Apologies for not being clearer. I never said you are a parody account. I’m fairly certain you are not, but I suspect notenoughbrewer is a deliberate parody. What I said is that you reminded me of that poster because he/she always talked about Brewer, another former captain, and pretty much nothing else. I’ll put it another way, I’m hoping you have more to contribute to the board than rehashing the Pietro departure in perpetuity. It’s good to have passionate Blues fans here. My comparison to notenoughbrewer wasn’t meant as an insult, more just an amusing similarity.
I’m not going to defend Armstrong’s side of things and maybe it really is ultimately his failure, but I do find it pretty ridiculous when some posters on this board don’t credit him for constructing the roster that won the Cup, as though Larry Pleau had something to do with it. I don’t agree that we are privy to enough details of the negotiation to make such abusive comments about Armstrong fairly, and it detracts from your argument. To me, Pietro looked like he knew he wasn’t re-signing when they were in the bubble. He has made some later comments about watching Vegas play in the bubble, and envisioning where he’d fit in. I think he was already strongly positioned toward going there. You can talk about clauses and bonuses, but the fact is that Pietro took less money and less term to go elsewhere. The point is: it’s a complicated situation and to talk about it in such melodramatic (black and white) terms like it’s all stupid Armstrong’s big fat ego ignores Pietro’s agency in this.
The last thing I meant to do was to start arguing about the negotiation AGAIN.
Let me circle back to Pietro appreciation, for the thread’s sake. Both Bouwmeester and Pietro have calm demeanors that can really help set a tone when things are not going well on the ice. The team will miss that. I think there is enough veteran leadership to offset the loss, but it bears watching.