If you were the GM cage we'd never make a trade and keep the same players year after year. To me either you suck and get top 3-5 picks to build your team OR you need to be smart with your drafting and make smart moves to add some higher end talent. We are the latter of course. And we made a smart move with Nash. We need to smartly make moves to go for the cup. What that means is you do NOT deal all your picks. You do NOT deal all your tops prospects. You DO trade a pick here and there to improve. You DO have a couple of kids you say those are my guys, I can deal some of the others. The funny, and sad really, thing that happens on this board is it turns into oh you want to deal a pick and/or prospects for a win now player...that equals oh my god you want to deal ALL our picks and ALL our good young players. It is sad because it shows you guys don't have the ability to understand things. We have two 2nd round picks...deal one. Make Miller, Duclair, Buch, Skjei off limits. Don't deal any of those guys period. So have a plan. Understand we did NOT deal a 1st round pick last year because we got Hayes, who is better than any 1st round pick we would have gotten at 29. Understand these picks you are all so afraid to trade are 25 or worse. Late 2nd round picks, maybe low 50's. So understand that. Don't be so in a box and act as if the options are A) deal every pick and every prospect OR B) don't deal any picks or any prospects no matter what. Doing EITHER of those things is flat out stupid. We need to be smart. Mark a couple of kids off limits. Mark one of the 2nd round picks off limits. Then go improve the top 9, which clearly needs to be improved if we want to win a cup. The issue with the mindset some of you guys have is when is it now? When is it our time to actually win a cup (last time I checked that was the goal not just to win some games). When is it time? Picking in the 20's and standing pat will not get you there unless you are simply rock solid on your picks and are really a great talent evaluator. And even still it would take a while to build that up. So if we are going to be at worst a good team, we are not getting a top 10 pick, so understand that, and SMARTLY deal picks/prospects to actually try and win a cup (the goal?). Otherwise when is it now...ever??
And thank god for that cage. We would sit tight at # 23 every year...LOL. Have a plan bro, and the plan isn't oh we have to keep the same players together every single season, which is always your plan. You have to work to improve your team. You can either suck and get a handful of top 5 picks OR if you don't suck you need to really work to be good and have a shot at the cup. You cannot sit tight year after year unless you suck.
Nobody's being desperate, but what good is it not improving the team to a SC level and just making the conf finals and then on top of it ending up with the 28th pick and non-impact, 3rd liner which we already have a ton of in the system. Every year the best teams add that one or two players at the DL to get to the top, otherwise you may as well not even make the playoffs and just be horrible until you reach Chicago or Pitt levels of talent. Lundqvist will play another 5-6 years at least so we need to maximize every season by using some B-prospects and a 2nd or two to get that extra player. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.
There have been so many names bandied about. My mindset is not conservative; just let's see who they can obtain.
