Miller Time
Registered User
- Sep 16, 2004
- 23,110
- 15,499
If we are commiting to a rebuild, we should trade our best assets which are probably Pacioretty and Gallagher, both who are on great contract. Next year you try trading Shaw, Petry and Price.
call it rebuild or retool, the point should be to drive toward building a team/roster able to contend for several years... from that premise, building a culture of excellence is just as important as acquiring talent. The oilers provided a great example of how fruitless it is to just focus on accumulating a wealth of young talent.
bc of that, imo Gallagher is an asset you don't move. you absolutely want players like him involved in turning things around.
and Price is the kind of goalie that can help greatly accelerate the process, if only by buoying a thin roster and giving it at least the chance of exceeding expectations until enough talent is in place.
I think over the next 18 months, you move:
Pacioretty
Weber
Lekhonen/hudon (one of him, hudon needs to go, can't have all the W's on one side of the ice be of the same diminutive build)
Lindgren
Plekanec
Shaw
Benn
Scherbak
+ Alzner, Hemsky, Froese, Morrow... if you can
getting as much young talent and picks as possible, taking on overpaid/high cap hit vets with 2018 or 2019 expiring contracts.
that leaves you this skeleton roster:
Drouin - XXX - Gallagher
Byron - Danault - Galch
Hudon/Lekhonen - XXX - Carr
Deslaurier - JDR - McCarron
Jerabek - Petry
Mete - XXX
Schlemko - Juulsen
Price
use 2018 offseason to sign a few reclamation project vets on 1 year deals to fill roster spots (and, if lucky, that can produce enough with the ice time/role bump to garner decent 2019 deadline trade value, not unlike laffs did two years ago).
2018 & 2019 drafts should thus provide enough organizational talent re-tooling that, with some luck, by summer of 2019 we have enough talent in place (with Drouin, Galch, Danault, Hudon/Lekhonen all in their prime and with luck, Mete, Juulsen, Poehling, & hopefully a few other young players ready to be impact top-4/top-9 players) that we can get back to focusing on playoff success as the goal and start looking at trades/UFA signings to help on-ice performance vs re-stocking long-term talent.
with this year already a write-off, just takes a GM with enough sense to make the most of the current assets, and willing to use a tactical approach to next season, to get the team quickly back on the contending track.