The only way Hronek works out for the team like Miller, is if Hughes vacates the PP1QB spot. something freakin drastic has to materialize for that to happen. I believe he will be a fair addition considering his future cap, he won't hurt us, but with the way this team is structured, they need surplus value everywhere to compete with the Vegas and Colorados, I am betting he won't be surplus value, WYSIWYG for a 27 year old when his new contract kicks in.
I have said many many times, Hronek has proven to be an upper-echelon even strength scorer as a D-man, so no pp time isn't make or break in terms of point production.
But he's about a lot more than that, he is a genuine building block on the right side, something we haven't had since young Tanev (when we had nothing else other than aging Sedins).
Ready to eat up 6+ million cap Hronek for 17th and a mid 2nd pick in a really deep draft year is a really good deal for Detroit. It's not a horrible deal for Vancouver, it's for a decent player, but at a very wrong time, in terms of where the pipeline is at and the cap health of the team.
It's probably a good trade both ways. Look, as draft day approaches I have spent a lot of time studying prospects and 2 more high swings would be nice. With that said, I'm also not convinced that we don't acquire a 2nd rounder at the very least.
But we have a team that is in its trajectory now. You can disagree with that and wish we dumped Hughes and Petey etc, but this is a team that is building to really hit the ground running within the next 2 or 3 years.
We were completely undermined by the weakness of our right side D and it's been a problem for ages. So this needed to be addressed or else it would be returning the ferrari onto the track with 3 wheels and wondering why you keep listing to the side.
Now, people argue for Severson or Dumba, but both are flawed players and I predict both get signed to unpalatable contracts. I would much prefer a gm take a swing on a still developing young player whom they deeply believe in, rather than trying to outbid the high-rollers for a walmart rack of players.
The idea that we "won" and detroit "lost" a gamble on the Isles pick is nonsense.
The Isles pick is 17th and at best could have been 13th due to trade protection. That's 4 slots.... and again, versus absolute best case scenario -it was never likely to be exactly 13th.
This is not remotely "we won the gamble on the depreciating asset" territory, if anything it's closer to the opposite where we started to sweat it would be in the 20s and traded it before that could happen.
Also 17th is well within the sweet spot for this draft, which runs at least 20 deep where no one can agree on the order after the first 7ish picks, e.g. Pronman just put Wood at 21 and Sale at 27 in his mock draft yesterday (which is not going to happen but illustrates the point).
You totally neglect to consider that the draft was protected after 13th, so if they had finished with the 12th pick, there was a real world possibility where this veteran laden team was very delusional about its capabilities and its trajectory and the wheels fell off and we ended up with a high lottery pick in 2024. That possibility was baked into the trade as well.
