Anderson will be on the first flight to Florida after the last game. That is where his family is and that is where they will stay. He may come here for the occasional alumni function, etc., but that will be that.
Brannstrom's injury is a real kick in the shorts. He needs to come back and have a good playoff to redeem his season. Otherwise, you have to consider this year to be a massive disappointment for his development. He really failed to take the next step, and never has looked like the dominant force in generating offense that a young EK was. He's only 20, adjusting to North America, defencemen take longer, blah blah blah, but the excitement of acquiring him has long since worn off...
Wait, this is based on?
Brannstrom will never be EK. Quinn Hughes will (they are the same age, but 1 year younger than Makar)
On the contrary, I find him super promising. Only 20 y/o, has shown that he can already play in the NHL, make good quick decisions, good defensively, good skating skills, hockey sense and hockey IQ is there. He hasn't figured out how to produce offense on a rebuilding NHL team yet but almost PPG in the AHL. Those 31 games he played in the NHL is good for experience.
Plus we know (well supposedly) that the Sens have brought their prospects slowly this year, Brannstrom like Batherson, Balcers and a few others could have played in the NHL all year but that was not the plan. When you think of it, only Nick Paul and Marcus Hogberg have fully graduated and they are ~25 y/o
All that being said, we DON'T need Brannstrom to be EK, if he's too good, we won't be able to keep everybody. We already have Chabot long term and a few other guys might need money eventually (Wolanin, Thomson, JBD, Alsing? Zub? Tychonick?). That's just on defense, I think the forward group will get very expensive very fast. We just need EB to be a good 2-way top-4 D-man. I'd be thrilled if he is a smaller Ekholm
I loved Stone and really wish he would have stayed through the rebuild but that was not possible. We could have gotten more prospects/picks (and in comparison we got 3-4 x times more for EK), but a high end prospect instead of quantity was better than nothing. And no, we were not getting a Makar/Hugues (remember, couldn't get a Glass/Heiskanen for EK).
We were in a bad position, Dorion has been trying to "hide" the FULL rebuild all the way but looks like Melnyk had already decided everybody was gone unless they took a major home discount. Poor Dorion lol, trying to convince Duchene and Stone to sign on discount during a rebuild. I have been wondering why any other team didn't try to be Vegas offer but I think the choices where Mark Stone would extend long term were limited... So yeah, nobody was offering more than Brannstrom + 2nd for Stone as a rental
Finally, you said "
the excitement of acquiring him has long since worn off"???
You realize that we got him exactly 1 year ago? lol
