Intermediate reward? If you land Mitch Marner and he plays like Mitch Marner has been playing, that's high reward. Don't use semantics and wording to try to downplay the idea. Hell, there is even a pretty decent likelihood that Mitch Marner at his current level ends up being worth as much or more than the 4 1sts. Like my previous example of trading the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Detroit actually took in the prior three years over a guy they'd sign at that level (say Werenski). I'd trade Rasmussen, Lindstrom, and Gallant for Werenski in a second.
Just win the lottery and it wouldn't matter. Bertuzzi-Larkin-Zadina Marner-Hughes-Mantha Athanasiou-Veleno-Rasmussen Profit. But you are right, Marner isn't a center, and he isn't suited to attempt to be, imo. But he's a damn good winger that can drive a line.
backes and bernier offer sheets with VAN and STL probably counts as retaliation. though a relatively small one. the biggest reason there aren't more of them imo, is that all GMs want too keep prices for RFAs low. nobody wants ro reset the market since they've their own RFAs to sign. and usually the only way offer sheet wouldn't get matched is to grossly overpay.
You don't just trade picks for the player. You're also likely going to have to pay way over value for the player. Any hypothetical team isn't going to part with their star player for something near to a fair contract. The team tendering the offer sheet would have to pay extravagantly for the team with the player's rights not to match. So, not only would a Marner need to be better than any 4 hypothetical 1st round picks, he would also have to play up to an extremely inflated contract. Can a player short of a generational player be both better than 4 bites at the apple in the draft and be worth millions more than what they would normally get? To put real numbers to it there is talk about Marner wanting Draisaitl money. So about 8.5 million a year. If Detroit offers him that the leafs almost without a single doubt match it. If Detroit offers 10? Toronto still might match. To realistically wrestle Marner out of Toronto's hands Detroit would need to offer Matthews money to Marner. The question is, is Marner worth north of 11.5 million a year AND 4 first round draft picks? The answer in my mind is no, he could never live up to that contract, and then add to that potential missed players, you're talking a monetary and opportunity cost beyond what Marner is actually worth.
Mitch Mariner is a very good hockey player, with impeccable timing for having a great season. But Sergei Fedorov is one of maybe a dozen guys in the history of the sport to have the ability to play both forward and defense at the level he did. In other words, saying that Marner ain't got nothing on Fedorov isn't a knock on the former. It's appreciating the latter.
Marner has more assist than anyone on the wings he can move to the middle of the ice. AA can switch to C and he is the worst hockey player in the history of the NHL....
Just because he is more of a puck distributor doesn’t mean he can play the pivot role. A lot of defensemen have more assists than anyone on the Wings so they can move to the middle of the ice. See how ridiculous that argument is? And AA can clearly NOT switch to C.
Because of extreme lack of center depth. And breaking up the Nielsen/Vanek line when it was just starting to click wasn't going to happen? And now that Larkins back AA is behind Ehn, JDL, Glendening, Nielsen, and Larkin on the depth chart for center.