2024/2025 Around the League

[Vaslof]

Honestly can you blame them? You don’t want Makar, MacKinnon, Landy, and Rants to retire Avs?

I don't know how to feel about it yet. I think both sides have a valid argument.

 

[Balthazar]

I don't know how to feel about it yet. I think both sides have a valid argument.

Nope. There's absolutely no valid argument to accepting to have a shit team so a player can retire as an Avalanche.

 

[Chiarelli]

At the expense of sucking for 5 more years? f*** no.

That 5 years of suck paves the way for the next group of guys we wanna win with. Especially with how this team drafts

 

[Bender]

That 5 years of suck paves the way for the next group of guys we wanna win with. Especially with how this team drafts

Tyler Arnason JR.
Jimmy Shantz
JT Hensick
Ralph O'Byrne
George Zanon
Allan Raycroft

 

[henchman21]

You live and die with franchise players… even if for only pr and business reasons.

 

[Pokecheque]

I just looked and their draft pick situation is fairly good TBH.

Perhaps Dubas plans to organically tank with Crosby, Malkin, Karlsson, Letang, Rust, Rackell and Graves on the payroll.

But if that's the plan then why the Graves contract?

I think the Graves deal was a mistake, and I remain a Graves fan. I just don't think you should ever, ever sign a player like that to a long-term deal. Avs got what they needed out of him and moved on at exactly the right time (just a reminder for folks out there, they used the pick they got in that deal to draft Behrens). But IMO that's really the only one you can attribute to Dubas alone. The rest were essentially forced by new ownership. If anything IMO Dubas deserves credit for convincing ownership to move on from Guentzel.

Hextall did a ton of damage, IIRC it was he who dealt away Marino for Ty Smith, signing the corpse of Jeff Carter, re-upping Michal Neuvirth (who was also a corpse at that point) just so they had two goalies at the expansion draft, and so on. He got blindsided even harder by the ownership change, but still made some inexplicably dumb moves.

 

[S E P H]

3 consecutive mistakes: re-upped Letang, re-upped Malkin, traded for Karlsson.

At the time of the signing Letang just had a fantastic season for a guy that age, it was obvious that it wouldn't happen again and shouldn't get a contract based on that season. Same with trading for Karlsson, he just won the Norris, everyone knew it wasn't happening again and he had this huge contract with term left.

They doubled down on old guys when they absolutely didn't have to.

I don't think upping Malkin was a huge mistake, especially after re-signing Jarry to the contract that they did and Graves to his. That is the true mistakes even if the goaler market was bare that off-season. Every team I can think of will re-sign their legends...Avs did it with Forsberg like three different times.

They were getting ready to retool, then the new ownership came in and abruptly forced them to change plans. Doesn’t excuse the bad moves made since then but I don’t think there’s anything that could’ve been done to prevent their decline (though the Caps are kinda proving me wrong there).

I suggest the Caps are proving all of us wrong, many of their moves remind me of Avs shrewdness. A lot of high risks like having faith that Strome and Dubois would reclaim their games (and personally I would have never touched PLD ever). Additionally, they have traded well for the most part; going after Thompson was a legit move, going after Roy who I am a big fan of, was a legit move, going after Mangiapane was a legit move, and going after Chychrun was a legit move. Finally, they have drafted quite well to supplement their core talent, drafting lads like McMichael, Fehervary, Alexeyev, Hendrix, Protas, and soon-to-be Miroshnichenko, Chesley, Iorio, Cristall, Parascak all with NON-top 15 picks is pretty legit scouting if you'd ask me. The highest of those players is freakin' Parascak at 17th overall. And this is me not mentioning Leonard who they drafted at 8th.

 

[Ceremony]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1856129305920844177

What a terrible fight. EJ looks in the opposite direction for about 90% of it.

There has never been a more worthless and unworthy individual inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame than Colon Campbell.

Alan Eagleson

Nope. There's absolutely no valid argument to accepting to have a shit team so a player can retire as an Avalanche.

Sport is a pursuit of sentimentality. None of them should go anywhere.

 

[Pokecheque]

Nope. There's absolutely no valid argument to accepting to have a shit team so a player can retire as an Avalanche.

Yes there is whether you want to admit it or not.

This is probably going to go the way it did following the 2011 Cup win. The core will age, they'll take a few more stabs at it, and then downsize (last time it was largely due to the implementation of the cap) to a team that isn't a contender, but merely competitive, before the bottom dropped out in 2008. Unfortunately it'd be a miracle if this core ages as gracefully as Joe Sakic did from 2001-2008.

