Doug Prishpreed
Registered User
What you don't want to do is get into a situation like St. Louis had where we had a good core with no centers moving forward all around the age of 24-27, but then we had a gap to where the next core was 18-20 and not ready to step up. Thus, we did deals like Schenn and ROR where we gave away more picks just to fill in areas of need at the expense of keeping our youth filled with quality top 6/4 players. Luckily, we were able to trade players to get late picks back so they weren't completely left out of the first round, but those are players that are still a season or two away from making the leap.
I don't know the status of your main core, but since you have a lot of picks coming in the next two years, you can afford to move one or two of them to fill in areas of need without sacrificing the future nor wasting years of your current core waiting for draft picks to fall into areas of need.
The franchise is a nightmare...there is no analog to anything going on in St Louis, I wouldn’t try to find one.
Yes, it would be ideal to trade the picks for help now but we’d be looking for a player like ROR, whom we traded away to get the picks in the first place.
I just wouldn’t even bother asking. “It’s Chinatown, Jake....forget about it.”