This is a misrepresentation of some of the complaints around Samsonov and other moves. It's not that he didn't try, it's that he allowed himself to be backed into a losing scenario and ended up losing assets for either nothing (as in the case of Samsonov) or well below their value (Siegenthaler, Stephenson, etc).
It's not a misrepresentation of anything. Every year there's some move that doesn't get made that several posters say "He didn't even try" about, and several other statements like this one was, where a poster comes up with an idea and says, "The GM should try this."
MacLellan isn't stupid or lazy. He's pulled some pretty neat rabbits out of hats that had to take a lot of effort. I think like most GMs he tries everything he can think of to improve his team. The notion that he didn't try or won't unless the fanbase gives him a kick in the pants or someone threatens his job is pretty ridiculous.
I'm not putting all that on
@ArmadilloThumb though. I was just pointing out that we have no way of knowing what he'll try to do. You either believe you have a GM that's putting in a good faith effort to make the team better or you don't.
Not sure how this applies to Siegs or Stephenson. They were cast out primarily by their coach. Siegs asked out, and GMBM said publicly that he felt Stephenson deserved a chance he simply wasn't getting here.
And the Samsonov thing is just horseshit. Keeping both keepers that offseason was a calculated risk for cap space. Not moving him in the second half of the season was about having a backup for the stretch run. And once the deadline passed, no one was going to trade anything substantial for a goalie with crappy stats that would almost definitely be available for free. Sammy's only claim to fame was his draft pedigree that he hadn't lived up to. No team was going to give up an asset worth a shit to avoid letting the masterful Ilya Samsonov hit the open market.
I agree with you that he had value along the way that we could have cashed in on. But the only rumored interest that year was from Montreal a little while before the deadline. They were definitely out of the playoff hunt, so they had no reason to offer anything major for him. And clearly not enough to risk not having a decent backup, or Mac would have pulled the trigger.
The "Samsonov is a prime example of poor asset management" argument is only even remotely true if you mean how one should manage a poor asset...
