Because I don't think it's better to have a capped team with significant roster needs and little in the way of moveable assets than a team with future cap issues, significant roster needs and a bucket of assets to work with.
And yeah, those opportunities are part of the discussion whether you like it or not. Why? Because they have a direct bearing on the current situation. Man, if you thought chiarelli was under the microscope the new guy is going to have it much worse.
The significant short-term roster needs you seem to think we need are being massively overstated. We're not in a situation where we're robbing Peter to pay Paul like we were in 2015.
And again, the immediate cap situations were very similar in the two instances. Both had dud contracts bogging up the roster. The difference was that the current scenario doesn't have a $20m+ cloud of inflation looming over it.
And I'm scratching my head as to why you seem to think we had a 'bucket' of assets then and nothing now. The only pieces of value we had were the roster players we ended up trading. $6m wingers in an era when wingers were the least valued positional players on the market. The only other 'bucket' assets were pissed away in week one in the crippling Reinhart deal.
And no, the 'opportunies' don't fall into the parameters of the discussion at all. We not talking about 'coulda shoulda'--we're talking about the literal job at hand. I know it's hard, but I'm looking at the
Edmonton Oilers--and not the Edmonton Chiarellis--and assessing what their strengths, weaknesses, needs and challenges are in both instances. Things are much better today than they were then, which is why the organizational turnover
should be relatively painless.