Blame Game

[the_fan]

Reversing the Mikko for Necas and Drury trade would likely result in this upcoming season being completely burned.

The trade alone is clearing at least 5M in cap space for the upcoming season.

The season may already be shot. But reversing that trade would essentially guarantee it.

Not if we could get rid of Colton and Wood. That would free up 6.5 mill. If we had smarter management, there are much better moves that could have been made without trading Mikko. CMac broke the whole thing and he’s been trying to fix his own mess

 

[EdAVSfan]

Not if we could get rid of Colton and Wood. That would free up 6.5 mill. If we had smarter management, there are much better moves that could have been made without trading Mikko. CMac broke the whole thing and he’s been trying to fix his own mess

the Avs curently have 8.7M in cap with 17 players signed. Going by your suggestion of trading out Colton and Wood (and pretending we don’t have to take money back) would leave us in a much worse cap situation than we are today. We’d be at 11M in cap space with 14 players signed. We’d need to add like 8 guys with 11M.

Like I said. Burned season.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

How about keeping Mikko and replacing Bednar? Imagine a new coach coming in and getting Mikko to play the way he’s doing with Dallas in this playoffs. If I was Mikko i also wouldn’t accept that 11.7 mill contract Avs offered. That’s just straight up lowballing after everything Mikko has done for the Avs

For this... he gets 100% of the blame. This is why I'm saying the hot seat is now on, not that he should be paying the price now.

Let's be honest. General Managers for the vast majority of the time get two head coaches before they are shown the door. Chris inheirited Bednar. Of course, they just won a Stanley Cup together so I don't necessarily blame him for extending Bednar... but that was his choice and his 1st coach.

However, I do believe Bednar is the biggest issue the team assembled for the playoffs this season had to deal with. I do believe Bednar should have been fired May 4th (the day after game 7). So... in my opinion, Bednar is CMac's first and second coach. If I'm not mistaken, at the season ending presser when the first reporter to bring up Bednar's name, the moment he said it, Chris leaned straight up to the microphone and waited for the dude to shut up and said, "100% confident Jared's our head coach." Yeah, the pilot light on his oven is f***ing lit.

I love Jared and I always will. I hate that I really believe he needs to go away. I just think it's been too damn long, his message and strategy are beyond stale. They guys look like zombies going through motions at this point because that's kinda all there is... especially for anyone on lines 2-4. I'm not sure who is coaching who at times with the way things are run. Especially the lineups. The constant demand for Nate and Mikko to be together. Is that the players badgering the coach? Because most coaches I can think of believe it is some sort of necessity to have a functioning second line.

Most coaches would concentrate on having their 3rd and 4th lines being extremely sound defensively but going full ham on dump and chase, forecheck, backcheck, paycheck. But during the regular season our 4th line guys are trying to play transition hockey like the top line with all the forwards bolting out of the zone the moment the puck bumps into *checks notes* Keaton freakin' Middleton, expecting him to do Cale Makar things.

I'm feeling like I'm the only one seeing things this way, so naturally... I'm questioning myself at this point. Does anything I've said, ring true? Or am I really an old man screaming at the clouds on this one? I'll try to shut up about it if that's the case.

Regardless, it feels like we've all kind have become siloed in on who we want to blame.

I think the obvious answer is that there was enough to go around that nobody should feel good heading into the summer. But after that, I think we've all got our individual culprits.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

Weirdly double posted.

Consider it operator error. Or an ID-10T error if you prefer.

By the way, how are you doing today? I hope you're doing swell. My day has been great... until this post happened.

 

[the_fan]

the Avs curently have 8.7M in cap with 17 players signed. Going by your suggestion of trading out Colton and Wood (and pretending we don’t have to take money back) would leave us in a much worse cap situation than we are today. We’d be at 11M in cap space with 14 players signed. We’d need to add like 8 guys with 11M.

Like I said. Burned season.

There are other things that can be done. We don’t need Girard making 5 mill on 2nd pair. I mean just look at the teams in this playoffs. No one has the perfect roster. Dallas has bunch of plugs on their D like Ceci, Lyubushkin Petrovic, Oilers have Corey Perry on their 1st line etc… yet this team have all made it to conference finals.