 

[Bender]

There has never been a more worthless and unworthy individual inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame than Colon Campbell.

It's crazy to think that whoever is in charge of selecting people to be inducted in the hall would just completely ignore the time that POS went completely apeshit on the refs for making a call against the team his son was playing on while in a prominent position within the league office. This wasn't a 'rumor' - the email and it's contents were made public. That alone should disqualify him.

 

[Pokecheque]

Alan Eagleson

Hmmmmm...well, that might be it.

It's crazy to think that whoever is in charge of selecting people to be inducted in the hall would just completely ignore the time that POS went completely apeshit on the refs for making a call against the team his son was playing on while in a prominent position within the league office. This wasn't a 'rumor' - the email and it's contents were made public. That alone should disqualify him.

It's unreal, that dipshit Bettman just said "Colie you're doing a great job" or something like that and it was just forgotten. It's a real shame, owners should've been raising holy hell about that but for some weird reason they didn't.

 

[Balthazar]

Yes there is whether you want to admit it or not.

This is probably going to go the way it did following the 2011 Cup win. The core will age, they'll take a few more stabs at it, and then downsize (last time it was largely due to the implementation of the cap) to a team that isn't a contender, but merely competitive, before the bottom dropped out in 2008. Unfortunately it'd be a miracle if this core ages as gracefully as Joe Sakic did from 2001-2008.

There's a big difference between:
1- rebuilding and keeping an old player around
and
2- extending the agony by several years because the old players are still here and you don't want to displease them even though you have 0 shot at winning

 

[The Abusement Park]

There's a big difference between:
1- rebuilding and keeping an old player around
and
2- extending the agony by several years because the old players are still here and you don't want to displease them even though you have 0 shot at winning

Extending the core is a business and PR thing. If the Pens got rid of the big 3 you’re pissing off the the casual fans(the largest % of fans) and then your team will be bad. So you’re going to be losing fans and revenue in two ways. Right or wrong that’s why it happens and will continue to happen forever.

 

[Pokecheque]

There's a big difference between:
1- rebuilding and keeping an old player around
and
2- extending the agony by several years because the old players are still here and you don't want to displease them even though you have 0 shot at winning

I'll agree that if a franchise has motivating factors outside of winning a championship, that leads to some big problems. In Detroit, they had an old team, but they wanted to keep that silly playoff streak going and a competitive, if not contending team to open up the new Arena. In Pittsburgh the new ownership group wanted to use the Pens as part of their new streaming platform. In both cases it obviously didn't go well.

That said, a long-term rebuild isn't very palatable to many owners, because it forces them to take a gigantic hit to revenues short-term. Both Winnipeg and Nashville chickened out when it came to blowing it all up, and in this post-Covid age you're going to see that a lot more often.

It might be logical to start from scratch the moment your proverbial window closes, but I have yet to see the professional sports team actually do it. And there's plenty of good reasons why they don't.

 

[Chiarelli]

I think the Graves deal was a mistake, and I remain a Graves fan. I just don't think you should ever, ever sign a player like that to a long-term deal. Avs got what they needed out of him and moved on at exactly the right time (just a reminder for folks out there, they used the pick they got in that deal to draft Behrens). But IMO that's really the only one you can attribute to Dubas alone. The rest were essentially forced by new ownership. If anything IMO Dubas deserves credit for convincing ownership to move on from Guentzel.

Hextall did a ton of damage, IIRC it was he who dealt away Marino for Ty Smith, signing the corpse of Jeff Carter, re-upping Michal Neuvirth (who was also a corpse at that point) just so they had two goalies at the expansion draft, and so on. He got blindsided even harder by the ownership change, but still made some inexplicably dumb moves.

Missed the biggest mistake they made - McCann

 

[LOFIN]

Let's be real, the issue with Pittsburgh isn't keeping the old core together, it's keeping everything around them more or less the same for the last few years when it clearly doesn't work. Yes, Letang is not great, Malkin is meh. But there are far bigger issues with that roster, you could mask the issues of Letang for an example.

Look at the Capitals, there's literally Ovechkin, Carlsson and Wilson left of that SC team (I think, am I missing someone?). EVERYONE else is gone, and they won their cup after the Pens won their last one.

The first thing the Pens could try to fix the issue is what 99% of the teams would do: fire the coach. But Dubas doesn't even have the authority to do that because Sullivan is apparently a family friend of the owners or something.

