I hope we see kids take off too and that has to be a growing priority, but I'll add a couple things to that.
One is that we really don't have a lot of good upside young guns yet. It's Beniers and Wright and that's about it. Maybe Firkus has a good camp and surprises next year.
The other is that I have watched rebuilds for clubs that started rebuilding 4+, 5+, heck 10+ years ago like the Jackets, Senators, Devils, and Sabres. The "fun young player scoring party" stage is the easy part. Getting them to play highly structured winning hockey after that is the hard part. All of those clubs are failing at it to some degree. The looser it gets for high flying hockey, the longer it takes to reintroduce structure when you want to start winning games.
It's tough. The West is getting stronger and we don't have a lot of young guns. I wonder if we might find more success sticking with a more highly structured veteran heavy team, and gradually adding whatever young talent we can get to that.
I still haven't been talked out of Dean Evason.
I'm not suggesting a roster full of kids playing shinny hockey. Good mentor vets are a must, and limiting the amount of kids in the lineup per game is important. Giving some of the prospects a taste of the league with limited callups without burning that first year of UFA requirement could be a good thing for both their development and fan interest in getting to know the team's future.
It has to be done right, as there are a lot of pitfalls in exposing a lot of kids to the league in the same season, and like you said, it is easy to fall into the trap of "play the kids", and not realize the damage that strategy can have longterm on the rebuild without safety nets in place.
I expect there will be a sleeper player that seems to come out of nowhere and makes a big jump this season in development, maybe Morrison, Kartye or Fleury, not a top name, but a younger player that fits in a 3rd line or 3rd pairing role. Maybe a guy like Nyman gets a midseason call-up and has a good stretch in a sheltered role. I don't have playoff aspirations for the current team this season, so giving several of the younger guys some injury replacement time is not a concern for me in that they would be throwing away the season.
Hiring a guy like Evason only to have him bench the young players when they push for offense while overplaying guys like Marcus Johnasson is not enticing to me. Probably should have just taught Hakstol how to coach the trap instead
