[PFellah]

Fire Brigade: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Brock Whitney here, bringing you another edition of the Fire Brigade. As always, I'm joined by Logan Marx, Stu Kennedy, and Sarah Shaw. The Stanley Cup playoffs are over, the NHL Entry Draft is days away, and we wanted to get together to take one last look at the season just finished, and to look ahead at what 2019-20 might hold for the Firebirds.

To tie both of those together into one jumping off question: what went wrong in the playoffs and how do they need to address it going forward? Stu, since you almost always have a strong opinion on things, we'll start with you.

Stu: Sure, Brock. Save me a few minutes at the end, and I'll tell you what I think about that tie you're wearing too. I think what you had with this team is a fixable problem, but one you have to be honest about, which is that about half this team was playing one line or one defense pair over their heads. Some of those guys did a good job stepping up in the regular season, but in the playoffs, you need difference makers, and I don't think the Firebirds had enough of those guys. They went out and got Kesler, he's solid. Nicky Sbruev is looking like he's going to be a player. Rick Nash was one on his good days. But they need more talent, pure and simple.

Logan: I'd maybe refine what Stu is saying a little. I think coming out of the expansion draft, their talent curve was kinda flat -- there wasn't a lot of difference between the guys on the top line and the guys on the 4th line or even the top line or two in the minors. Arguably some of those 3rd and 4th line guys were BETTER than the equivalent guys on other teams, and that worked for them over 82 games. But when they got to the playoffs, they didn't have that Steven Stamkos who could put the game on his back, and I think you need that.

Sarah: You particularly see that talent flattening with the group of defensemen they picked up. Other than maybe Adam Larsson, it never felt like there was much gap between, say, Mirco Mueller, who spent most of the year as a second-pair guy, and Adam Pelech, who spent the whole year in the minors. Pelech was probably better than minor-league talent and could've started for a lot of clubs; Mueller was maybe a little stretched compared to most other teams' #3 guy. I think it's a dynamic that came about because that's where the available talent in the expansion draft took them.

Stu: But Sarah, I think that's my frustration with this management team, they were content to collect chips and never cashed in. Imagine if they'd taken Pelech and Mueller and traded them for a real here-and-now second-pair guy. You saw it start to click in their heads a little bit with the Kevin Hayes trade, but I would've liked to see them be a little more aggressive once they realized they were a real contender.

Logan: But the flip side is "how do you recognize that moment when you've got no frame of reference?". They had a hot first month, but then they slowed down and played .500 hockey up through when they traded for Kevin Hayes. Sbruev started hot but then he had something like four points in December. At one point, second through seventh in the division was a gap of like 5 or 6 points. I don't think you can fault a brand-new organization for taking some time to evaluate what they've got before they start making large-scale changes.

Brock: So what do they need to do going forward?

Sarah: I think they're actually in a really good position for 2019. Most of the guys they're losing aren't core guys. Hagelin probably walks at 4 million. Bieksa at 1.7 is probably gone. Pominville was a rental to begin with. Maybe they bring Rick Nash back, but maybe not. Depending on what you do with some of the younger RFAs, you could be looking at 20, 25 million under the cap. That lets you add two, maybe even three difference makers without disrupting the core.

Brock: Any thoughts on specifically who they might be interested in?

Logan: I think you probably want to look at a true #1 defenseman, someone who can run the power play and maybe even generate some offense from the back. A month ago I would've said Drew Doughty, but winning a cup and winning the Norris might have blown up the market for him. The better play might be Erik Karlsson -- doesn't have the same buzz around him. There's also a lesser couple guys like Mike Green or Anton Stralman, if the price tag on the big guns got too high.

Stu (nodding vigorously in agreement): Now you're talking. These kids are nice and all, but you need a #1 guy holding down the fort.

Logan: I'd also want to add a forward or two. Center looks pretty solid -- Kesler, Hayes, Nash, Lowry... that's shaping up as a solid group up the middle. Left wing, you've got a nice top two in Perron and Sbruev, but then it drops off to Cogliano and... Helm?... if the season started today. Right wing, you've got Jesper Fast, Craig Smith, and Tyler Pitlick, and you could put Nail Yakupov in that conversation, but none of those are #1 guys. Fast was probably a miscast #2 at best. So if I were the GM, my first phone call when free agency opens is either Blake Wheeler or Mitch Marner. Heck, depending what sort of dollars they're asking for, maybe both!

Sarah: You could look at left wings as well, but it might make for some weird locker-room dynamics to have either your scoring leader or the kid who just won the Calder bumped down to the third line.

Stu: I don't think one year on the 3rd line would kill Sbruev's development. Or maybe you play him on the right side -- he did a lot of that in his rookie year and it worked out just fine. He had a great year, but let's remember that he's a 19-year-old kid and he can play where the team needs him to play.

Brock: Does anyone in the minors come into the conversation?

Logan: Probably not unless there are other moves in the pipe or somebody you wouldn't expect gets moved. I could see Yakupov pushing Pitlick for a roster spot. Dominik Simon had a good year in the minors last year, but would you start him over Adam Lowry or Riley Nash? Probably not, and I don't think you'd rather have him playing in the minors and working on his game rather than sitting on the bench as a scratch three nights out of four. Maybe one of the defensemen looks good in camp and you shuffle that bottom pairing or give DeAngelo a year in the minors so he can get more minutes. But there's no guy that's beating down the doors to claim a job.

Sarah: It also wouldn't surprise me if rather than go out and get a veteran replacement for Kevin Bieksa, they just promote one of those defensemen from the minors as the new swing guy. Pelech, Koekkoek, maybe Olofsson if they retain his rights.

Brock: Lastly, we have the draft coming up. Any thoughts there?

Sarah: This draft represents a bit of a tough position for them to be in. They're in kind of a middle ground where they're no longer in that rebuilding "stockpile as many picks" mode that Stu hates so much, but they're also not in that "one piece away from a Cup" mode where maybe you sell off your draft to add that one last piece. I think they just have to be patient and take what this draft gives them.

Stu: They do have a lot of picks in the second round. I would like to see them take one of those seconds and package it to try and move up and get a guy who's NHL ready. Even if it's just to make a statement that "we're competing now". It doesn't even have to be Top 10 or Top 5... just something that's a little more aggressive than collecting future bottom-six guys.

Logan: I wouldn't go there in the first round, but I was thinking they could use a goalie to develop. Right now Grubauer is your starter and Ullmark is your future guy, but in a couple of years Ullmark is going to reach a point where you have to play him or let him walk. Or make him the starter and let Grubauer leave. Either way, it would be good to identify a guy who could be the next guy once you hit that decision point. They picked up Austin Quincey in 2018 but he doesn't look like he's going to be the guy they hoped he'd be.

Brock: Well, we'll start getting answers to all these questions in just a few days, but that's all the time we have for today. Until next time, I'm Brock Whitney, and this has been the Fire Brigade. Thanks for joining us.