 

[Balthazar]

I'll agree that if a franchise has motivating factors outside of winning a championship, that leads to some big problems. In Detroit, they had an old team, but they wanted to keep that silly playoff streak going and a competitive, if not contending team to open up the new Arena. In Pittsburgh the new ownership group wanted to use the Pens as part of their new streaming platform. In both cases it obviously didn't go well.

That said, a long-term rebuild isn't very palatable to many owners, because it forces them to take a gigantic hit to revenues short-term. Both Winnipeg and Nashville chickened out when it came to blowing it all up, and in this post-Covid age you're going to see that a lot more often.

It might be logical to start from scratch the moment your proverbial window closes, but I have yet to see the professional sports team actually do it. And there's plenty of good reasons why they don't.

I know why they do it.

I just hate owners that appear to be living paycheck to paycheck and worry about paying monthly bills instead of worrying about the long term success of their franchise.

All they do it making it worse long term but hey, these guys didn't become billionaires by losing money.

 

[Pokecheque]

Missed the biggest mistake they made - McCann

I don't know if they did. For whatever reason, McCann took his good sweet time to develop into a legit impact player and scorer. He simply wasn't what they needed at the time, turns out he's not a center. The underlying metrics were there but it took a while. I'd argue Vancouver and Toronto f***ed up way, way worse by dealing him away (Florida IMO did not however since they still succeeded in getting rid of a shitty player on a shitty contract).

 

[CobraAcesS]

Yes there is whether you want to admit it or not.

This is probably going to go the way it did following the 2011 Cup win. The core will age, they'll take a few more stabs at it, and then downsize (last time it was largely due to the implementation of the cap) to a team that isn't a contender, but merely competitive, before the bottom dropped out in 2008. Unfortunately it'd be a miracle if this core ages as gracefully as Joe Sakic did from 2001-2008.

There was a reason it was impressive how productive he was until the end. Didn't he have some record for one of the oldest players to put up 100 points?

I think you have to keep those guys until the end, but don't actively hurt your future with stupid contracts going for it like the Pens have.

If the team sucks and needs to rebuild the pipeline just do it as soon as possible, just don't drag out the pain in order to limp into the playoffs.

 

[Balthazar]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1856459983279243281

https://x.com/i/web/status/1856480391063904447

 

[ABasin]

You don’t want Makar, MacKinnon, Landy, and Rants to retire Avs?

Only if they're still really good players in their final season(s), on an Avs team that is still solidly playoff-caliber.

I don't care about this "retire as Avs" thing one bit. I know I'm in the minority in regards to this issue, but I think it's one reason the Avs were so bad for so long during the "lost decade". They held on to (or traded back for) players who were skeletons of their former selves, when they should have been selling for future assets.

At the expense of sucking for 5 more years? f*** no.

Amen, Brother.

 

[Colorado Avalanche]

Only if they're still really good players in their final season(s), on an Avs team that is still solidly playoff-caliber.

I don't care about this "retire as Avs" thing one bit. I know I'm in the minority in regards to this issue, but I think it's one reason the Avs were so bad for so long during the "lost decade". They held on to (or traded back for) players who were skeletons of their former selves, when they should have been selling for future assets.


Amen, Brother.

I agree with that. Look at Pens. It's actually sad to see your legends just losing it. It's nice to have some dignity left when leaving.

Of course, someone like Sakic retiring with Avs was special though. Same with Pens and Crosby I guess.

 

[Pokecheque]

There was a reason it was impressive how productive he was until the end. Didn't he have some record for one of the oldest players to put up 100 points?

I think you have to keep those guys until the end, but don't actively hurt your future with stupid contracts going for it like the Pens have.

If the team sucks and needs to rebuild the pipeline just do it as soon as possible, just don't drag out the pain in order to limp into the playoffs.

I believe he remains THE oldest player to hit triple digits. He also made it easy on them by signing a few one-year deals so everyone had as much flexibility as possible.

I think it’s fine if the old guys want to stick around but if the team mortgages even more of the future to try and extend a window that’s already closed, that’s where the problem lies. IMO the Avs knew from around 2005 on that they weren’t contending. But at least they iced a fun team that made things interesting under Quenneville.

 

[Bill Peckerskull]

Jets are 15-1

 

[RoyIsALegend]

I just watched the full game of the Sens beating the Leafs 3-0 in Toronto.

Man, sometimes the Senators look like a really good team. They are big, strong, fast, play a heavy style and have skill up and down the lineup.

They just really lack some consistency to take their game to the next level.