I dunno, I don't have a ton of confidence that he'll make those moves. That's honestly the real concern here.
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I suspect a fair few VGK fans would say "yeah, that looks about right" yet Francis threw 7 x $6.25m at him.
Well.
He's our $6.25M faceoff specialist.
And he won two cups. You need cup winners in the locker room....
It looks like 9 of 13 games with a negative game score.
I'd love to know who in the front office thought this contract was a good idea. It looked like a horrendous idea the minute we signed it.
I guess someone locked away that supposedly huge analytics departmend, so that the good 'ol boys were able to bring in that cup experience.
It's an absolutely aweful deal and most likely gets worse over time.
But hey, I guess Francis did the good old GM thing and said to himself. That's the problem of the next GM.
In some ways the Ottawa loss is the most disturbing. Getting outplayed by Carolina, Dallas and Boston is one thing, but getting outhustled by the Senators? That shouldn't happen.
Whether Francis has the stomach for it or not, he is going to have to make some moves. Caution right now will rightfully be seen as paralysis.
The only potential positive is if our current play is indicative of the season, we will likely generate a high draft pick. Even that feels like a lousy consolation prize at the moment, though. No one wants to contemplate an unsuccessful season in the first week of November.
The problem I see is that this team still isn't just not good enough for the playoffs, but also not bad enough for a really high pick.
So I guess you end up with a pick in that 8 - 14 range and have to hope to make a good pick.
Looking at all things Kraken, I think we've got to hope that Catton really pans out(no matter if that's at center or wing) and can become our point producing offensive player.
I said this before the season started but Francis will be on the hot seat if we miss the playoffs this season.
We just changed coaches, so that is out of the question, but maybe we should look at moving out some vets (Gourde, Tanev) to kickstart the dressing room. A trade makes sense for so many reasons. It creates cap space to give us more roster flexibility. Gives us a chance to start bringing up kids to see how ready they are to help.
I went in positively into the season but was prepared that we may miss the playoffs. On the bright side, we would have another decent 1st round pick in a good draft and likely get some additional picks for moving out the likes of Gourde, Tanev, etc. at the TDL.
I'm actually not sure about the trade part.
Unless we're clearly out of it I'm not so sure Francis would actually trade those guys given that he's under pressure and needs results.
Though, I hope I'm wrong about that one.
