Well, I will admit that I always liked Hanzal (trading him was still the right thing to do) and if you knew me as well as you pretend to, then you should know that I never liked Smith and was more and more upset with Tippett as well. I never blamed anybody for trading away vets or firing Tippett.
Regarding FA's you shouldn't forget that they also let others like Burmistrov or Vrbata walk for free. I'd be fine with that, they're not exactly cornerstones you build around. But if you let that many established vets walk for nothing then you also have to take something outta that FA pool. It's how a rebuild works. Trade vets for assets...the more vets you have, the more vets you sign, the more of them you can flip ahead of the deadline. Chayka has to go back to the drawing board and learn the GM's 101...
Again...letting Burmistrov walk is something you can do but not if the replacement is a useless plug like Cousins...and I didn't even mention that Chayka gave up a pick to get him...
Regarding deAngelo...the Rags are a complete mess. Not his fault that nobody on this team knows how to defend...even McDonagh is a turnover machine. They were blaming Girardi for every single loss last season...now they know why he had to play all season long despite being badly injured. Vigneault had no options.
Name me one franchise that successfully completed a rebuild by trading for vets...then we'll talk again. I'm more than curious because I can't think of single one. You typically rebuild by filling your prospect pool and acquiring picks, not by trading for vets. You can do some sort of a hybrid rebuild for sure but that's only possible with a solid foundation of top players and a full solid pool. Don't think the Coyotes are in the position to do this.
Burmistrov was a waiver pick up, we spent nothing on him and he was an invite to a camp, what do you expect to get in return? He wasn’t replaced by Cousins, he was replaced by one of Keller, Fisher and then, Strome, so take your pick on his replacement.
Vrbata was a one trick pony, a slow footed (not where the team was heading with the new system) streaky goal scorer. Again pick your replacement above.
Those vets that were brought in were natural leaders. Stepan couldn’t have fit the mold any better. A 27 yr old, consistent producer that had never missed the playoffs. Hjalmarsson won 2 cups in Chicago and was said by many to be a top 5 shit down d man in the league.
2016 Chyka pulled Keller and chychrun in the same draft. Two guys that will be NHL stalwarts as opposed to a lot of draftees who rarely make it to the league.
The rebuild is still in effect, with marketable talent. You don’t go and spend money on aging vets to fill out a roster, especially on a budget team.
Domi
Dvorak
Duclair
Perlini
Keller
Reider
Chychrun
Strome
Fischer
Are beautiful young peices to build around and add too. That’s what Chyka did.
Stepan
Hjalmarsson
Raanta
Demers
Are solid additions and not overly aged to support that young core.
On paper (completely different than the teams performance on the ice, clearly) this is by far the best team assembled in years.
Not much more you could have asked for out of Chyka. He did his job, he got the talent in very mysterious ways and for cheap. It’s on Tochett, the coaching staff and the players to put it together and to perform. It’s certainly not happening as fast as we’d like but the majority of the players on the roster are learning a completely new system. They’ve never played any other way since entering the league than what Tippet preached.
It was a time for a change and you can see that change, just may take longer than we’d like.