They went and bough high (it was the first moments of UFA after all) on yet another winger when the need was so obviously elsewhere in the lineup. The process was reckless.
Results were fine, in a vacuum. Until we hear they let him play through a torn ACL...
I'm personally not buying his sudden scoring efficiency. That has never been his game.
Unrelated to the UFA process, I'm nervously waiting to see how his skating looks post knee surgery.
That's fair. If the guy they went out got for his skating has suddenly...lost that edge in his skating, that's a disaster. Though not one you can really predict on UFA Day.
I agree that it seemed a bit puzzling to go after another Winger at that point, when we were already so full up on them. But there was an obviously focused attempt to bring something to our winger group that we really didn't have. It'd be one thing if they'd gone out an spent big on another soft skill guy who is slow and doesn't offer anything else. That'd be absurd. But Mikheyev at least...i can understand the thinking there. It's a premium price as always in UFA...but it's a premium because you can get small slow skill wingers cheap as dirt at any time, but big fast two-way guys tend to be more expensive.
It took me a while to come around to understand it, where...i think the intent is to basically jettison as much of this dead weight, soft, slow, point-producing winger group as possible. To reshape the forward corps into something actually respectable.
Speed. Size. Physicality. Two-way responsibility. That's how you build something. Long ways to go. Lot of bodies to move out. Still clearly lacking an actual #3C which isn't great and is going to cost a fortune for a good one.