I’m not saying signing a Marner or Ekblad will happen but it would be organizational malpractice to not offer a contract. If either or both say yes then you complete the deal.
There's nothing stopping next year's team from enduring a lot to make winning less than 20 games a possibility. Shit happens and it happens a lot to bad teams that are inexperienced. We have a lot of incoming prospects with less of a draft pedigree than Smith. It shouldn't surprise anyone if some don't figure it out or it takes a similar or longer time to figure out than Smith (who to be clear only figured out some of it as he is a long ways off from figuring out his game). I don't think it's some devastating reflection on Grier if next year is a tough season even with a lot of young players figuring it out to a certain extent. It doesn't mean that it was part of his plan necessarily nor that there were too many mistakes in judgment. Managers need to be patient with young players, especially when a team is going to have a healthy amount of them, while they figure it out. It may not happen next year. It may happen the season after that based on what they learn this upcoming season. We don't know but that 20 win number is not some magical number whether they get there or not. Getting to 20 and say even to 30 doesn't change that they're still a long ways off from the playoffs and that it will still be a tough road to go down. Not getting there doesn't change any of that nor does it really set the rebuild back any.
The alarming part. I see nothing alarming about a manager filling out his team with mostly scraps while the young players get opportunities and develop.
I apologize if I wasnt clear, but what did you think my point was? that the sharks have to draft 100% of their future roster? I was just pointing that you can win with a team of first rounders, and they dont all have to be home grown, but you do not a good critical mass (not just 1 or 2).
Hence the last part of what i said about if we're that bad then it's because that was Grier's plan all along, which seems to go against what he said post-TDL.
I heard Martin Kaut, Filip Zadina and Ty Dellandrea are gonna be available this offseason.
Honestly, at this point I can't wait for Marner to sign somewhere else so that it stops being a topic of conversation.
That's great news! I was hoping we would send Dellandrea somewhere else.
You keep saying words but not addressing my only point: no matter how bad it looks or is, no matter how alarming - which I agree it would be - I don't think Grier is getting fired next year. If we are DFL next year and the following year shows no change, I think he might get fired.
It could be part of the plan to not be a playoff team but not part of the plan to only win X number of games. I don't know why you'd think it's close to impossible to get improvements from the kids at the NHL level and be worse than last year. There's a lot of variance that you seem unwilling to acknowledge when it comes to young players. The whole group of young players could suck as awful as Smith did in the first half and turn a corner to finish the season and maybe that corner isn't turned until game 60. That group can lose a hell of a lot of games through that. This is especially true when one of those players is a goalie you at least expect to get 30-40 games out of. Which then means that the rest of the 42-52 games are being played by a goalie we pick up off free agency or someone's expendable goalie and whoever ends up being our 3rd stringer if injuries occur similarly to last season. The team will have a massive upswing potential but they also have massive struggle potential at various pivotal positions in the lineup. And we're not in a position to add talent that is going to really change that outlook much.
Well, as I said, if Grier's plan is to purposely finish last by minimizing any moves to help improve the club then that's one thing. If his attempt to improve the team backfires then there will be a scapegoat, and you're right, it probably wouldn't be him, but it will be someone, most likely Warsofsky.
Because even if the kids struggle out the gate like Will did, guess what we'll still have in the lineup that we didn't have last year in the first couple of months?
This exactly proves my point that legit top 6/top 4 players will not sign with a bottom feeder unless there are exceptional circumstances similar to Toffoli. That’s why everyone who is not willing to shell out term is stating they want another year as the worst team in the league.
We had an acclimated Celebrini and Smith to finish last season and as that showed, they aren't winning games on their own. Players being better doesn't always mean it happens for the entirety of the season. Those guys may not end up better until a lengthy period of sucking occurs and something clicks. But in the process of figuring it out, they absolutely can suck just as bad as anyone we iced last year. I don't get why you think otherwise when we just had Will Smith do this very thing last season as a guy with a much higher draft and skill pedigree than anyone we have coming in this time around, including Dickinson. I don't think the target for the second goalie is going to change much of anything on this front. They're not going to trade much for one if they do and the ones that will choose to come here aren't exactly going to be the pick of the litter.
I can acknowledge that offering a 5th year as the UFA tax is likely and a price I am willing to pay for the right player, since that what Seattle had to do last offseason. If we would have to move an overpaid vet on the last year of a deal it is doable and buyouts are options well, I like to avoid those situations, but life is not ideal. But there is a difference between that and locking the franchise into seven year deals to players that will be whined about in the later years of their deal by the same people who advocated signing them in the first place.
Alright, it that was your point then mea culpa, I misunderstood. But in my opinion draft pedigree stops becoming relevant the moment a player hits their second team. Like how college grades aren’t relevant once you have job experience.
We finished poorly last season because Grier traded 9 players from the NHL roster in like a month. If that's Grier's intention again, then, as I said previously, what he said post-TDL and what he ends up doing are two vastly different things. If Grier intends on throwing out another lineup where he's throwing the likes of Goodrow and Lund on the second line then he's not doing it because he think it'll improve the team's chances.
And I’m saying he can try and things happen that don’t yield a 20 win team while still having individual improvement that make next season a positive. This season was a positive in a similar way. They went from 19 to 20 wins and showed great improvement practically everywhere even with a disappointingly small win increase. Because development is not linear and accepting that or having a dip in some metric is not the end of the world or the whole story.
I understand what you're saying, but from my perspective we should expect every area to improve. Goaltending, defense and upfront (considering we were dead last in goals for and goals against). We should expect improvement... ANY improvement even if it's minimal from all facets because we literally could not have been any worse.
I mean we were literally worse the previous season. We got improvements on several fronts but you’ve ignored that because we only got one more win than that season and were disappointed with Grier selling off. They could do the same thing next season because they’re getting younger throughout the lineup.
