I hear what you are saying, and in a vacuum, some of these are good (even great). However, i am speaking in a macro sense of roster building and cap space. While some of those contracts are really good value (failing to mention Cal...and afterthought of PLD/Fiala), it's the totality of it all from a planning perspective that has caused issues -- resulting in lost draft picks to supplement the roster, dump/create cap space, same with prospects, etc. All of this has prevented them from obtaining a solid/decent goalie situation...and physicality/toughness. The former is a huge problem and could be the downfall as the season progresses (or the playoffs). Which again, unless we have perfect injury luck, we're going to have to dig deep into draft picks to trade for a goalie that the other team eats his salary. Not to mention the lack of toughness that could yet again become a problem in the playoffs.
That's roster planning. We're back into a hole. Somewhat helped out by Arvi injury, but still a problem. That should not happen for a team coming out of a rebuild and with a top farm system. We have a poor prospect system, no cap space and no playoff series win to show for it.
I admit I completely spaced on the Petersen contract. I will defend it as one that simply didn't work out, as he was showing competency before quickly declining on a year-by-year basis.
Trading pieces away to supplement cap dumps is definitely something we all would like to avoid. I agree. I'm willing to forgive a bit of it, because I actually thought that the Petersen contract is defensible. I don't want to be a hypocrite by blaming Blake for ridding himself of something I previously thought was good. And of all things - Blake doesn't make a habit of overpaying to get himself out of bad contracts. I'm willing to explore this point more if, say, PLD gets run out
Regarding team toughness, this does tie in to some of my general complaints about Blake - identity. He's been at the helm for 6 seasons, and was an executive with the team years before that. His formulation and execution of long-term plans is one of his weaker skillsets.
Goaltending is one symptom of that. There's no defense, in my opinion, of having this goalie pipeline:
Talbot - UFA NHL starter
Copley - UFA NHL backup
Rittich - UFA AHL starter
Portillo - traded AHL backup (~2 or 3 years away from NHL?)
Ingham - drafted ECHL tandem (suffered with injury, but no ETA on AHL play)
Markkanen - drafted Liiga backup (no ETA on being a starter in North America)
Slukynsky - drafted USHL backup (~5 years away from NHL at least)
There should be more proactivity. Even if Petersen was playing well last year, he's 30. There should be plans on moving him to a backup role in the upcoming seasons and having someone else challenge on the pipeline.
Back to toughness - I believe toughness is more of a state of mind. Resilience. I like Englund, but I don't think teams NEED a bunch of face punchers. It helps, but not at the cost of playing hockey.
The prospect system, I agree, could use some fine tuning. As much as I've criticized it, though, it's more in the minutiae and rigidity in its application. I don't think Byfield, Vilardi, Kaliyev, etc should have been jammed into the bottom-six. It looks good for Byfield now, but he was a talented player picked 2nd overall - I believed he'd do well once getting regular reps in the top-6. It's how they grow and build skills of the later round players.
Ryan Conmy, for example, is looking poised to be like Jesper Bratt - a 6th round pick with a good scoring touch. When he graduates college, will they expect a smaller scorer to play in the bottom-6, regardless of how well he did in college?
Laferriere was fortunate that Kaliyev was suspended and Arvidsson injured. Else he'd be in the AHL waiting for someone to get injured. Or suspended. I don't think that's a good plan to reward young players for playing well. Especially when they get demoted the moment they don't knock the coaching staff's socks off.
I believe in the org's ability to identify talent. I think they get too caught up in the development process to understand that different people learn different things at different paces in different ways.
Anyway, sorry to rant. I think we're largely in agreement. I was mostly pointing out that we're seeing more potential flaws than abject failures, and I didn't pick up on your general tenor the first time.