We could easily trade Girard and get a cheaper 2nd pair d-man who would be solid defensively even if not as good of a puck mover as Girard. We don’t have to wait another year then pay Necas 10 mill. We can trade him right now and improve the 2C. Like I said, smarter management could do good things but unfortunately we don’t have a smart management since CMac taking over the GM position

 

[Foppa2118]

Good to see that you're back even if we disagree. Though to be fair my arguments are mostly emotional where yours are logical

My question though is why was nothing changed to the special teams? 7 game series are too short to rely on averages. If it's not working you have to make some adjustments but PP and PK both got dominated with no changes and I think that Bednar has to take some heat from that.

And where do we go from here in your opinion?

I think they probably tweaked a few things. The PP had a few different setups. IMO it was mostly a problem of execution and Cale's shot being off. They lacked urgency and a hunger to score, so they just got out competed, plain and simple.

The PK felt like a discombobulated mess though. I don't know what was going on there. Like they had never played on the PK before. They looked so off, it was very strange.

The question I can't figure out, is why the PK kept letting that bumper pass, and the cross ice pass on the doorstep go through all series? The latter was the GWG in Game 7, and I feel like everyone except Toews and Coyle knew it was coming. They were so slow to react.

I can't imagine that wasn't part of their video meetings. They must have been prepared for that after watching it all series. They just weren't in the moment when it happened.

The only thing I can think of is they wilted under the pressure. After a bad call like the one on Drury, at a key time of the game, sometimes as a viewer you can just feel like it's gonna cost you.

I think that may have happened a few times in the series on the PK. The players can't afford to have that negative reactionary feeling though. They have to have a battle mindset in that moment on the PK, to kill it off no matter what, but I think they just got too passive mentally and let it happen.

Where we go from here, is an incredibly nuanced issue, that relies on a lot of factors.

The first thing they have to figure out is what to do with Nelson. I think this mostly has to do with their other options. Do they think they can land Bennett, Tavares, etc? Most seem to think they won't sign here, but I'm not totally convinced on that. Can they sign a UFA D and trade a D+ for a 2C?

Does Nelson even want to re-sign? There was lots of smoke he may sign with Minny anyway, and then he didn't fit great, and the team had a very tough loss. He may just want out either way.

Complicating everything is Coyle's $5.25M at 3C. I have no idea what their plan is there. The only plan that makes senes is to try him at 2C to start, which I was on board with, but his last few games were pretty bad, and that makes that plan less desirable.

I don't see how it made sense for them to trade Mikko for extra cap space, and then use most of it to pay Coyle $5.25M to play 3C, when they could also use Drury at 3C for $1.75M, and use the extra cap on overpaying a top 4 D man like Provorov, or overpaying a 2C like Bennett or Tavares. I think that's a better use of the money.

Maybe they end up trading Coyle for a pick or prospect? That would make the Byram trade tree look ridiculous though.

Necas playing 2C would solve a lot of this, but it doesn't feel like anyone other than Necas in the organiation wants to do that.

So I guess best case scenario may be they utilize UFA to bring in a two way top 4 LD that can chip in some goals when Cale isn't, then either play Marty at 2C, or overpay for Bennett or Tavares, and trade Girard+ everything else they have for either a winger if Marty plays 2C, or maybe some futures to use at the deadline if need be.

Haven't crunched the numbers on this, but if they don' t re-sign Nelson, and move out Girard's $5M, they'll have a lot of money to work with next year. UFA prices will be crazy this summer though.

 

[EdAVSfan]

There are other things that can be done. We don’t need Girard making 5 mill on 2nd pair. I mean just look at the teams in this playoffs. No one has the perfect roster. Dallas has bunch of plugs on their D like Ceci, Lyubushkin Petrovic, Oilers have Corey Perry on their 1st line etc… yet this team have all made it to conference finals.

