There will be mass revisionism, so I think it's important to hammer down that these people were okay with like, 90% Trump and went along with him thinking he wouldn't be 100% Trump despite always being 100% Trump.

Yup. real thin margins on em. Build out better depth or get Elite talent. They needed younger players to continue what they did last year or take another step and neither has happened as well.

Just like "Defund the Police" - need to run on a different slogan if normies are going to take it up.

But yeah. Drastic re-thinking of it all, definitely.

I also think the true reason for where they're at now is what's left unsaid by your gradings here - no A or A- players as well. Maybe the goalie.

And it isn't a criticism of really anyone on the team or the org. Just how the team has laid. Hardest players to get/find/acquire.

Yup. The extended version of what makes a guy Elite is that they make those around them better in ways that others do not. I'm not sure how many of those we have.

Wilson, Chychrun, PLD, Strome are in similar categories to me of being maybe in that Very Good range.

They're missing the piece(s) that are hardest to find. Elite players.

There's ways to build around that and I think they can do that. They have a good hockey team with good coaching and good players. Better than most.

When you lose two of your key contributors below that, you'll get what we see now. It's not to say that the construction is flawed, it just creates very narrow margins. Add in some young guys unable to match what they did last year - and here we are.

What they don't have are any players in that Elite or Near Elite range, maybe a player or two in the Very Good range. Guys in that "Elite" status, either truly Elite or Near Elite, are guys you can rely on to always be scoring/performing. Nearly every game, they're making stuff.

(and so am I)

It seems like a lot of people saw the election victories last week and take it to mean that Democrats should continue the shut down as it is "working" and I don't understand how so easily linked those two things became.

When I say these guys think they are inventing Machine God I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating for LOLs but that is really genuinely what they believe. They think they are inventing a higher form of life. They exist inside an insular group of other rich people that are radicalising each other.

Timing on it is pretty bad though. Feel like they shoulda went on a few more weeks or real signs that the public was starting to blame Dems for this, too (cause that was coming, just at what point).

Yeah we'll see how the public views this all. I guess where I come from is shutting the govt down is a resistance tool. When Republicans weren't going to come to the table at all, there's no fighting to do. They're ghouls, they're cool with SNAP expiring. They were never coming or flipping.

Republicans control both sides of congress. They won the votes. There is only so much Democrats and Dem leadership can do.

There was one road this was on, and it was going into January and the ACA subsidies expiring anyway and Republicans getting to blame Democrats for not trying.

Maybe I'm naive, but I always figured that this was how this was going to end. Rs, famously ghouls, would not budge. They weren't going to win enough over (the amount they needed to is not talked about enough, it's a very high number!) and they weren't going to negotiate.