Just a couple thoughts about a few popular opinions...

[cdgraham]

So i have been lurking around these forums for a long time and i've noticed a lot of people saying that if we are not doing so well around trade deadline we should sell... Particularly now with Horvat being out 6 weeks i keep hearing "guess we're sellers now". Anyways, just posting now to just get peoples opinions on why exactly? It seems to me we actually have a pretty good team for the first time in a while with a solid new core in place and more already waiting in the wings (petterson, dahlen, lind, gaudette etc.) Do we want to disrupt this? Just for more picks? Or even prospects? Ask buffalo how all their picks and prospects are working? Arizona also says hola. We have depth with veterens and young guys on the team, and im sure the veteren depth has an impact on how our young guys perform. Do we really think they would do as well if we traded say, Gagner, (who to my eyes has actually been serviceable, not quite worth the contract but not nearly as expendable as people make him out to be, at least not yet) Vanek, (who is actually killing it with his contract one of our leading scorers) and honestly really anyone else. We finally have Depth and people just want to immediately  gut it second we fall below .500 lets say? And then what? we will fall even more and how do we exactly expect to get better? Our prospects will come in and save the day? They are good prospects but this is not putting them in a spot to succeed. we would be a team of young players and rookies, with no depth. But i guess we would have draft picks.. If we want to be successful we add these prospects to the depth we already have to make us extremely deep. The time for selling is over.  These guys like petterson will come over already playing on a decent team adding to it to make it great, as opposed to coming to a poor team trying to make it decent, maybe great? with luck? Anyways what you guys think?

Also putting one last thing out there, a common opinion is losing hamhuis and vrbata for nothing was one of jbs mistakes.. well this is a poor notion. Teams obviously held out hoping he would just give in and sell them for like a 4th round pick or something as opposed to lose him for nothing.. his price was not met. Teams thought he would lower his price, he didnt. Anyways, do we really think if he traded them that year for anything below his price we would have gotten such good returns for hansen and burrows? NO. Teams knew this time around he wasnt kidding and if they didnt meet his price he just wouldnt trade them. He had done it before. So this time he got his price. Losing hamhuis and vrbata for nothing was savvy in the long run.