You've been a prince on the topic of moving on from tanking. And you are being consistent.
But I still think Habs can afford one more bad year, and hence a top ten pick. Therefore I am very happy with Bergy's attitude this year.
No bad long term contracts in UFA. (I will leave the inexplicable DD contract out of this.)
Give Tiny and the rest a chance to grow. And protect the kids with a beast like Parros in the meantime.
So far so good.
Yes, I believe in rebuilding. But at some point you have to run with what you've got.
This past year we came in 2nd in the East. We had some younger player emerge and PK turned into a superstar. So now we have to pick a direction. Do we rebuild or do we start to go with what we've got?
I don't see how we can just keep rebuilding when we've got players like Price, Max and PK coming into their prime. YES we should've rebuilt more. Yes we've ****ed things up for years but now it is what it is. And we have to start going for it.
So what do we need? Add a big winger and a big top four defenseman who can clear the crease. If we did that we'd be in pretty good shape as it would help Price and help our smaller forwards.
Bobby Ryan would've been great. Maybe it costs us Beaulieu and a pick. But at the end of the day he's what we needed. And getting him would send a message to every player in the league that we're serious about winning and actually have the horses to do it. Same with say a Braydon Coburn. Big strong blueliner who's also available.
Instead we go out and we do the opposite of what we should. We send a message to everyone that we're going to continue to build with leftovers and we're going to stay small and weak. Might as well have just gone and traded back for Cammy or Koivu...
We're too good to tank. We're not good enough to win a cup. I felt like we were a piece or two away but now we've managed to push ourselves further away... Our GM looks like he has no idea how to build a winning team and that's scary because we've already gone through this with several failed GMs already.