Barkov, Lindholm, Monahan have a chance of being much better than Cowen ever will be. Cowen is too dumb and lacks offensive skill to be more than a #3 dman.
Ill take a potential #1 center that is either NHL ready this fall or the season after over a current 4/5 dman with, imo, not much more room to grow.
I dont think some people understand how good Barkov and Lindholm are going to be.
Wow, a 22 year old D with not much room to grow? Regardless of disagreements over the relative merits of trading away Cowen you could quite possibly be the only person who describes Cowen as having "not much more room to grow." Normally D that young who have already cracked an NHL roster are described more in "the sky is the limit" type of language.
Anyway, so let us gut out our D to pick up this number 1 center you believe is out there for the taking. And then I suppose we get rid of one out of Spezza, Turris, or Zibby to open up a top 6 role for that player. Then we cross our fingers and hope that the player is as good as the players we got rid of.
In the mean time, as we wait for the player to start parting water and leaving a trail of burning bushes across Ottawa, let us say for the sake of argument that he puts up Yakopov numbers. He will not get that many, but let us do the hypothetical. Yakopov was good for 31 points in 48 games this year. That is pretty good for a rookie for sure, but not enough to get us any further in the playoffs. Especially not after losing one of our top 4 D.
So far we ditched Cowen, got rid of one of out existing top 6 Centers to make room for him. Now after his rookie season, before he develops into a great player, we also lose Alfie to retirement before we can make a decent cup run.
So I'll ask again whether this makes any logical sense to anyone.