@Inferno
The other thread closed before I could get my hands on it, but I wanted to still touch on it.
I get what you're saying. Even without the coach, this team is not a contender. A good team? Yes, I think so, potentially. Stanley Cup? They'd have to get lucky. I get that.
But here's my thing, you brought it up and everyone brings it up, and that's the lack of star power at forward, namely a number 1 center. However, you're then advocating trading our #1 defensemen, which 1)doesn't necessarily get us closer to a franchise center and 2)if it does, it'll just give us the same team, with the same problem, in a different position. We'll have the center instead of the defenseman.
I agree that this team isn't a Cup winner right now, but I never understood the logic that moving further away from the Cup short-term gets you closer long-term. At best, it's a roll of the dice.
I do understand that you need to keep getting younger little by little and I also understand the risk of contracts, and the idea that you shouldn't throw money around when you're not in the running anyway.
But I have few issues
1)Zuccarello I could get behind, but McDonagh is your #1 defensemen, which I'd argue is more important than the coveted center. We would be ripping a massive hole into our team for who knows how long, to have a CHANCE, at MAYBE getting closer to that center.
2)Even if we draft the center, we've accomplished absolutely nothing if we don't also replace McDonagh. The chances of drafting both within the next 5 years is slim to none.
3)Everyone is worried about an 8 year contract because we're not contenders now, which I think is absolutely foolish. 8 years is an eon in today's NHL. You can't make 8 year plans based on where you are now. The depth of a roster overturns constantly. We could have the best roster in the league in 3 years, or we could have the worst. (I mean depth, aside from those two big pieces) Roster overturn is extremely short-term. Let me tell you what's long-term - finding a Stanley Cup caliber #1 center/defenseman package. You can go 5, 10, 20 years without finding one. We know this from experience. The few teams that do win multiple Cups. As far as the rest of the team, you can always cross that bridge when you come to it, but you have to hold onto prime pieces, because sometimes they just don't come back around.
4) With all due respect to Stepan, Zibanejad, and even my f***ing husband Brassard, we haven't had a Toews/Kopitar/Bergeron/Crosby (nobody is Crosby, but you know what I mean) level center since Gretzky retried. We know how difficult that is. Now, we have a good enough #1 D to win it all, and despite the fact that we haven't had the center all these years, people are still willing to let go of it.
The roster you posted looks good and has a ton of potential. What if they never reach it because they never find a Stanley Cup #1 defenseman, just like the '13, '14, '15 team never found a center? And on top of that, the roster you posted still doesn't have the center! So what have we accomplished?
The only way I move McDonagh is for an absolute can't miss franchise D like Makar/Heiskanen, and frankly, I don't think we get that back.
Anything short of that is putting a contention-crippling hole in our lineup for a bunch of dice rolls.
And if this is a total reset for the sake of a reset, just because we haven't won the Cup, well then those almost never work.
