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That is a pretty bold statement given that a team build by Yzerman just won the Presidents Trophy by a mile and almost beat a record held by a pre-cap Red Wings team, that was supposed never to fall in a league that promotes parity like there is no tomorrow. Yes, that team also lost four in a row in post season after that. It happens in sport. But four ******* games don't make or break Yzermans superb performance as a GM in Tampa.

Disagree. Rasmussen was pegged as a one-trick pony, a power-play/net-front guy who cleans up around the net and doesn't do much else. Easy to clean up around the net as a 6'6" player in the OHL. NHL? Another story. Seider did well in a men's league. He's dynamic, there's a ton to like about him. Projecting him as a good two-way top-pairing defenseman doesn't seem like a stretch.

I'm saving this quote for later

We had the cap space to make that deal, and we have the cap space to make similar deals, but for whatever reason we haven't / likely aren't going to. Maybe the Leafs didn't want to trade Marleau to the Wings, giving a divisional rival a 1st round pick. We could still make a similar deal, if there's a team out there that wants to trade a bad contract with one or two years remaining. Cap space isn't a problem for this team right now, and certainly won't be in the near future.

So our 2020-21 blue line could be... DeKeyser Trouba Nemeth Hronek Cholowski Seider Seems pretty decent to me.

And as of right now it appears Trouba may only play 1 season for the Rags...

No convincing needed. I think apple seider is tart yet delicious

I don't care that he didn't fill the 2C hole. I don't care that he signed some veteran stopgaps. In fact, I said numerous times that he was probably going to sign veteran stopgaps. It's what he did in his first offseason as Tampa's GM. It's only disappointing to people who are laboring under the illusion that we're anything but an organization that's still in the middle of a painful rebuild. Maybe he could've acquired Marleau. Maybe he shouldn't have signed the UFAs that he signed. I dunno. At the end of the day, I don't think it really matters all that much. We suck, there's basically nothing we can do to truly accelerate the rebuild timeline right now, we need to get some (more) elite talent in the pipeline, we need to endure some more pain for a little while longer. I don't like the situation, but it is what it is. Yzerman felt we could use some depth (I explained that we basically had no decent veteran shutdown defenseman outside of DeKeyser and that having another Nielsen gives us a bit more depth) and it didn't come at great cost, so whatevz.

I think what's going unsaid is that Yzerman wasn't trying to improve the team this year beyond stop gaps

Jesus. What a pile of bulls***.

LOL Dude. He's been GM of this team for all of three months. Eff me. Also, let's be honest. You're trying to be a little iconoclastic here no? It's sort of your thing right?

Well considering we were top 10 on most boards last year, I would assume we moved up a bit since then. I'd think we're top 5 or so in the league in prospects, with a solid young core already graduated. I was high on Jurco and Smith (Sproul too), not so much Pulkkinen though. You love bringing up when people were wrong, but never when people were right. Remember when everyone was super high on Ouellet and Marchenko and I said they both sucked. I also said for year's that Jensen was the best of the lot, and he clearly was. I also said Saarijarvi wouldn't amount to s*** and Hronek would be very good. You can keep bringing up the times I was wrong, but I've been right plenty as well... Of course not all of our prospects will pan out, but we haven't had prospects of this caliber for over 20 years, maybe longer. So yes, I'm very optimistic with the group of players / prospects we have in the organization.

Obviously not how much cap space the Wings currently have. We could have taken Marleau's contract, plus just about any other bad deal from around the league. It's a somewhat interesting partial evaluation of cap usage, but ultimately meaningless. Acquiring talent is the hard part of building a team. Figuring out how to pay for it is relatively easy. We could have afforded Panarin and Trouba (contract-wise, maybe not the trade cost). Instead we got Flip and Nemo and $15M in potential cap space we won't use. But at least now we'll get to listen to a new round of idiots telling us how bad contracts ruined our dynasty. Glad this kind of bulls*** was legitimized on a paywall site instead of remaining the tripe of fan blogs. Thanks Dom Lucyzipzamzergyzym.

meh. I'll start complaining about the cap situation when we've got a young core that's worthy of a Cup and bad contracts are catastrophically hindering our ability to open and maintain a Cup window. I suspect Yzerman was fine with signing Flip and Nemeth to two-year deals because he dgaf. I think he feels we're at least two years away from seriously contending. By that point, most of these bad contracts that everyone's always harping on will be off the books.

we should go back to topic and stop this, because it becomes more and more personal and I don´t need that.