I am not saying that Gute is a bad GM, but this organization as a whole doesn’t weight past performance nearly heavily enough into their analysis of what a player will become. They don’t do it at the collegiate level, and they don’t do it at the professional level.
In a vacuum, yes, you are paying for a player’s future, not their past. However, as you alluded to, the past 3 seasons should give you some indication on what the future holds.
Picking up 5th year options of guys like Savage and LVN is poor procedure based on, again, a sunk cost fallacy simply because of the level of investment.
If LVN were a 4th round pick we wouldn’t be dreaming of giving him a 1 year, 15M dollar extension for 2027.