Barzal’s production has been heavily impacted by the lack of talent around him. The only two wingers with an expected goals rate over 50% with Barzy last year were Palmieri and Lee.

That being said adding Kadri at that price doesn’t make any organization better in the long run. Furthermore, you seem to be ignoring the fact that the isles made back to back conference finals with middling wingers. Fixing the defense and having Sorokin in net should be enough to keep the isles in contention until the deadline.

I do believe that not getting Kadri will help long term. I remember Isles made it to the conference finals. Trotz is gone. He was fired after a "bad" season. The schedule was unfair to them. Is Lambert the answer? Sorokin idk if he'll be able to carry them to the playoffs. Varly looked shaky at times. Even in 2021 (playoffs), the Isles were getting brutally outplayed by the Penguins, Bruins and Lightning. I know that's just 3 teams. There's only so far u can go with mediocre offence.

I mean the isle won two of those three series, so I’m not sure when they got “brutally” outplayed. If you mean they lost games then yeah, they got “brutally outplayed.” You are questioning the isles goaltending, even tho Sorokin was phenomenal last year. Varly wasn’t as good as he was in 2020-2021, but replacing Leddy with Chara might have impacted that lol. Hell having Chara hurt their offense too lmao.

Just by making the blue line AVERAGE and having Sorokin/Varly as your goalie tandem, your team should be able to make the playoffs. The offense isn’t flashy, but maybe you need to look at why they were worse last year instead of just pointing out that they missed the playoffs. There’s not a lot of analysis in your post tbh. It just completely misses the mark imo.

The lack of a big point producer was a big factor in them missing the playoffs.