I read these comments and sometimes think I'm just not idealistic enough for HFBoards lol.
Here's the pragmatic view: teams don't win cups anymore without a top 10 centre in the league. A bona-fide #1 franchise centre.
You only usually get those with lottery picks, or if one falls into your lap at the right time like St Louis with ROR. No one in the cap era has won a cup without one. LA managed to find one who fell down later into the top 10 in Kopitar (very rare), and Washington got super lucky winning in what was probably the last season that Backstrom was arguably in that company, and they also had the most elite winger possibly of all time.
It sucks to not make the playoffs, I get it...but aspiring to be the 2015-2019 Columbus Blue Jackets is WAYYYYY worse. And that's exactly what we'd become if the franchise goals were to just make the playoffs, and pretend we won the cup if we so much as won a round.
No one is trading the Bedard pick, but maybe we have enough now to trade up to #2 and take Fantilli. Who knows, Im just spitballing...but at least with a player like that, you can take a reasonable gamble on thinking he'll become that franchise 1C you need to build a cup winner around and feel good about exiting the rebuild. We need that kind of splash.
Until we get to that point where you have a #1C good enough to be the centerpiece on a cup winner, everything kinda feels hopeless because you can absolutely see the ceiling, and the ceiling is absolutely not winning a Cup.
Lottery luck seems to be everything nowadays and it's just infuriating as a fan. Ottawa jumping us and picking 3rd a few years back and getting Stutzle instead of Raymond (and I love Raymond, don't get me wrong) is the difference between a team that can exit a rebuild with the necessary core piece to potentially push for a cup, and a team that can't reasonably have those aspirations.
The media would never tell you about this because hockey isn't in a place where it can disappoint its fanbase and raise barriers for new fans to get invested, but having a top 1C in this league is legitimately more important than having a top QB in the NFL in terms of winning a championship. We've at least seen a handful of teams win Super Bowls in that same span with non-elite QBs. Same can't be said in hockey with 1Cs