Joined: Sep. 2020
Posts: 3,525
Likes: 2,000
Don't think other fans are trying to clown on CBJ as much as they look at this team and see no real direction.
The core you listed out is a great example: Gaudreau was a big FA signing and is 30, already looking like he might have lost a step. Is the team on his timeline? Are they going to be good in the next 3 years? You could put Severson and Jenner in this same category. Werenski, Laine, and Provorov are all 25/26. Is the team being built around them? Are they really the 1LW/1D/2D of a cup contender? Results so far are I would say pretty generously mixed. Then you have Fantilli/Jiricek/Johnson. Are any of them going to take huge leaps? Fantilli and Jiricek are looking like very good bets but there's no such thing as a sure thing. Even if they do take steps, are they 1C/2C/1D leaps or 2C/2W/2D leaps -- there's a huge difference between the two? Is Merzlikins more of a Kuemper/Jarry/Markstrom or a Campbell/Petersen/Grubauer? Are guys like Marchenko/Chinakov/Boqvist going to top out as anything more than depth pieces?
Trust me I am the last one to suggest that if you're not a top 5 team you should be tearing everything down, but to do a "retool" right there needs to be some concrete sporting reason to do it. Are you the Caps or Pens and trying to wring out every last drop of two of the top 10 players of all time? Are you LA and selling everything except your franchise future HOF 1C and 1D? Are you NYR and know that your market can lure legit MVP contenders like Panarin and Fox? Are you Dallas and luck into a franchise 1W/1D/1G in the same draft?
Compound all of these more big-picture concerns with the fact that your two highest-paid forwards in Gaudreau and Laine look absolutely awful, the team sucks, and other teams theoretically in similar or further behind stages of their lifecycles (PHI, MTL, OTT, BUF, ANA) look somewhere between better than expected and legitimately good and I feel like it's completely understandable that people are somewhat panicking.