By Dave Semyck
It has been a while since Tampa Bay was "relevant" in the league. Some other GMs and more than likely some players looked at Tampa Bay as a lame duck over the past few seasons. It is believed that management either stepped away from the details of the season or was so content with the team that they didnt want to make any changes. If you can remember, in the middle to late 2000's the Chicago Bulls of the NBA suffered from the same type of complicacy that seems to be hitting Tampa Bay. They had a core of players, none of them were really any good at all, and they would not get rid of a single player. They were so dead set that they had the future in their hands that they ignored reality. Tampa Bay, is trying to change that.
We know that Tampa Bay made a splash at the draft and traded away a few draft picks and some prospects to go up and grab Kirby Dach. There was some confusion on why Tampa Bay would give up multiple firsts and prospects for one prospect. The answer, to them, was simple.... change. Kirby Dach is going to lead the new era of Tampa Bay moving forward and Tampa Bay vows that every single year there will be a new addition to the core. The future core in Tampa Bay currently consists of Dach (18), Julius Honka (25) and Joe Hicketts (22). Some may look at that and chuckle but Tampa looks at it as opportunity. Every single name on the roster that was not listed there is available in an effort to rebuild in a winning fashion. Tampa Bay is not rebuilding, they are retooling, they will win.
Players like Malkin, Hall, Schenn are critical to the teams success as they will help develop and grow the current youngsters of the team to eventually take over their roles. Tampa Bay expects to make the playoffs each of its next three seasons but expects that the fourth season from now they will be on top of the conference. The retooling approach is actually pretty neat if you can pull it off. The top players will help the youngsters turn into top players, you flip the veterans for young players and your previous young player now can help the youngsters improve. There could easily be three cycles over six seasons until you have a solid roster of 30 or under players that can win. Thats the approach that Tampa Bay will be taking and we will see how it pans out.
10/19/2020 - 430 words
