Just leaving the team as is will have us on the outside well before the season ends, barring exponential growth from Mittelstadt. The reason is, Kyle and Jason are no longer the useful middle-six forwards they were in October and early November. And since trends (last year) suggest that they don't go through ups and downs, they have their brief time of productivity early on decay into sub-NHL play by April, we have to assume that will happen again. Sheary has gone ghost as Pens fans warned he would, so what we've gotten to this point (plenty of fine play but no game-breaking and long cold stretches) is likely what we'll see through April from him too. Tage and Casey have both shown mild growth from October but they will not be top six NHLers and we are a net top six NHLer down from even last year's pitiful team, though two of the guys are performing much better this season (9&23).
There is nothing about the game we've played for the last little while that suggests a hockey team that can be counted on to win more than 3-4 of every 10 games, and those forwards behind Jack are the reason why.
I know the temptation to have another player in Rochester's 2021-22 season doing for them what Nylander is right now is very high, but getting throttled by the Lightning in round 1 is far more important to our current young players (Jack is in year FOUR) than that is, and I hope Botterill sees that.
Of course, we won't even realistically need to give up a 1st rounder to get meaningful help back there.
It'd be one thing to sit tight if it was "less than ideal" depth scoring. But that's not how I'd describe:
GP: 60
G: 1
A: 1
PTS: 2
From the lines not centered by Eichel or Larsson since we played @ Tampa. The lines responsible for the 2nd and 3rd most ES ice time among our forwards. The lines taking up well over half of the game.