Personally, I have ero faith in GMMG when it comes to buulding this team and signing UFAs.
This offseason, he signed toffoli, which was a great signing, but hen threw 10's of million to Wennberg, Kunin, Grundstrom, Dyllandrea, Goodrow etc. This was after several millions to lindbom, sturm, benning, and several others.
I dont know if Grier was trying to lose this year (or last year) and thats why he purposely gave garbage 10s of millions of dollars. However, if he was actually trying to win, he has so spectacularly failed to sign well, that its almost laughable. I HATED the wennberg signing (look back through all the old posts), and its turned out as expected.
Grier has drafted well (I think, though of course until they play in the NHL all the love of musty, cherny, dick etc remains TBD)., and his trades for walman and ceci were solid. Askarov is obviously very promising too. But, to build a winner, you have to add actual talent in the UFA market. I have ZERO trust in grier to do it. I also have Zero trust in his development and medical staff. How many more pointless 2 penalty games does Smith need to have to realize that he was better served starting the AHL?
obviously the celly bad luck hurts, but If grier had spent the 25M this summer on respectable players (10M unspent and approx 15M on Goodie+kunin+wennberg+grund+dyll), we would be a solid team. nearly every game is close. We are 2 or 3 more toffoli-like players from being 4-2-1 instead of 0-5-2. If grier had half a brain and a modicum of skill in idetifying talent, he could have gotten them.
Needless to say, im really pissed, and really disappointed.
My bets arent lookin' too good :-(
p.s.: all this talk of getting a good UFA D is pointless with grier at the helm. He will throw millions to other team's #6/7 guys and more 4th line grinders. What a crap GM when it comes to adding free agent talent...