Just gonna comment on a few of these. Letting Perron walk should have never happened. Letting Pietrangelo walk over a NMC also probably shouldn’t have ever happened.

That being said, aside from the extensions on Scandella and Leddy after a stretch of 15 games or so with Parayko should’ve never happened. I get the Scandella one tbh. It was our closest thing to a suitable partner for Parayko we had seen since JayBo retired. More of a fool me once situation. I hated the Leddy extension from the start. It’s Scandella 2.0. Paying term for a square peg to fit into a round hole because of a short stretch of success.

Krug was pretty much something that needed to be done. Our powerplay wasn’t great and the thought was Parayko would ascend into a 1D like Pietrangelo. Had the money and got a weapon. Faulk I never understood at the time. It was a fairly good deal. But we had Pietro and Parayko. There was nowhere to fit Faulk. Just didn’t make a lot of sense.

If we’re honest with ourselves, Walman, Edmundson, and Sundqvist all needed a change. They weren’t cracking the lineup or were struggling. Eddy was healthy scratched much of that cup run. Sunny was fresh off an ACL trae surgery and he was noticeably slow and we desperately needed defense.

Walman couldn’t crack the lineup.

Dunn hurt, but he wasn’t very trusted by our coaching staff at all the season prior. Was very shaky in his own end.

The Blues defense contracts really aren’t that bad. Parayko is still a top end defenseman. He needs a suitable partner though if he’s going to be put into the usage he is. Faulk is ok, was good the past two seasons. But hasn’t looked great this one. Krug is overpaid, Leddy is very average.

I'll concede that in the cases of Dunn, Edmundson, and especially Walman, there may be some hindsight involved. But IMO it speaks more to the philosophy of the coaching staff, i.e. why are guys that clearly possess NHL talent not valued or can't succeed in the system? We knew Dunn was gonna be Seattle's Shea Theodore and here we are. We didn't know it about Walman but he was never given an opportunity to play his game, he was strapped to Bortuzzo and told to play safe or ride pine.

I had no issue with trading for Scandella but extending him for a tacky amount after like 8 good games was the issue. Same with Leddy, the trade seemed necessary, the extension was brutal especially with the context of choosing to give that money to Leddy vs Perron.

We will see what happens but I've become extremely pessimistic that Army will be able to fix anything on defense without falling into a full, long rebuild. And maybe that doesn't waste the entire primes of Thomas and Kyrou but it definitely could have been avoided.