PrinceLH wrote:

listening to Chayka in interviews, he sounds better than what you heard from Treliving.
Low bar I know. but Ill take it at this point

Nothing much will happen until the draft and free agency. I’m still a proponent of taking the best player available, which the consensus pick being McKenna. The issue with trading down, you get into a scenario like 2016. The first overall pick, Matthews vs the second overall pick, Lainie. Same could be said about 1984, when Lemieux went first overall and Kirk Muller went number 2. Take the first pick and bank it as a cornerstone of your franchise. If you Fuck around, you find out.

McKenna is not the consensus #1 pick. He’s not McDavid, he’s not MacKinnon, he’s not Matthews, or Crosby or Ovechkin or even Celebrini. He’s not a generational superstar player. There is plenty of debate and merit behind taking Stenberg over McKenna because he plays a more complete game. That’s exactly why this is a good scenario to trade down if possible.

McKenna could just as easily become Alexis Lafreniere or Nico Hischier or Juraj Slafkovsky or Taylor Hall. Not terrible players but not the best player from their draft either. And in every one of those scenarios, had those teams traded down, they could have picked a better player plus gained assets. It’s up to the scouting department to make that expert analysis and see the value.