Is London legit good now?

[McWolf 3,115]

These past two seasons have been pretty good for London. Well, as good as you'd expect from an expansion team. Finished 2nd to last in the inaugural season, then dead last the next season, but over these 2 seasons, we got loads of talent from the Expansion Draft and the S73 and S74 Entry Drafts. All in all, I think most of the players we got early in these drafts have pan out just as well as I imagined they would, which placed us this offseason in a situation where, if I decided to not do a single thing, we would probably have been a pretty competitive in two or three seasons, when these prospects got in their peak. But after two straight seasons out of the playoffs, we decided we'd try to turn things around faster than that. Two big trades saw us giving up two 1st rounders, a 2nd rounder and a 3rd rounder to get Hugh Jass, Erik Killinger and Chad Magnum.

 

Now, I've received some bad reviews on these trades. I think we can all agree the overall value was great for London, but I do agree that it might seem like we are jumping the gun and trying to be competitive too fast. Here's what I think about it though. Let's look 3 years forward. In 3 seasons, Magnum will be done and both Jass and Killinger will be in their last season - if they even want to finish their career in London. But in 3 seasons, we'll have a deadly forward core, with Volchenkov, Trivium, Nousiainen and Schwarz - 4 draftees from S73 or S74 - all being in the later half of their career. Our current prospects will no doubt have made it to the big league by then. On defense, Kankkunen will be a star by then, and Malone will definitely be an outstanding starting goaltender. So the qustion is: do we really need to add two first round picks to that future core? Adding stars now turn us into a playoffs team, but I think we're still going to be fine in the late game, despite losing two 1st round picks. It bridges the gap between now and the moment our own draftees are ready to be in leadership roles.

 

And we are 7-2-0 now, so I guess we have been doing some things right.

[Banackock 8,048]

[McWolf 3,115]

1 minute ago, Banackock said:

We're doing the Queen proud