Rory has ignored the question every time it's been brought up. It's always you have to give up someone for someone.
You can't just magically say he failed because he didn't land an impact player because you assume one was available that no other person knows about. If that mythical impact player was available, all of the contenders would have been involved heavily. You have to evaluate his performance on players that were actually moved, and there wasn't an impact, high end scoring forward traded.
Hall was available earlier this year
I think the point he's trying to make
is the core of this team is old as shit.
Benn, Pavelski, Radulov, Perry, Comeau, are all on the wrong side of 30.
Seguin is knocking on the door.
That is 4 of the teams "top 6" players, a vital 3rd liner and a solid utility guy.
You could even add in super scrub (Cogliano) being over 30, but he shouldn't be on a roster now but we're stuck with him.
3 of whom have already started to slow down (Benn, Pavelski, Radulov)
There's no prospects in the system coming in to replace any of them in the near future. Robertson maybe replaces one Next year, but we're anchored to them for another couple years at least.
So maybe you can't go out and get a Hall when he's available because of Poor cap management, before even beginning to talk asset cost.
But You have a team that is largely the same as last year, that continues to have trouble scoring goals, (including being unable to control play enough to even draw a Powerplay in game 7 last year)
You have very few games all year(this and last for that matter), where you can say they outplayed their opponents the majority of the game, and this isn't even taking into account the ramped up play of the POs.
So trouble scoring goals, don't control the majority of play in most games, generate the 9th least amount of shots a game, and allow the 13th most, draws the 9th fewest PP chances in the NHL (with the stricter rules of the regular season) , has played in 18 1 goal games already. And this is a team you can't think of any player traded today that would be an upgrade over anyone on the roster?
Hell bringing in Thornton and Scratching Cogliano, is massive improvement.
Pageau would be a massive upgrade as a 3rd line A or 3rd line B center (assuming again Cogliano is the odd man out)
Namestikov would be a massive upgrade over Cogliano. for the low price of a 4th.
Toffoli would have been a nice addition as well
There's a lot of players out there who would have been upgrades for this team.
Now the price of Pageau was astronomically stupid but I'd guess what He's(Roy) trying to say is that with how little window we have open before we're stuck in another rebuild thanks to poor drafting and bad cap management.
You pay the price to maybe get "over the hump" instead of sitting still (while everyone else improved) and thinking your good because Johns stopped having headaches for a little while.
