We're not players for the top UFAs this year, or most years.
That's reality.
As far as trades, uh like who? For what?
In the last calendar year, we've seen Jacob Trouba, Mark Stone, EK, Matt Duchene, ROR, Jeff Skinner, Dougie Hamilon, Nino Niederreiter, Gustav Nyquist, Jake Muzzin, Max Pacioretty, Mikael Granlund, etc. all dealt.
Meanwhile, we've acquired Hartman, Bailey, & Talbot.
Now, I'm not saying we should have been in on all of those guys or anything, but the point is that good and great players are indeed available by trade. I've been advocating patience and am fine going young and dealing with the growing pains, but we have assets out the ass and had a shitload of cap space. I'd prefer to make a hockey trade to fill 2C instead of a highly questionable signing that takes out a huge chunk of the latter and potentially costs us some of the former without having the type of impact that makes that acceptable. And we should be players for top UFAs (and used to always be as a matter of course.) It's just when dipping into that market, you have to be careful. You want to add Brieres & Timonens, not MacDonalds & Bryzgalovs. We have (had) money, a willingness to use it, cap space, important pieces already on the roster and a cupboard full of prospects. You take your shot at Panarin and if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen, but I'd much rather pay Panarin 12 million than Hayes 7 million.
In which way has Danny Briere been a bad contract? That little guy was money on and off the ice.
Gomez became inept at playing hockey soon and Drury was more like a slow breakdown. One can only hope that Fletcher picked his own Briere in K. Hayes.
Briere was coming off a 95 point season that saw him garner serious Hart consideration when Holmgen signed him. If the NMC is what got him signed, then fine, I can live with the consequences of that since he was a game-changer for the franchise for the bulk of the contract and almost helped us win a Stanley Cup. Expecting Hayes to live up to that seems like pure insanity to me.
And lest anyone misunderstands me and thinks I'm shitting on Hayes, I'm not. He's a fine player and I very dearly hope this all works out and that I have the biggest possible plate of crow in front of me when we win the Stanley Cup the next two years. But you're just rationalizing yourself into blind acceptance if you don't see that we're taking questionable risks here.
