That's a bit of a glass-half-empty view. The picture is actually quite promising:
First of all, the roster has all the most important, and hardest-to-acquire, pieces already:
- a great 1st line (Landeskog/Mackinnon/Rantanen
- 2C (Kadri)
- good Top 4 D (including a combination of Makar/Girard, Johnson/Byram, Zadorov/Timmins)
- A solid, if somewhat unproven, goalie
Secondly, Colorado is a desired destination for free agents again, and so the secondary roles can be filled in free agency. We saw that with Donskoi, who in a recent interview said that Colorado was the first choice as an UFA. Though he eventually chose the Rangers, we were also in on Panarin all the way to the the (at least according to Sakic).
Thirdly, given the above two points, the team will be in a position to consolidate it's assets in package deals, which can help mitigate the fact that some prospects might not be "A" prospects. For example, packaging Jost + B prospect + pick is a legitimate possibility to acquire a good player, without losing too much off the roster. Point being, the depth is the system is there to package assets.
Perhaps the biggest challenge now is to be able to consistently develop players that can fill roles in the bottom 6 as ELC's to reduce the need of filling those roles with expensive free agents like Calvert ($2.85m), Bellemare ($1.8m), Wilson ($2.6m), and Nieto ($1.975m). If those bottom 6 roles could instead be filled by Bowers/Kamenev/Kaut/Kovalenko/O'Connor on ELC's going forward the team would have way more wiggle room to add talent to the top end of the roster, in trades or free agency.
