That's a yes and no situation though.....
How many players like Fiala are available, Yes Panarin is on his 3rd time.....but CHI had a cap crunch, and I believe he went to FA and signed with NYR? (could be wrong there) Fiala, same thing, if there wasn't a cap issue, you think he would have been traded?
Wingers like the ones you mentioned DO NOT become available often....when they do, it's almost 90% of the time, something else, cap, fit, request, don't lose for anything....etc...
To me, one of the key things for a GM to be successful, is to be in the position to take advantage of those situations when they do pop up......if you can do that, you will win more times than not.
I didn't even mention Tkachuk on that list who was just traded. Not necessarily "easy" when you are sending two good players the other way but a 1st round pick and a guy who goes 1st round in a redraft while then giving out a high-cap seven-year deal sign unseen isn't necessarily "easy" either. I think the point is that if you have the assets, these type of guys seem to be available. Debrincat is another one.
There always seems to be a cap crunch or a team deciding to blow it up. Or you have a Panarin or Johnny Hockey who decide to leave.
I agree that being ready to take advantage of a situation is a key part of a rebuilding GMs job: all of the picks and prospects acquired by simultaneously sucking and trading away good NHL players for a few years will not all form a future 12F/6D core like some on here put together.
Blake has done that with RV, Danault and now Fiala. Some don't like the Danault cap hit--or more so the contract length--and some really didn't want to lose Faber but there isn't much argument about the player cost for these: the Kings did not lose one roster player in these trades and are a better team than the one in 2021 because of it. It gets more in to the timing of deciding to use some of the dry powder in the form of moving a 1st, top prospect and long-term cap of like $13MM when excluding RV as that isn't a real long-term commitment. Regardless, guys always come available for some reason or another. Doesn't mean it is a slam dunk you get them over all the other teams but, again, that is another reason why drafting/development is so important.
You can look at Danault like DL getting Zeus and Fiala is the Ryan Smyth move. Thing is DL added these guys to a roster with its best players being very young with their entire futures ahead of them while Blake has added them while said best players are close to their retirement tours. Lombardi knew he had a stud 1C, 1D and 1G while Blake still has those same guys in the same role 13-14 years later and the jury is still out on his future 1C and 1D. Some believe figure that out first before adding all the known quantities because what if this is what we wind up with: the black hole.
Team building isn't easy. This place was ready to run DL out of town. I was like "Get Kovy! Get Vinny!!" because I was tired of missing the playoffs for seven seasons: especially while going to nearly every home game during that period. I'm glad he didn't "win" those free agent prizes. I just kind of feel like Blake is doing a paint-by-numbers DL impersonation...like someone covering a song and removing the soul of it.
- Accumulate lots of picks and prospects by moving nearly everyone with value
- Make sure those are high picks by sucking
- Once you have so many picks and prospects, start adding vets while trying to do it from a position of strength (cap space, picks, RHD prospects)
He just doesn't have the foundation or have that foundation prove it can be legit like DL had with 11/23/8/32. Of great concern though is DL seemed to have an idea of what type of team he wanted to build. We are in T-Mac's fourth season and he is talking about trying to figure out what the identity of this team is. Scoring is fun but this team is a sieve and are super soft. Not a killer in sight when looking at the pipeline. 30 centers drafted. This is the main issue: he seems to be following a similar timeline for the rebuild but he doesn't get that a culture was being built even during those tank years under DL.