We could easily trade Girard and get a cheaper 2nd pair d-man who would be solid defensively even if not as good of a puck mover as Girard. We don’t have to wait another year then pay Necas 10 mill. We can trade him right now and improve the 2C. Like I said, smarter management could do good things but unfortunately we don’t have a smart management since CMac taking over the GM position

The convo seems to have shifted here. You were originally discussing keeping and signing Mikko. So you don’t get to trade Necas for a 2C, he’s not here under that scenario.

Secondly, if Girard is easily tradeable for a cheaper 2nd pairing, he still is today.

No matter how you want to re-arrange the contracts and who’s where, the reality is that with Mikko, we are extremely more top heavy. Thats not to say we couldn’t win like that, but you’re very much oversimplifying the cap crunch that would exist if Mikko were here instead.

Here’s what you’ve suggested.

Trade away Colton, Wood, Girard, take away Necas and Drury, keep Rantanen.

That gives us 7.25M more cap space than we have today. So we’d be at 15.95M in cap space, and we’d have 13 players signed.
So give or take, sign 9-10 guys with 16M in cap. And you still don’t have a 2C on the books, and you’re still short a 2nd pairing dman.

The cap situation is not ideal. It is significantly worse for this upcoming season with Rantanen, even with you dumping a bunch of players.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

There are other things that can be done. We don’t need Girard making 5 mill on 2nd pair. I mean just look at the teams in this playoffs. No one has the perfect roster. Dallas has bunch of plugs on their D like Ceci, Lyubushkin Petrovic, Oilers have Corey Perry on their 1st line etc… yet this team have all made it to conference finals.

We could easily trade Girard and get a cheaper 2nd pair d-man who would be solid defensively even if not as good of a puck mover as Girard. We don’t have to wait another year then pay Necas 10 mill. We can trade him right now and improve the 2C. Like I said, smarter management could do good things but unfortunately we don’t have a smart management since CMac taking over the GM position

Do you really see a bunch of plugs coming into Jared Bednar's roster and getting any minutes?

You realize this means Jared Bednar would literally test Cale Makar and Devon Toews' ability to play 42-45 minutes a night in the regular season?

 

[EdAVSfan]

Do you really see a bunch of plugs coming into Jared Bednar's roster and getting any minutes?

Do you really want to test Cale Makar and Devon Toews' ability to play 42-45 minutes a night in the regular season?

The convo is moving around.

His original idea was keep Mikko, change the coach. So Bednar isn’t here under his scenario.

I was just trying to point out how the roster would be very poor for this upcoming season. It would be jammed with 1M dollar players.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

The convo is moving around.

His original idea was keep Mikko, change the coach. So Bednar isn’t here under his scenario.

I was just trying to point out how the roster would be very poor for this upcoming season. It would be jammed with 1M dollar players.

As they happen to do when I've smoked.

I'd apologize but it's chemo day and I'm an entitled bitch.

 

[the_fan]

Do you really see a bunch of plugs coming into Jared Bednar's roster and getting any minutes?

Do you really want to test Cale Makar and Devon Toews' ability to play 42-45 minutes a night in the regular season?

I agree. Bednar wouldn’t be able to get much out of guys like Ceci, Lyubushkin like DeBoer is doing, but I’m not necessarily talking about getting players like that to replace Girard.

I mean this is the 10000000000th time I’m gonna say this but, everything that has gone wrong with this team isn’t just recent mistakes by CMac. It goes back to 2022 after the cup win.

I’m not gonna mention Kadri again how CMac messed up there.

Also could have traded both JTC and Girard for draft picks.

Could have kept Byram who was making less than Girard and Byram was actually there to help us win the cup and he was great.

All the mess CMac has created since 2022, is the reason Avs are where they are and haven’t won more than 2 rounds since that cup year

 

[the_fan]

The convo seems to have shifted here. You were originally discussing keeping and signing Mikko. So you don’t get to trade Necas for a 2C, he’s not here under that scenario.

Secondly, if Girard is easily tradeable for a cheaper 2nd pairing, he still is today.

No matter how you want to re-arrange the contracts and who’s where, the reality is that with Mikko, we are extremely more top heavy. Thats not to say we couldn’t win like that, but you’re very much oversimplifying the cap crunch that would exist if Mikko were here instead.

