"Wine no longer makes my heart glad; a little of it makes me sad, much makes me melancholy. My soul is faint and impotent; in vain I prick the spur of pleasure into its flank, its strength is gone, it rises no more to the royal leap. I have lost my illusions. Vainly I seek to plunge myself into the boundless sea of joy; it cannot sustain me, or rather, I cannot sustain myself. Once pleasure had but to beckon me, and I mounted, light of foot, sound, and unafraid. When I rode slowly through the woods, it was as if I flew; now when the horse is covered with lather and ready to drop, it seems to me that I do not move. I am solitary as always; forsaken, not by men, which could not hurt me, but by the happy fairies of joy, who used to encircle me in countless multitudes, who met acquaintances everywhere, everywhere showed me an opportunity for pleasure. As an intoxicated man gathers a wild crowd of youths about him, so they flocked about me, the fairies of joy, and I greeted them with a smile. My soul has lost its potentiality. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!" - Kierkegaard (as "A"), Either/Or
tl;dr Kids = Possibility, hope, allure of the unknown. Veterans = Zzzzz.
You do need veterans. But do you need so many veterans? I think that's the point of contention for a lot of people. There's a difference between "some veteran leaders" and "4,000 veterans, mediocrity as far as the eye can see, oldest team in the league." Abdelkader, Daley, DeKeyser, Ericsson, Helm, Glendening, Green, Jensen, Kronwall, Nielsen, Nyquist, Vanek, Zetterberg. So much old. Soooo much old.
But, I mean, it is what it is. The mandate was "Keep The Streak Alive," our prospect pool has been unremarkable for a long time, and so we leaned on veterans. And now we're slowly getting younger, because The Streak is dead and buried and the overall quality of our prospect pool is improving. So it's all good.
