Ku
Kub
Kub and Dach ares gonna be good, but TT and Panarin are franchise guys. I mean...Seabrook and 1 goalie and your there.
TT should have been bridged, and the center that actually developed we have missed for three years is actually Danult who turned into a stud player and we lost for a rental.
Danult/Panarin/TT for
Seabs/Smith(AA)/Shaw/Saad and maybe have to pick your #1 goalie
To me, Danault is the biggest loss. He would look great on the 3rd line. I don't necessarily disagree that TT is a loss, but then again, I don't value him as highly as others (admittedly, I never did, even when he was here; so of course I'd say that). I really didn't mind when he was traded at the time -- same with Leddy, who you could also argue was lost by Stan. But I understood those moves. Both were undersized players who really weren't performing to their standards, at least while they were here. TT wasn't good enough for the top six while here, and really wasn't a true 3rd liner. Maybe the change of scenery lit a fire under him, but personally, I'd rather take my chances on a guy like Dach over having kept TT.
Losing Panarin sucked, but then again, Saad has been our best forward this year. It's not a wash of course, because Panarin is obviously the more productive player, but it doesn't suck as badly as the Danault trade. Saad, to me, is still a solid utility player. He can PK, you can throw him on the PP. He can muck it up along the boards and has good size; and he's a serviceable top-six -- for six million a year, that's a pretty decent return, compared to Panarin, who is lights-out offensively, but is one-dimensional, at an astronomical price per year.
I still think trading AA was just stupid, as was the Joker trade. I'd rather have AA in the lineup over Smith. I was fine with the idea of trading AA, but only if it would have opened up substantial cap room and/or we were getting a better player in return -- but neither of those things occurred. Obviously, Stan wanted to bolster the bottom six, but since he blows at actually identifying talent, he over-valued guys like Smith, Carpenter, Quenneville (who hasn't even been up yet). He's always done this: Johnson, Regin, Garbutt, Bouma, Wingels, Kunitz (my God), etc. It's nothing new; and that's just with regard to the bottom six. His record on top-six and especially the D is even worse; and his drafting is utter shit, as we literally have no one in the pipeline in the 10+ years he's been at the helm, other than his most recent picks in Boqvist and Dach (and Debrincat: his one hit). He has no idea how to fill out a roster that isn't already completely stacked -- no idea whatsoever.
