Quoting: mokumboi
1- I agree that Edmonton does some bad spending (though Ceci and Keith just arrived, so you can't count them when speaking of the past). But when two players take up more than a quarter of the cap, it's a problem.
2- Army's stupid contract work is a separate issue, but for what it's worth I agree 10000% that this is his major glitch. I get sick of seeing him take care of everyone else before dealing with the most important player(s), who he then drives off with an ego play.
As for "elite talent", the Blues have had plenty of it through the years. They never won the Cup until the team was based on overall balance that wears teams down, which just so happens to be, and has always been, my favorite way to build a team. Nowadays, pretty much every team has some elite talent - it's what they surround it with that makes a champion IMO.
3- Well, good for him. I'm still not interested. It's way too high of an opportunity cost.
Yeah, for sure those guys are brand new, bad example probably (especially if Edmonton does well this year lol) but Edmonton has had that issue for McDavid's entire tenure. Before Ceci it was Sekera, before Keith it was Neal, before Neal it was Lucic, before Kassian it was Russell. Armstrong's biggest weakness is contracts for his own guys for sure and Edmonton still makes his roster building looking insanely good.
And of course I'm not arguing for having an extremely top heavy lineup like the Leafs or Edmonton and I don't really think adding someone like Eichel would inherently do that. But teams do have to have both depth throughout the lineup and elite players, and that's something the 2019 Blues had. The idea that they were truly "balanced" is a bit of a myth. O'Reilly, Perron, Tarasenko all played close to a hundred more minutes in the playoffs than Sundqvist or Barbashev or Steen, and Pietrangelo/Parayko/Bouwmeester played over double what all the other defensemen played, because those are the guys that need to eat those minutes to have success. And it was good to have those crash and bang guys like Sundqvist and Barbashev and Maroon but look at what they were making.
I look at Tampa- the type of organization everyone should strive towards. They built the team the way you're talking- lots of depth, four lines going, etc. But that didn't compromise their elite talent. They were paying 9.5 million for Kucherov, 8.5 for Stamkos, 8.5 for Vasileviskiy, 7.8 for Hedman this year (Kucherov you can throw out if you'd like since he didn't play in the regular season but I'm talking playoffs). That's more than anyone on the Blues. And those were the guys playing the most time, as they should be. But that didn't stop them from surrounding them with really good players like Coleman, Gourde, Palat, Kilorn, McDonagh etc. They had such depth their third line was handling Montreal's top line, just like our second d-pairing went toe to toe with the top competition in 2019 when most teams have to use their top pair for that.
I don't think the Blues have that depth anymore, but they haven't really lost their "depth" guys. The guys they've lost (or are losing) are the guys taking those top minutes- Bouwmeester, Pietrangelo, Tarasenko etc., and yet they keep going back to the well with guys who are just fine and giving them more money. And I think it shows in our abysmal (for our standards) regular season this year and two poor playoff showings that we're hurting for the true top players.
I don't necessarily think Eichel is the ideal solution to that problem. All of your concerns about his injury are totally valid. But he is definitely 'a' solution, and even if we disagree on acquiring the player I don't think we can pretend that top talent isn't an issue for this team and point to success we had previously as the proof, because we leaned on the top guys then quite a bit even on a nominally "balanced" team.