they all suck though, we still have to ice a team, what tells you DVO's replacement wouldnt have been even better than him? same for Edmundson, he sucks, his replacement would have been better than him...Jake allen? he sucks,! The only one I could agree with is Anderson, but some would say he is part of the future core, would be a great 3rd liner, just overpaid.
Belzile and RHP scored and gave us what 6-8 more points?? you cannot predict that...you cannot call up f**king Nate Schnarr when Belzile and RHP are busting their ass for years..thats not fair.
they did what they could, simple as that. they tank as hard as they could with what they have
You can call up Nate Schnarr to replace Dvorak though. Dvorak sucks as a NHL player, doesn't mean he's not near a net neutral player.
They didn't do what they could, they acquired players and sat on their hands. The Monahan and Matheson trades were both really good, but there's no reasons to not turn around and at least lose some talent elsewhere. If you have Monahan, why do you need Dvorak ? Or even Evans ? If you have Matheson, why do you need Savard ? I love Savard, think he's the best vet to have around the kids, but do we REALLY need three different Savards on the team ? No.
While Jake Allen isn't even close to a NHL starter, he is still a very good 2G and he was signed this year, in october 2022 to a 2 year contract. This is a HuGo decision, it's not some "welp it is what it is". Trade Allen as a UFA, it's not hard.
And that made me realize that the doofus signed Allen for nearly 4 millions for 2 years. For christ sakes.
Doesn't this just counteract the whole rant preceding it? All these veterans you're mad we didn't trade spent half the year on IR and we won games with them out of the lineup because of career AHL plugs like Belzile getting hot and rookie dmen being unexpectedly good. Anderson isn't that good, if we expedited a trade that just means Harvey-Pinard gets called up earlier and maybe we would have claimed Tolvanen as well. I'm just not really convinced that these kinds of moves would have done anything. Allen has an .891 this year and has played 41 games this year, tied for 48th in the league among goalies with over 20 games played. A goalie playing that poorly who still has the contract and veteran status to get 1A status and play 45 games is a great "asset" for a tank.
The only one that works as a straightforward tank maximizing decision would have been trading Matheson which I'm not really in favour of. Still, either way, he also missed 40%+ of the season and it's not like he's some standout stud player compared to the guys the other bottom 10 teams have.
It's a rehash of an argument we had before but I also don't really understand how you can just handwave "Savard and Edmundson could have been traded" either. Savard has two more years at 3.5M and Edmundson's back is made of papier mâché. Same for Dvorak and Anderson with term under a flat cap. Maybe they could have moved Anderson last offseason but moving Dvorak before knowing where Dach fits at C doesn't make much sense nor does selling at an absolute low point in his value like last summer would have been.
Its not the vet injuries that are important here. It's Guhle, our 1D, Caufield our best goalscorer, Dach our 2nd line C, Xhekaj one of the Habs top 6, etc. They are the ones that drove the bus and the injuries to those guys should've sank the ship. Instead, the "bad/good" (depending on when and how convenient it is to excuse HuGo) vets just came in and played just good enough so that guys like Suzuki, RHP, Montambault/Allen could carry them to a few wins.
Why does moving Dvorak before knowing that Dach fits at C doesn't make sense ? Why ? What would've happened ? They would've lost even more games ? Finished lower ? Why are you not in favor of trading Matheson ? You literally believe in the very thing Im criticizing and you don't see it. You don't want a rebuild, you want to clutch your pebbles, because they're not pearls, and trade them for a few random valuables later down the road.
HuGo didn't move at the draft and HuGo didn't move during the season either. This is his vision, this is his fault. Instead of making tank moves that would take us into the Bedard sweepstakes, he made the roster marginally better by getting Dach, Matheson, Dadonov and Monahan. All NHL vets, aside from Dach, that ensure they would make the team better and also not be part of the future.
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