throw a half decade down the toilet to me. We could have gotten the rebuild started years ago, doing this just delays it far, far longer.
Can't believe I have to explain this, but I'll try. Most everyone we traded has a future value to this team of almost nothing - because they were a UFA who was not in the plans (Eller) or who was not willing to re-sign for what we offered (Orlov). With the exception of Orlov, everyone we traded was essentially, easily replaceable with similar impact, at lower cap hits. We can find another Hathaway and another Eller (Strome?) For swapping out Orlov for Sandin, we got a player back at a cheaper rate who has similar overall upside/impact, but who is younger and cheaper. So all those trades were made with the idea that, this isn't a total rebuild, its a retool on the fly sort of thing. For better or worse, this is the hand that BMac is forced to play - largely because Ted made a commitment to Ovi not to blow it completely up while he's still competitive for 895. So the idea was generally to keep players who have long term value that would exceed their short term return. Lets say we traded Kuzy (everyone wants that), the return would likely NOT be a player who makes a better impact today, it would likely have been picks/prospects who would take several years to make any impact, leaving a massive hole to fill, thus the team gets significantly worse now. Trading out the core players who have term signals that we just don't care about next year, we are "rebuilding" and it will be several years before we see any benefit from the trades. That simply wasn't going to happen, yet.
With regards to Wilson, he's simply irreplaceable in terms of his impact vs age and term and cost. Sure, he might fetch 2 1sts and a prospect... but no one who wants WIlson will send us back a player who fills the hole he leaves behind. So sending Wilson out for a haul is a clear sign that we are fully rebuilding and everyone is going. The simple fact is that even during a full rebuild, a small chunk of core players stay around because they are so valuable that its nearly impossible to replace them with picks or prospects. Wilson is the only guy not named Ovi for who that applies.
I'd be sad to see Oshie go, but I know his runway to help this team is essentially finished so I'd be OK if he was dealt. I'd be fine with moving on from Backstrom, or Carlson, because they are overpriced for what they deliver. Whatever they fetch will provide more value tomorrow one way or another (immediate help, high picks, or contributing prospects at greatly reduced salary. Those players leaving would not create a hole that is unfillable. Tom Wilson is not in that category. He should be here, wearing the C, when the rebuild starts in earnest.
Lets all face it, as long as Ovi is here we're not blowing it all up, we're just going to tinker and try to balance his chase with being competitive. We may not like it, but we have to face it, that's where we are. Ovi and WIlson are the only players who are untouchable because they are irreplaceable.
So the long answer is, no I don't think we can contend like this, but we can be entertaining and give Ovi a shot at 895. We haven't been a contender since 2018 and that was, apparently, just a f***ing fluke anyway.
