Quoting: SweetRevenge19
Zadina is already proving himself top line and driving play better than Mo right now. Mantha is proving he can’t drive the the 2nd line by himself, he isn’t that type of player, his career needs McDavid or another skilled center feeding him pucks so he can be most effective. He’s being wasted. Selling him now fits our timeline and helps the rebuild by adding extra assets to fill out more holes. Which there are a lot. It’s taking one step back to take three steps forward. Bert is effective on any line. Raymond coming soon. Holloway ready soon. Veleno coming soon. Add Berggren to list if you like. Getting the franchise center in 2022 draft is imperative and a must have for this rebuild. I can see Danault, but he will want more term than I think Wings offer and it doesn’t really move the needle. And but Hall didn’t sign, and he’s unlikely to sign another 1year. Like you admit, Hall doesn’t move the needle for us yet, so it’s almost pointless, and unlikely anyways and takes us out of a top 3 pick in the most important draft in a decade. Just like hanging onto Mantha doesn’t make sense when we’re still so far off.
There are problems with your ideas.
Teams in rebuild do not trade younger players for even younger unproven players and picks. In 3 years teams will want Holloway, if he is good, and they will say it helps the re uild.
Two no teams in a rebuild take in horrible cap contracts for nothing, even if they have the cap space. That is just not how it works. You want the Wi gs to take on Neal's contract for nothing. Why would Yzerman due that, you never answered that question? To even out the cap is not Wings problem, it is the Oilers probelm. If you want Wings to solve the problem you have to pay for that solution. Simple business equation.
I guess in short, rebuilding clubs have to set a line in the sand and then go from there. Yzerman has set the line and guys like Larkin, Bertuzzi Mantha, Hronek, Zadina and Seider are the building blocks. You build from there. We have already taken the 3 steps back and we can only go up from there, not back again. If they did they could lose the fan base.
Again I beleive Yzerman will continue to build the team thru the draft, cherry pick 1 and two contract players to fill gaps, until his draft picks are ready and then dig into the free agent pool. Until then his core will be ent as CT unless he gets a to good to be true offer. And I believe, contrary to you that this is not it.