Quoting: A_K
To be honest there's so many different things going on with this team right now that I can't tell what direction is the right way to go. Hopefully Doug chooses one.
By my assessment though, rougher goaltending would've made this season the low-water mark. Now that might still happen this-coming year - with or without a Binner/Hofer combo (goaltending can be fickle). As exciting and promising as some of the younger guys are, they're not all here yet. And the veterans are just getting another year older, slower, etc. Wouldn't be the worst thing to be patient for another year and try to make some low-risk, high-reward moves to set up for the future.
I’m more concerned about the Kyrou and Thomas iteration of the core. I’d consider those two and Parayko the core currently.
I think the most beneficial thing we could do would be to add a solid defenseman in the 24-27 age range. However in order to do that, we’re going to have to cut bait with either Krug or Faulk which I don’t think is a huge deal.
Ultimately I think the plan will be to middle out like this while contracts expire and then once they do make a large splash with a UFA defenseman if we can’t find one before. The issue with that is it’s rare those higher end caliber defenseman hit UFA status, because as we can all see, when you let one go you create a massive problem trying to stop gap or piece together the hole that’s left behind.
It’s definitely not a perfect plan, but there really is no perfect plan. I’d imagine we try and find a way to address a 2nd line center and move out a defenseman in hopes of adding another that can profile to be more of a two-way guy than we currently have.
I’d be shocked if our first pick in this draft was a forward, but there’s certainly an avenue where that could happen.
Truthfully I know it’s very unlikely, but I would move our 1st if we could get a guy like Harley out of Dallas.