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I respect everyone's opinions on this. But I'm prepared to throw down over this. Or at least rant a bit. My opinion: We need scoring punch in the worst way, and we've needed it in the worst way for the better part of a decade, and we've had all these draft picks and all these prospects and all these free agent opportunities and all these trade opportunities......... .........yet somehow we still desperately need scoring punch. I wanted Matthew Tkachuk. "Too expensive," people said. OK. Fair enough. But if you want a bigger, grittier, more complete version of DeBrincat, you're basically looking for a unicorn - unless you want to pay out the ass, or unless you get really lucky in the draft. I think the time's come for us to get serious about really, truly moving forward. I love David Perron - but I hate that he's one of our top two wingers at this stage of the rebuild. It's unacceptable to me. We've got a lot of good young players in our system right now, that's true. And that's good. And we'll need them to be good. And they probably will be good. But there's no rule that says we can't trade for other teams' young players. We can sit here and say "Nah, f*** this goal-scoring punk. If he REALLY wants to be a Wing, he'll sit out for a year and wait until free agency next summer." And we can watch that ship sail away. And that will be the 415th ship we've watched sail away since the start of this rebuild - because "Nah it just didn't make sense for us, given where we're at. I'd rather we do the other thing [which we won't end up doing]." And we can spend another year losing close games because we can't score goals. Or......................... ...............we can say "F*** the police" and grab the 25-year-old right-shooting goal-scoring winger right now and sign him to a big deal and take our chances with that investment. "But do you really want to chance it?" Yes, I do. We have all the cap flexibility an organization could ever want. All the money in the Bertuzzi fund can now be used for other stuff. All the money in the Vrana fund can now be used for other stuff. And we also have draft capital. "Yeah, but our young guys are going to start eating up cap space really quickly." Maybe they will, maybe they won't. What I care about now is getting solid footing. Tangible things. Known things. Alex DeBrincat has scored 40 goals twice. He's a natural scorer. He can and will put up points. These are known things. I don't want to go through the motions for another 82 games and accept that we don't need to ice the best damned lineup we can ice "because it's just not time yet. I think we need at least one more really good draft." We've been saying "We just need one more really good draft" for the past 500 years. Enough already! If we can land DeBrincat without giving up our 1st, I think that's a major coup. Pick a name out of a hat for that pick. Let's call it Nate Danielson. If we land DeBrincat and Nate Danielson, I think that's bloody fantastic. All of a sudden we're talking about Larkin, Kasper, Danielson, Veleno down the middle. All of a sudden we're talking about flanking those guys with DeBrincat, Raymond, Mazur, et al. I don't want to wait a second longer than we have to on taking the next step. I don't want to rush it, but I do want to push it. I don't want our young leaders to grow any more accustomed to losing than they already are. We need to start winning games. We need to start doing that whole "winning culture" thing now - not two or three years from now. So. Give me a proven scorer. Who's 25 years old. And who shoots right. And who's from Detroit. [/rant]

You’re allowed to have more than one good player per position lol

Something else to pursue: Carolina needs offense, they don't have a ton of money, but they do have a really good right shot defenseman that's buried in the depth chart behind Brent Burns and Brett Pesce. Scott Morrow has eaten up the NCAA for two years in a row and is clearly ready for the NHL. He's 6'2, 200 lbs, and makes plays all over the ice. Perhaps something centered on Kubalik or Berggren? I'd start him with someone safe like Maatta as a rookie but he's clearly a top four dman in the making. Walman-Seider Edvinsson-Chiarot Maatta-Morrow

What we can't afford to do is fetishize draft picks. Even top picks have a pretty good likelihood of falling flat (anybody remember Filip Zadina?). We didn't trade Bertuzzi and Hronek just to cross our fingers and roll the dice on a replacement. We traded them to get assets...assets that can be used to do all sorts of things to improve the club. You can't fall in love with your own picks and prospects and when quality players become available you need to try to land them (if you don't have comparable players in your system). It's not like trading our additional 1st and 2nd round picks is going to gut the club. We'd still have our own 1st and 2nd rounds the next two years...AND one of the deepest prospect pools in the league. We need upper end talent. Guys like Debrincat and Dubois are already there and the likelihood that a mid round pick becomes as good as either of them is small. If you can get them, do it. I also REALLY like Barbashev and think SY needs to take a LONG look at the guy. If Vegas wins the Cup he'll likely be on the chopping block as they look to gain cap flexibility. He's really skilled himself, compliments other skill player well, is SUPER hard to play against, and plays responsibly all over the ice. I imagine after the playoffs he's had he's going to command a decent salary, but he's worth it. He'd be a target for me for sure.

The Wings need to sign Barbashev. That dude is a beast. His board play is amazing.

Agreed, that BOS 1st shouldn't be traded until you know where it will fall. The Bruins are always at risk of falling off a cliff, next year they are capped out, older, and losing UFAs. That pick could be a top 5 pick in 2025... until you get a solid feel on the status of that pick hold on to it.

I can't see Dubois signing here long term. No deal. Way too much for Debrincat IMO. No deal. I know you kids want to fast track our playoff/competitive quotient, but, this is the last year/or two probably of having a decent chance to load our system, so I don't want to trade away any of our futures for the now. Our lottery luck has been crappy, (Gary hates us) and even with Kasper, Eddoggie etc, we're still pretty thin with hopefuls. Take on salary, get extra picks and if our team deserves to make it into the playoffs then great, I just don't want to force it.

defensive deschmensive