Quote:
Originally Posted by pete goegan
Depends. How has the team played earlier? A team that's played pretty well for much of the year and, for one reason or another drops out of playoff contention, might play poorly from lack of motivation. We're not in that situation, though, this team has been out of contention since Halloween. The record throughout the year stinks. Even this brief spurt of relative competence has not raised us to within 10 points of #29! I just don't believe that the addition of JJ, no matter how much we like him, turns this team from garbage to contention. Again, look at that top six, does the addition of Yakupov really make that much difference? As much as I hate it, a successful Nash trade is the only move I can see that would bring in enough to have any significant effect. That and/or trading the first pick in the draft.
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You hit the nail (no pun intended, on the head).
The reason this team struggles when inevitable injuries happen, is a lack of depth. Depth is not something you can create overnight.
Now, we could trade depth in a Nash trade...but it still isn't going to be immediate. And, we're going to give up quality in the short term hoping to gain it in the long term because the best player we get back in the Nash trade won't be equal value on the day he's received.
As you point out, JJ wasn't enough to solve the defense. And here's the problem with solving it simply by one more addition--chemistry. When healthy we arguably have two pairs that work--Wiz/JJ and Tyutin/Nikitin. If we brought in a top dog shutdown defenseman, do you split those pairs up? Put him with Moore as the "bottom" pair and simply divide time more evenly? And, if you split up Tyutin and Nikitin do they struggle paired with someone else--Nikitin has been -3 since Tyutin went out and I've got some concerns about his communication abilities.
And then there is the goalie situation. There are not that many options in free agency and I'm still not sold on making a goalie the centerpiece of a Nash trade. What is the likelihood this gets resolved in the off-season or, like a #1 center and a #1 defenseman, is this something we can't assume will easily be resolved in one off-season?
Which is a long winded way of again stating that I agree with you--it would take an Executive of the Year performance from whoever is GM come June to get this team in a position to make the playoffs next year.
