I suppose from my point of view, it’s about now a budget is used. Are we trying to lure people in for bigger wages who may have took their first steps in Europe in German, Czech, Swedish or Slovakian leagues first (Herr, Carr, Malmqvist,Fick ) added proven European players (Matheson,Connelly, Jakobs, Loiseau) and then gambles on players who haven’t been tested too much (Deutsch and Golokovs) to build around a dynamic?
If you look at the players on an individual basis:
Loiseau: point a game ECHL player, 0.9 PPG player in 2 comparable European leagues
Quist: 3rd top scorer in Danish league
Fick: 0.5ish PPG player in the ECHL from defence last season
Deutsch: 24 year old with KHL, SHL and EBEL league experience
Herr: 3 straight season AHLer with no drop downs at 26 going into his prime
Carr: 5 seasons over 90% save ratio goalie in the ECHL
Matheson: career AHLer with SHL experience
Golokovs: KHL experience at 24 0.8 PPG Elite league player
Malmquist: 0.75 PPG NCAA player at 22 who was invited to the Wild camp
Connelly: career AHLer, with SHL and EBEL experience
When you start to line those up, there’s some big league experience (however small) that are comparable with some of the other teams
Granted we don’t have that 500 game KHLer or the massive ex NHLer, but other than Ling, when has that worked for us?
On paper, I 100% agree that it doesn’t look as strong. But build in that experience alongside players who will probably look to push themselves to bigger leagues, maybe we have decided to spend the money on players on an upward trend rather than those on the downward. Maybe we’ve gone “come here, we’ll give you a chance to put yourself in the shop window to earn better money in a better league next season if you can come here and light it up.” It’s a massive risk but we’ve gone the other way for so long, why not give this approach a go
I really don’t know the finances but maybe GD and TW have invested in but I wanted to ply devils advocate here. Very easy for us to look at a CV and say “he’s expensive”
I’m hoping this prompts some debate