I get all that, I get the rationale. My point is this. With young players, you better understand what you are trading away, what you are receiving, and what you are paying for in dollars and how much term. Galchenyuk didn't work out, Domi and Strome did elsewhere. I know we got talent in return but still.
I see why Chayka signed Keller, the term and the money. I'm not questioning the deal on it's own. I'm questioning weather we should trust Chayka's decisions with young players. I think there is a little bit of too much confidence maybe in Chayka, thinking he can predict the future of young players, he is a very inexperienced GM with no leadership around him to bounce decisions off of. I hope DVO/Schmaltz/Chych/Keller all have career years and Chayka looks smart with these signings. In my opinion, he hasn't looked smart so far.
The reason that I think I will see this one out is because there are a lot of little things that have been done that can attribute to Chayka and growth.
The first thing is that no GM wants any one of their players to fail. What sort of attitude does that bring? The team he inherited is the one that he inherited and he is no more or less beholden to any player. In fact, the only statement that I remember from the year when he and Maloney were together, Chayka mentioned going after Brad Richardson. He has been one of our better forwards, ugly injury notwithstanding.
Given the scope of what we have learned in interviews and stories, he will try to maximize our tools in any way legally possible. For one purpose or another, we could not maximize the most out of Domi or Strome on the ice. We tried to maximize the trade value for them and did okay, but not to the level of seasons those players had after being traded.
If Domi was indeed incendiary behind the scenes, then the GM has to shape the team a certain way. We needed goal scoring and we had a Domi replacement in Keller. For Strome, I think that the rift was caused by not being disciplined enough to see Strome ever really buy in. I don't think anyone can disagree that we never saw the best Strome had to offer here, period. Even when he was at his best in the 11 game call up, I don't know if the commitment was there. Any sort of not being able to buy in to the locker room, the system, the offseason, whatever it may be requires some change. He at least has the balls to identify an issue and take corrective steps. Even if he missed on those players, I don't believe that someone will miss on all of them.
And that is kind of the micro level of what we are looking at. This is a shrewd business dealing where he is taking the idea of building up and seeing the build get maximized. Chayka has done so with our scouting department in general, our AHL team has far better depth and a much deeper pipeline to bring competition into the organization. Our drafting looks odd, and then over time, we see more than just the Haytons and Soderstroms - instead we see Jenik, Dineen, Bahl, Steenbergen. Players that could get a call up and/or be poised to progress.
With as much progress made, even with some blips on the radar, I think that there should be a lot more trust in the direction. In three years, people will think of how good of an investment this was, and it kind of parallels the steps to get all our ducks in a row, as an organization.