It's not an all or nothing. I understand you and others here hate Armstrong and potentially hate Stillman
Let's start setting the record straight here.
I don't hate Armstrong. I just think he's a crappy GM who's failed upwards, who absolutely lucked into winning a Cup, who thinks because he won a Cup it validates what a genius he thinks he is and so everything else he thinks up is great because once upon a time, he won something.
I also think he has no f***ing clue what an "actuary table" is or how to use confidence intervals, but ... self-deluded genius, so it's really not a surprise.
I also don't hate Stillman either. I'm fine with him. I just think he is
way too deferential to Armstrong, to the point that it's caused some of what's going on today and it's consolidated more and more decision-making power over the organization in the hands of one individual. Which, I don't need an owner to be completely involved in the day-to-day events of running a team, but I
do want an owner who knows how to say the word 'no' on occasion.
and twist every possible thing to put their words and actions into the most negative light as possible.
When someone says they have an "actuary table" that tells when someone is going to play their 11th game, 50th game, 100th game, whatever, and that it can say that within 15%, plus or minus even for guys on other teams around the league, and I'm an actuary who deals with statistics and understand what actuarial tables are and how confidence intervals work, ... well, he's pretty much doing all the work himself and all I have to do is point out the absurdity of it.
Which, I will. Repeatedly. And I'll mock the ever loving shit out of it.
If the ultimate risk/reward option is burning it to the ground and praying that you get a McDavid, Bedard, etc., and the low risk/reward option is not trading away anyone and adding prime aged players to try and get back to the playoffs, I'd say we are taking a middle of the road approach, and we'll see what happens.
The is the same straw-man argument Armstrong suggested.
We've drafted well, we've added a lot of picks for last draft and this one, granted all from the 2023 deadline, and a Buchnevich move is still possible.
We
think we've drafted well.
Hope we've drafted well. It remains to be seen if that's really the case.
While we don't have Heiskanen, it's not unreasonable to be able to do what Dallas was able to accomplish. Draft our own versions of Robertson, Harley, Johnston, Hintz, and fill the gaps in with vets. It seems like some here think the only option is to tank, and that's not true, and tanking doesn't even guarantee success.
1. Maybe you should go read what others are actually saying, instead of taking a distorted view of it and running off like it's accurate. Or, maybe you should ask others what they really mean instead of presuming you know what they mean and running off like it's accurate.
2. Heiskanen was a 3rd overall pick in 2017. We can discuss where everyone else was drafted or who drafted them [there are 11 1st-round picks on the Dallas roster, 6 of which were Dallas picks], and we can talk about how Jason Robertson was a 2nd round steal and Roope Hintz was a 2nd round steal, but
* You gotta have someone who's a bedrock pick to build from,
* It's easier to find that guy higher in the draft than lower,
* Trying to straddle the playoff line and break above it more often than not makes it more difficult to find that guy later in the draft, and so
* You're relying on your scouting staff to be so much better than other teams that it can find those mid-to-late 1st, mid-to-late 2nd round gems
* Dallas tried the "limp it along" approach for years before finally having that "bottom out" season in 2017, which still required winning the lottery to move up from 7 to 3, and
* Within 2 seasons they were playing us in the 2nd round and stretching us to 7 games, then playing in the Finals the following season.
As this roster stands, we've got like 87 forward prospects who allegedly have top-6 potential but no one - not even Lindstein - who is
clearly a future 1D or even has the potential where you'd say "there's a better than 50/50 chance he's our future 1D."
You're hoping you got a steal at 29 with him,
you're hoping he develops into a 1D, but that day is still 3 years, 4 years out at best. By that point, the forward corps might be early in its prime, maybe into its prime, but the defense is going to largely need to be rebuilt and our pieces are Lindstein and Buchinger whose max upside is 3/4 [I'd bet the '4' part of that]. We sure has hell don't have a Heiskanen and Harley in the system at the moment, at best Lindstein explodes into Heiskanen and we draft our Harley this year ... and again, we're still talking 3-4 years for them to make an impact, best-case.
Which, that can very easily make this a
limp it along process that drags out for years and we're hoping we strike magic with a draft pick along the way ... which, as you pointed out when disparaging any rebuild case, has no guarantee of success. Give me the scenario that has a higher chance of success, let me work with it and try to maximize opportunities / minimize problems, instead of even a "middle of the road" approach that's still somewhat low-risk, low-reward hope it goes off-the-charts, off-the-actuary-table great.