All bull****...no offense. I have a hard time believing that Blake has the 'green light' from Luc and the ownership to 'tank'. With that said, if you think Blake is so comfortable with his job security, and that losing every game has no impact on that, you are friggin nuts.
Blake signed the new coach to a five year contract. Five. What does that tell you?
They are stuck with under performing veterans on big contracts that--outside of Kovalchuk--they can point at and say "Dean's fault." While I am pro-Lombardi, I can't even argue against that since he is the one that signed them or traded for them in the case of 77.
I didn't say that they will lose every game. Tanking doesn't mean you lose every game: it means you purposely don't put out the best team you have available for short term pain but--hopefully--long term success.
Team finishes next-to-last in the entire NHL. Key addition is Ben Hutton for one year at $1.5MM and not signed until training camp already started. If you are trying to be a lot better than the year before, why do you run back the same team? The answer is because you aren't trying to be much better than the year before.
I may be nuts, but this take isn't what makes me crazy. Bluc got AEG to bite on a rebuild. In return, AEG basically didn't spend any more money on this team than it was already obligated for. Season seat prices remain the same as last year so no bump there and, more than likely, a loss as people cancelled their seats. The tea leaves say that they don't plan on being competitive until the 2021 season at best.
Yes, they are not trying to lose every game and Blake isn't tanking so hard that he is forcing TMac to play MacDermid 25 minutes a night but that is the beauty of it: he doesn't have to. The team, as constructed, finished next to last already. With better coaching and whatnot, they will probably finish higher than last season but that still isn't saying much. Remember that they actually had Muzzin for a bunch of games last season but this season it is a worse group of defensemen right from the hop.
The only error in my original post is excluding 23 from the positive play veteran group. He actually could be looking at another contract from the Kings. Other than that, yeah man, the plan is to suck.