A complaint about Jarmo Kekalainen that we’ve repeated in articles and comments here at The Cannon, and on The Cannon Cast, is that he collected good players, but didn’t effectively build a team out of them. He also overpaid too many depth players, which left little flexibility under the salary cap.
One example of this problem is Damon Severson. He’s a solid player, but was it worth signing him to an 8 year contract as he entered his age 29 season? Is he worth a $6.25M cap hit per season? Per CapFriendly, the best comparables for him are Hampus Lindholm and Noah Hanifin.