The stutzle argument seems pretty petty. You can say all you want that a potential top three pick was supposed to be special but the reality is the top three went in order as expected by virtually every pundit. The media always hems and haws a bit to create drama but non of them were expecting Byfield to fall to 3. By all that the kings picked who they should have, the BPA at the slot. The Turcotte pick might be more contentious since someone did change things up there. The Hawks were widely expected to take Turcotte at 4, when they took Dach people were legitimately surprised. The Kings taking Turcotte at 5 only needs to be examined from the standpoint of how confident were they that they had done their due diligence for an asset that might not have been available. Lets face it, when you're drafting high you might do a bit of work on the number 1 but are you really focusing efforts there? We won't really ever know if the Kings were settled on Dach if the hawks took Turcotte, but the fact that he was a Chicago product and they didn't take him should have set off some alarm bells. I also highly doubt that the plan was ever to take Mortiz at 5 had the Hawks taken Turcotte. In any case I'm glad that the front office has woken up on a few things:
1) Sending Clarke back to Jrs, the kid needs ice time in games. The mistakes he made at the WJC were catastrophic and clearly of the "I'm better than these guys/doing too much" variety. Simply put he was chomping at the bit to put on a show. He needs that feeling of 3 games in 4 days week after week after week.
2) Letting Cal percolate in the A. Copley may or may not be the answer, but letting Cal work through some serious cycles down in the A the best bet at salvaging his game. If he's still down there in March I won't consider it the end of the world, unless the wheels come off the Copley bandwagon.
3) Byfield on the wing, with Kupari and others taking that 3/4th line center role. Lizotte for as much as I love his spunk needs to be our 4th line leader. That third line needs to be functional and we have players ahead of Byfields current ability for the role. If this was a non contending team I'd say go nuts with Byfield, but there are expectations and that doesn't allow the time or the situational deployments he would need.
With the power play actually adding goals and stats to the players lines this year I think its going to be a lot easier to stomach Kopi's crew playing 18 minutes and basically being even at 5s. Getting Fiala away from that and letting him go nuts in less minutes is probably the right answer. Danaults the line that will need to be our general difference maker to get us those 5v5 breathing room goals. Now if they could only shore up that PK. I'm telling you I think the problem is structural and I hope they use this 4 day break coming up to implement the personel that can play the structure they're trying, or to adjust it to the people they're playing. I don't think they're almost there with what they've got at all.
