it doesnt matter that every team went through covid as well, when they signed Tavares the idea was the cap would continue to rise and everything would be fine. flatcap happened and now suddenly that signing was a major mistake but how the hell could anyone prepare for that?
its not an excuse if the cap continued to rise the signing would have never been an issue.
The cap would rise for the rest of the league as well.
One way or another we had no need for JT , it f*cked our internal cap structure, stripped Matthews of any responsibility and ultimately C, costed us draft picks we could turn in two lines of Matthew Knies -let that sink in. The depth we had in Kadri, Hyman ...
I could go on, pointing out that even with raising cap, we would be suckers with the worst cap structure in the league.
But yeah, it would be slightly better if not for COVID. No one expected COVID, Dubas is lucky COVID happened, gave him an excuse.