You don't need Barzal to draft a defenseman in 2018. Adding a forward of Barzal's calibre is nice but it doesn't help the defense. The defense is huge problem and if you trade Duchene for forwards you're wasting your best shot at trying to pry a defenseman away from another team. The defensive prospect pool looks good but there is gap between who is on the roster now and when the next batch of prospects will be able to contribute. The Avs could really use another defenseman to fill that gap.
We sort of do with this organization. We need that potential #1 LHD, but we also need another Barzal or PLD level forward (or two if we want a stacked top 6). MacKinnon, Rantanen, Landeskog & Jost is a strong start, but even if Jost is that tough minute 2C to partner with Landeskog, we still need 2 more high end forwards to either complete those duos, or to let Rantanen move down and form an elite two-way line with Landy & Jost. So I'm terrified of this organization ending up with a pick where the BPA is a forward who could fill one of those holes for us, and so failing to land that #1 LHD we need to draft next spring. Which is why filling one of our forward needs while giving us some spare picks to use as ammo to move up for the LHD who's second on our list, is so tempting to me.
And we'll sign Kulikov to bridge that gap. Yeah he's not very good, and yeah we'll probably give him too much money or too much term; but he and Barrie would make an alright second pairing behind Zads n EJ, with Barberio/Lindholm/Bigras next to Mironov hopefully giving us the first useful third pairing we've had since Holden-Stuart stepped up to be our shutdown unit after EJ went down. That D isn't better than too many teams that I can think of, but it can be passable until more of the kids break through.
Using Duchene to bridge that gap would be idiotic unless we were getting someone who could grow into that top pairing LHD who lets Zads form an awesome second pairing with Meloche or Timmins...assuming we don't draft someone who's so good that he could form an awesome first pairing with one of those two, which let Makar play next to Zads on our "second top pairing".
