I agree. I don't think we are necessarily worse than last year, I think that is the reason I am frustrated is that we had a wide open canvass to take a step forward and we went lateral.

The Guentzel trade looks great now that we have Bunting and we wouldn't have been re-signing Jake near the numbers he got in free agency. He was gone anyway so we filled a hole with a good player on a good contract and added to the pool.

How we do this season is going to be highly driven by what we do to fill the 1LW slot. We still have some cap space to make a deal. Seems extremely unlikely Yager can make that big of a leap, but I almost wonder if that is why they havent filled the spot yet... holding out hope he can make the leap?

I think you can make the case we are better this year because we have at least finally addressed our teams most staggering weakness... coaching. Quinn did an awesome job with Karlsson and the SJ PP. If he can replicate that we are in a wildcard spot. If he can also figure out a way for Graves to function with Karlsson we are going to be in great shape.
- MacPatty

We've had a semi open canvass the last few years. For some reason, we are tripling down on bottom 6 forwards and depth dmen instead of using cap space to acquire talent and scoring.