What?
Keeping two top six players is now a bad thing?
Face facts- the Hawks were pathetic with both of them and they would have still been in the running for Bedard. This whole "we had to trade them for Bedard" drivel is just that.
The Hagel trade was a stupid move. They have nothing to show for it and Moore is starting to look like nothing that was expected of him. People were saying he was a top ten talent, many here were saying that, and he's looking like a potential Viktor Stalberg, which is what I was saying all along.
You don't trade Brandon Hagel for two fourth liners, Viktor Stalberg, and lord knows whatever pick this organization wastes with the other first rounder.
Nonsense.
Need I remind you, the Blackhawks
without Hagel and Debrincat did not even successfully secure the best odds at Connor Bedard.
They were in a dog fight with 3 other teams and lucked into a lottery bounce from 3rd place. If the Blackhawks add the 122 combined points that Hagel and Debrincat scored in their final year with the Blackhawks to the 2023 roster, there is zero chance they don't finish higher than San Jose and end up with Will Smith or somebody even less promising. That is, for reference, an even bigger drop in prospect value than Jack Hughes to Kirby Dach.
It is lunacy to suggest that the Blackhawks, a rebuilding team, shouldn't have traded two players that would be expensive, on the down-side of their prime and close to 30 by the time the team is ready to contend for draft capital. Davidson and the Blackhawks have done a stellar job turning a bad team choked by old expensive players into a team with an elite centerpiece, a promising pipeline, TONS of draft capital AND, perhaps most valuable of all, OBSCENE cap space to work with. The plan was always to suck this year. Nobody should be surprised they suck this year, that's why they acquired and kept the metric ton of draft picks they had beyond the 2023 draft after landing Bedard. It takes an ARMY to make a legit contender and we're still drafting generals.
It's also super easy to assume any prospect short of a blue chipper is a bust, because most of the players drafted after the 15th spot end up somewhere between average to bust. That's precisely the reason you WANT as many lottery tickets as possible. Any rebuilding team WANTS to amass as many draft picks as possible, to improve their odds at drafting good NHL players that can fill roles that therefore won't need to cost assets in a trade or overpays in free-agency down the road.
The truth is, the 18 year old kid in his first half of a college season hockey is exactly as close to looking like Viktor Stalbery as he is to looking like Ryan Kesler.
Because he's an 18 year old prospect. Give the kid time to develop, we're not trying to compete next season, we just want the team and all the prospects to take a step. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Rebuilds are painful. That's why teams like Vancouver, Calgary, Minnesota, Nashville, etc refuse to do them, and remain wobbling around the mushy middle of the league forever with the odd spike in performance when everything lines up perfectly for a year or two in a completely unsustainable fashion. I'd rather suck really really bad to set the foundation for greatness down the line, that have my team try to shortcut and 'stay competitive' for the sake of impatient meatballs.