I get the frustration. I think honestly that LA is invested more in Moore than Grundstrom. I like Grundstrom but as I said, I think he isn’t long for LA.
The only thing I can think of is something Stothers said on Chiclets. It is hard to work through issues if you are sitting. Maybe they are trying to jump start Moore and Brown. Is it the right call, we all have opinions I guess.
I don’t have answers but I think NHL people are pretty smart. The majority soured on Sutter and called for DL to adapt. We were ok with a rebuild and refresh from a stale product. TMac and Blake aren’t the previous regime. I think it’s ok to question them but I feel like there is a willful effort to discredit their decisions and motives. I’m not even a rah rah guy for either of them. Just trying to look at things objectively.
I am as well, but that's why it's frustrating. Yes, IMO after so many poor-looking decisions I have a cynical bias, but I mean, I've outlined a LOT of decisions from this year I have problems with, and most of them aren't just moving a guy from one line to another.
I think the Grundstrom thing is an example. That's not even a guy I was high on, figured he'd have been moved before this year as he's been a tweener. But when he does draw in and shows you what he's got, and he's got more than two guys that are much older, why bench him for nothing? He's helping you win
now AND in the future. Same goes for Clague; they made the (poor) evaluation that they prefer Maatta and Wolanin, and waived Clague and waived and lost Wolanin. Maatta is by any measure the worst player on the team and it doesn't even make sense--we have veterans in Doughty/Edler, middle age guys in Roy and Walker, and solid sophomores in Bjornfot/Anderson--why purge the guys with higher end current AND future game in favor of a loser who will be gone next year anyway? It would
kind of make sense if Maatta was a better current player than anyone but he's not.
After verbalizing it, my bigger problem is the asset management side of it. We ALL know some of these guys will have to go; i just figured it would be the Brown, AA, maybe even Moore tier of guys who are later in their careers, fulfilled their potential, and aren't taking us to the next level, but instead, we're sucking the value out of the youth and TRYING to dumpster guys like Clague, Grundstrom, before we even know what they can be. Luckily, in spite of their poor decisions, Clague has come in and middle fingered them (i'm sure he'll be traded for peanuts later) and Kaliyev found success on a line in spite of it being the 4th.
We can't fill holes with all our assets until we find out what holes we have--but we can't find out what holes we have until we play the kids. Right now we're just in purgatory, which is frustrating in and of itself, but also rapidly depreciating A-/B+ assets in favor of clearly-suffering vets.
