Quoting: jonh514
The truth is that in any given season some of your players will play better and some will play worse. I think Mittelstadt and Krebs are unfortunately gonna be bottom 6 players on a cup contending team. That's not a bad thing to have, but hoping that they take huge leaps forward is ... Wishful thinking at this point. Krebs may break the top 6 on the wing.
I believe Cozens & TT can be a good top 6 tandem, but... If you can have a Scheifele back by trading Cozens that's a good option because you are getting a 70-80 pts center back and Cozens would be lucky to become that.
No team competes with 100% of players they drafted themselves.
Buffalo didn't draft Krebs, Tuch, Tage, Joker, Levi etc. Most of the teams that have won the cup in recent years all drafted their core players and then built around them with complimentary pieces.
The Avs drafted Makar, Mac, Landeskog, Rantanen, and Byram. The pieces they added were mostly compliments to fill out the roster.
The lightning drafted Hedman, Vasi, Stamkos, Point, Kucherov, Cirelli, and acquired guys like Cernak and Sergachev while they were still developing.
The Blues drafted Tarasenko, Parayko, Pietrangelo, and Binnington then added pieces around them along with RoR.
The Caps, Pens, Hawks, Kings all drafted most or all of their core pieces during their cup runs.
The pieces added to most of those rosters were not top end talent, most of what was added was solid middle 6 forwards and bottom 4 Dmen.