Sure, but Walker isn’t going to get you the elite talent anyway.
True - But he's going to get you a real asset that can be used to either get elite talent, or future flexibility so that you can get elite talent when it's comes in. Second round picks (or better) buy you flexibility.
don’t think it’s strange that the best players are 26 and older. None of those guys took the step to being elite/high impact players until they were ~25. Obviously you wish you could have a franchise player at age 20, but those are very rare pieces. And we might actually have one with Michkov.
I guess I just don’t get what the problem is. You’re right that we need elite young talent, but Michkov and Drysdale are pretty good foundational pieces. And you have to hope Frost, Farabee, Foerster, and Brink continue developing (like Konecny and Sanheim did) so that at least one or two of them can be high impact players at age 25.
So, I would completely disagree with you that none of those players took a step to being elite until 25. Until this season, TK's best season was when he was 22. Couts was putting up awesome seasons basically since his age 22 season as well. It just took the Flyers two more years to actually make him a 1C. They were content with him being a defensive specialist (this is the guy who was a ~100 D-1 player, and touted as a 1OA pick until mono hit). He always had elite potential. Sanheim the same thing. He was putting up awesome seasons in a lesser role basically since he came into the NHL. These players were showing talent/elite levels of play at younger ages, it just took the Flyers forever to put them in their positions.
I like Drysdale, and hope he turns into a legit top pairing D-man, but he has 2 games as a Flyer and 18 over the last two seasons. He's lost a lot of development time, potentially not a problem, but we can't say he's an elite talent right now. The others (apart from Michkov), how much better do we realistically expect them? Frost is pretty much as good as he's going to get - a solid offensive center who can give you ~45-60 points and solid defense; Farabee can be a solid ES scorer, the perfect topline complement player; Jury is still out on Brink and Foerster. FWIW, I think Brink is an x-factor and has 70-point potential in him, if the coach just accept his deficiencies and let him play with offensive players.
Michkov is an awesome talent, and he may end up being a top winger. He's exciting to have, there is no doubt. But the best players in the world are responsible for 4-5 additional wins per year. Currently, the Flyers are projected for ~90 points, give or take. Lets say that all together, with the current roster plus Michkov (and no regression), they get an additional 8 wins per year, 16 points. That gives them ~106 points per season. That's a 5-10 best team in the NHL, that's not good enough for a championship level team. The bottom line is they need for find an additional 10-12 wins per year. Sure, you can pick it up in aggregate, but it's obviously much easier to with raw talent. This doesn't even account for your best players starting to decline. Even if you can find those 10-12 wins per year, it's limited because of the age group of the players. This is why it's important to get talent and have an eye for the future.
EDIT - The projections from Hockeyviz and Money Puck are higher than the on at evolving hockey, around 96 points. But, the point still remains, they need 8-10 wins vs the 10-12 additional wins per year.
