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“I like size,” Chiarelli said. “Especially in our division. To get out of our division you’re going to need some guys that can lean on the bigger players in L.A. and Anaheim.”

He talked about the impact of his moves at the trade deadline.

“You see how it changed the complexion. So that’s something we’re going to try to continue to do.”

But that’s just one facet of the rebuild. They’re not as mobile or skilled on defence as they have to be to get the puck in stride to a talented forward corps that still doesn’t score enough. So there is work to be done there, too. It’s generally accepted that an upgrade on defence will come at the expense of their surplus at forward.

“That’s probably the easiest formula,” he admitted.

But a core forward? Because everybody asks about the core — Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle among them. Not necessarily, he argued. He could deal their first-round pick, he suggested. But he was just entertaining the question, and it seems highly unlikely that he would pass up a very good player, as high as No. 1, as low as No. 5. Some of them can help right away, at the bargain price of an entry level contract. Hard to turn away from those economics.

He already has the starting goalie he wants and on Sunday threw open the contest for backup. He has the franchise player everybody wants, and so happy was he with Connor McDavid’s performance on the ice, in the community and in the dressing room, that the kid is likely to be named captain next season, a year before most thought it would happen.

Whatever Chiarelli does, and doesn’t do from now on, he’s working with a template, his own, that delivered a Stanley Cup a few years into his tenure in Boston. So the benefit of the doubt is still his.

dbarnes@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/jrnlbarnes