Ours was in quite recent memory. The sentiment is obviously still alive for many fans here as well
I don’t know of any fan that is wishing for that type of one dimensional player. In the Wild West days of the wipeout, bench clearing brawls and unbridled goonery, it was a necessity.
If your reference point is prior management, there is more than one reason why they failed, a lot of them had to do with incompetence. One of Bergevin’s first moves was to not renew the contract of the analytics expert on staff. Another was not to hold the scouting staff to account.
Without going into a long tirade about Bergevin’s shortcomings, HuGo did inherit a lot of the scouts from the prior regime, plus chose to name Lapointe in a senior role and who knows how much of what Lapointe did under Bergevin was brain dead. At least, HuGo is much more progressive, they have a game plan and are implementing it and have multiple means to validate Lapointe’s input.
I think Bergevin didn’t solely favor size since most of his rosters were undersized. It was simply a failed blueprint that he kept churning and that ultimately led to his dismissal.
I would personally never sacrifice elite skill over size but I’m just a fan on some hockey forum. I would venture that neither would any NHL GM.
Doesn’t mean size is not important as we know that the NHL is the only pro league in the world that has two sets of rules — one for the regular season and the other for the playoffs where almost anything goes.
All of the recent SC finalists have tended to be teams who are bigger-sized and more physical. So size is an attribute to be mindful of among other attributes, when a potential draftee is being evaluated but less so when there is a rare opportunity to land a player possessing elite level skill.
Of course, when a team is selecting early, you can bundle both size and skill (Slaf, Dach, etc).
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