Another factor that the less optimistic of our posters fail to recognise is that the wings are in a fundamentally different position to almost every other rebuilding team.
Because the wings roster had every single drop of blood squeezed out of the stone (and achieved the longest competing window of the modern era - even if you think we stopped competing before Lidstrom retired), when the playoff run ending became inevitable, we found ourselves with an old roster, primarily made up of supporting players of no great value, or great players either passed their best or hobbled by injury or both.
There is no doubt that this disadvantageous position for a rebuild was exacerbated by chasing the playoff streak record (I agree with the organisation that it was a prize worth aiming for, but I know I'm in the minority) and the failure of any of our award winning d-men to develop to anything like the level their junior careers suggested (and we can take turns in blaming Holland, Nill, Fraser, Babcock etc etc).
However, the point is, having hit somewhere near the bottom, and with a roster made up of mostly has beens, never was's and never will be's, we don't want to be rushing the rebuild by getting all the kids up as soon as possible. The worst thing would be for DRW to NOT stagger the introduction of these kids. We don't have enough talent or balance for our current assets to become contenders in the short to medium term, and we don't want all these kids to peak contract wise and development wise too close together. Quite apart from the gamble of breaking players by bringing them up too soon, we simply don't have the talent in D or in net in the pipeline to hope that this team can be real contenders before reaching cap hell if all our young forwards become regular 80 game roster players within 3 years of each other, particularly with some of the lengthy contracts that will not be traded away painlessly.
If you look at all the winning teams in the last couple of decades, they all had distinct waves of core players, bar perhaps Pittsburgh, who were gifted 1 generational center and 1 franchise center among a whole flurry of high picks before the lottery system changed.
People may point to Toronto or Edmonton if either kick on, but both, like Pittsburgh, had enough saleable assets to trade for positions of need to kick start things (largely the direct result of high picks following multiple years of utter incompetence), quite apart from a reliance on successive kind draft lotteries.
Now if more of our prospects were sure fire core players, it would be different, but with no top 5 picks in about 3 decades, and only 2 top 10's, we simply don't have enough sure fire guys to go all in.
While we all want to see teenagers tearing it up for us, the approach for the moment has to be slow and steady.
Once we get a couple more years down the line, with most of the bad contracts gone or nearly over, with our current roster kids nearing their peaks, a handful of other kids established in the NHL and some more drafts with highish picks (and extra picks each year) then it makes sense to be more aggressive at bringing kids in straight from the draft or draft +1. At present we need most of our kids to be top 6 or top 4 d. Looking at our improving prospect pool, in 2-3 years time, we'll be happy enough if the are just good NHL-ers (as long our recent and forthcoming 1st round picks are up to snuff re their draft position).
Of course, I don't know if this is the organisation's thinking. But it would be mine.
There are a lot of exciting teams around the league who have relatively small windows due to cap issues stemming from rushing things. Given our current position, we need to be more strategic.
