Quote:
Originally Posted by Teufelsdreck
I'm exasperated by those who discourage signing desirable UFAs and trading for veterans on principle. The tankards seem to forget that some recent championship teams (the Bruins in particular) made good trades and free agent signings. Aside from Seguin and Horton, they didn't feature high draft picks, and they didn't even draft Horton (not to mention Chara and Thomas, among others. The Devils are another example, although they didn't win the Cup this year. Of course there are also the Penguins, who were lousy enough to be able to draft Fleury and Crosby at #1 and Malkin at #2, but that wasn't all they did to build their teams.
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There are different means of winning cups. Rask and Seguin (both Toronto Rip-offs) didn't feature prominently in their win but if they win future cups I'm sure they will play key roles.
The Bruins landed Chara as an FA. If you can get a guy like that, you go get him for sure. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But we've shown no abilility (for whatever reason) to do this. And an FA of Chara's calibre doesn't come along too often. But let's be real here. The B's won primarily because they landed an incredible goalie who was a total fluke. The guy left the NHL for Pete's sake and came back in his mid 30s to become a star. No way to predict this and therefore... no way to repeat it.
There's always more than one way to skin a cat but rebuilding has been shown to work more than any other method. If FA was the way to go, we'd have expected to see the Rangers win the cup year after year and it hasn't happened.
Invest in the best young prospects you can. Build your team with them that way and see how it goes and make trades as needed. What's the problem with that strategy?