I mean, that looks objectively much worse. Glendening is black hole. Sheary doesn't have the versatility of Colton. And CDH is much worse than Cole. Cole was playing top-four minutes for TB and CDH is more 6/7D territory. That's a downgrade. And obviously Killorn is gone.
I'm not saying TB will be bad. Not at all. But I have a hard time reconciling with TB fans who want to deny that they got worse at all.
You say Glendening is a black hole, yet he's got better SAT% and had pretty comparable offensive stats last year. Glendening is younger, more physical, much better on faceoffs. That is a direct upgrade at 4C.
Colton is bigger and much more physical than Sheary, but from all reports Sheary fell off a cliff in the second half of the season and STILL had more points and only 1 fewer goal than Colton last year. Overall, probably a wash here.
Ian Cole was fine for us last year, I don't have many complaints. This year we needed someone to fill out the bottom pairing, de Haan is a perfect fit there. He had excellent metrics with Carolina (who doesn't) and was about on pace with Cole points-wise. Put simply, I'd rather have de Haan at $775k than Cole at $3mil.
Agreed on Killorn being the obvious hole. There are still some options out there to fill that spot and we will see what happens. If that hole stays a hole, we are objectively worse than last year. If that hole is filled by a nice middle-6 winger for 2-3mil, I honestly think we are better than last year. That bottom-6 was beyond plodding last season, going younger and faster is going to be a boon IMO.
That's good, hope is important in life.
I especially like the Killorn > ??? line. I don't know, I thought Killorn was a pretty damn good player.
It's like you read the first 10 words and then closed your eyes. Please re-read the last line in that post.