I don't agree when you say the team didn't fully tear itself down.
It's not really a case of agree or disagree, you're just wrong. They didn't trade Bozak. They didn't trade JVR. They didn't trade Kadri. They didn't trade Gardiner. In all of those cases except Kadri for now, they kept those guys and got nothing back for them. The assets they could have gotten for them would have easily been enough for at least another Muzzin type deal and potentially even more. At the very least you're probably talking about multiple first and second round picks in our prospect base.
you're just wrongThere's the Nik we know and love, rounding into playoff form. Never change my friend!
I have taken your intemperate remark and run it through StatThruster®, my proprietary software package, and based on that analysis I concede you are 57% right. We definitely should have traded JVR and Bozak, but not Kadri (after all he was touted for 18/19 as the 1st-line center of an uncontainable third line) and probably not Gardiner since you would have damaged the very area of the team that needs bolstering.
And the bolded part of your quote is where you are 43% wrong. Neither JVR and Bozak as rentals were going to return a roster D-man of any decent caliber, and it's hard to see a Gardiner rental trade doing the same. JVR was returning a 2nd at best, Bozak not even that. Gardiner may have gotten a 1st but more likely a 2nd. The only one of the four that would get you a good return (roster player or 1st) would have been Kadri, and that only if he had been traded last summer before he went blotto.
So instead of "at least" a probable group of 1sts and 2nds, StatThruster® projects "at most" a 1st, and maybe a couple of 2nds + lower, based on 1,000 iterations of its Bayesian model, which is widely regarded as unassailable.