Like the article suggests, I’m not entirely sure we’re better on paper than last year.
Obviously there’s more to a good hockey team than being good on paper though. What are everyone’s thoughts?
Like the article suggests, I’m not entirely sure we’re better on paper than last year.
Obviously there’s more to a good hockey team than being good on paper though. What are everyone’s thoughts?
One thing we can’t forget is that this off-season’s FA crop was/is quite maligned. Everyone’s been dogging it for months so we shouldn’t now somehow expect to get dramatically better from it.
I don’t mind the Holl deal at all. It’s not a crazy amount of term or money and he’s going to be quite serviceable. I also like that we can reduce some of the time that seider plays on the PK, bc while he’s write capable it’s also just hard minutes to play and there’s injury risk given how winning he is to block a shot. Hell still play but Holl will eat time there.
I think Compher will be fine. It does feel like his deal is about 1x1m too large but I also think that’s just what happens when you need to go to the market to fill gaps.
not discussed much yet it’s that this is really our first chance to build some things with lalonde after him having a year under his belt and being able to evaluate some of our players (and us having another year with them). Zadina… we’ll see…it’s been ~4 years of still not quite all coming together. JFV has NHL level ability but has a long way to go to guarantee himself a nightly roster spot at C; he also doesn’t have a contract yet.
At the end of the day, we have no choice but to replace Suter, erne, sundqvist, vrana, and Bert. Plus some AHL plugs. I think the signings and picks also show that the team isn’t that sold on veleno long term. This off-season wasn’t the one to change the trajectory of the team with moves. MAYBE getting debrincat would help that a bit, but it’s no guarantee and clearly we’re not the only ones with challenges getting alignment with him on contract terms. This is just the difficulty we face when not winning the lottery…elite talent isn’t just available to take.
Finally, I think we’re also locking up a couple of middle/depth pieces in Compher and Holl before the cap jumps slot next year and the spending increases. I’m not sure I love spending 8.5M on them combined annually, but it’s really not that terrible. Again, the primary pause I have here is the term on Compher, but good luck picking up anyone to play top/middle 6 roles for less in FA. As much as I liked Suter, Compher is inarguably a better offensive option.
Hopefully berggren can take that next step for us and Ras returns with the form he had pre-injury. Maybe next year we go for big offense in FA.