Hockeyville USA
Registered User
If you draft well every single year, you're then able to replace the players you lose due to the cap crunch with cheap ELCs who are productive. The NFL model of plug and play. When you don't draft well enough, you're forced to sign the Sheary types of the world in UFA, many of whom don't perform to the contract level.I don't think it's all that fair to criticize that regime for drafting. Other things, sure, but their drafting was the major reason we won two cups. Every team missed on the players you're talking about, not just us. This is all relative. Not a single team drafted better than we did during that era. They drafted two, possibly three, Hall of Famers in under a decade.
The issue is we had SO much good talent to choose from, that when it came time to pay the best of it, we didn't have enough money for the rest of it. Which is pretty much what the salary cap is designed to do.
If they had drafted DeBrincat, they have a natural Johnson replacement and are able to trade Johnson when he was an asset, not an anchor, or just let Johnson walk in UFA, for example.