Oh COME THE f*** ON. Outside of the time when he basically started one of the biggest deadline cap management trends in the NHL? That's like saying "Outside of 2012 and 2014, have the Kings ever won anything?" Or "Outside of 2016 through 2020, have any of Kekalainen's teams made the playoffs over the last eight years?" It's really f***ing easy to make someone look terrible if you arbitrarily exclude everything they did good. That's not an argument, that's shitty spin doctoring.
Yeah but what have you done for me lately?
To rant for a minute, I don't think anybody on this board disagrees that the team needs to improve. If anything, the issue with Jarmo is a case of mismanaged expectations by calling it a retool. They performed well enough last year in Larsen's first year to assume there could be an improvement on the 37 wins from last year after adding Gaudreau. Obviously, the season has not gone that way due to a piss poor defensive system in the early season, and was furthered by injuries and bad goaltending. Also obviously, the team is not as well constructed as it was during most of Torts' tenure, because we lost some guys and traded some away for futures.
Meanwhile, the "futures" have been looking great. KJ and Marchenko are having a couple of the best rookie years for CBJ rookies ever, on a terrible team. Jiricek is having one of the best 18/19 year old seasons of all time for a D-man in the AHL. Even Chinny looked massively improved over last season before he got hurt; Dumais is having a historical season in the Q. I could go on but I won't. Sillinger is the only young guy that hasn't improved since last year. He needs to be sent down. To add to all of that, we're most likely going to have a top 5 pick in an absolutely
loaded top 5, with a possibility of taking the best prospect since McDavid/Matthews, and another 1st round pick that we can use to improve the defense now.
There's obviously still roster holes in important areas and probably a coaching hole. We most likely won't be in the hunt for the playoffs next year either. However, we have the assets and the time to improve those holes in the offseason. To say this rebuild has not gone well IMO is simply a sour taste from how bad the team has looked the last couple of seasons, and a couple of recent bad moves (Bjork, Gudbranson), when in reality we knew we were likely rebuilding anyway.