Here’s what you’ve suggested.

Trade away Colton, Wood, Girard, take away Necas and Drury, keep Rantanen.

That gives us 7.25M more cap space than we have today. So we’d be at 15.95M in cap space, and we’d have 13 players signed.
So give or take, sign 9-10 guys with 16M in cap. And you still don’t have a 2C on the books, and you’re still short a 2nd pairing dman.

The cap situation is not ideal. It is significantly worse for this upcoming season with Rantanen, even with you dumping a bunch of players.

We won being top heavy in 22. Yea I’d much rather have kept Mikko, but since CMac created another mess, and there is a good chance he makes more mess by re-signing Necas to a 10 mill contract after next season, I’d trade Necas right now for a 2C and let Nelson walk.

Someone needs to come in a fix the damage CMac has done before he does more damage and for sure closes the contention window for this core

 

[CobraAcesS]

There are other things that can be done. We don’t need Girard making 5 mill on 2nd pair. I mean just look at the teams in this playoffs. No one has the perfect roster. Dallas has bunch of plugs on their D like Ceci, Lyubushkin Petrovic, Oilers have Corey Perry on their 1st line etc… yet this team have all made it to conference finals.

We could easily trade Girard and get a cheaper 2nd pair d-man who would be solid defensively even if not as good of a puck mover as Girard. We don’t have to wait another year then pay Necas 10 mill. We can trade him right now and improve the 2C. Like I said, smarter management could do good things but unfortunately we don’t have a smart management since CMac taking over the GM position

Girard's role as the #3 needs to be improved not downgraded. As in I fully believe we need a better player in that role. Which likely means more spent, not less.

I'm going to try to leave you alone regarding Mikko lol.

 

[CobraAcesS]

We won being top heavy in 22. Yea I’d much rather have kept Mikko, but since CMac created another mess, and there is a good chance he makes more mess by re-signing Necas to a 10 mill contract after next season, I’d trade Necas right now for a 2C and let Nelson walk.

Someone needs to come in a fix the damage CMac has done before he does more damage and for sure closes the contention window for this core

We didn't win by being top heavy.. In fact that's the issue with the flat cap, they've never been able to build a team as deep or as complete as that team was while also having game breaking talent.

 

[EdAVSfan]

We won being top heavy in 22. Yea I’d much rather have kept Mikko, but since CMac created another mess, and there is a good chance he makes more mess by re-signing Necas to a 10 mill contract after next season, I’d trade Necas right now for a 2C and let Nelson walk.

Someone needs to come in a fix the damage CMac has done before he does more damage and for sure closes the contention window for this core

What???

We were too heavy in 2022 when we won the cup?? No way. That team had considerable depth. It was one of the most stacked teams in the cap era.
We had 60 point Burakovsky on the 3rd line.

I understand that everything stems from mistakes made in the 2022 offseason. I get that.

But you suggested we should’ve kept Rantanen. I seriously don’t think you understand how difficult it would be to have a quality roster for this upcoming season. Seriously, try to build a roster. I gave you the numbers. You’d be chock full of 1M dollar players.

 

[the_fan]

What???

We were too heavy in 2022 when we won the cup?? No way. That team had considerable depth. It was one of the most stacked teams in the cap era.
We had 60 point Burakovsky on the 3rd line.

I understand that everything stems from mistakes made in the 2022 offseason. I get that.

But you suggested we should’ve kept Rantanen. I seriously don’t think you understand how difficult it would be to have a quality roster for this upcoming season. Seriously, try to build a roster. I gave you the numbers. You’d be chock full of 1M dollar players.

Burakovsky was the only expensive player we had at 4.9 mill who was playing on the 3rd line in 22, and if remember correctly, Burakovsky was actually a healthy scratch at times during that run. The next highest paid player on bottom 6 was JTC making 3.5. This year we had a more expensive 3C in Coyle making 5 mill, and Colton making 4 mill, and how did that work out for us?

I know Colton was injured, but I don’t think he was gonna make a difference as far as beating Dallas. So basically we traded Mikko to have more depth only to get knocked out of the 1st round. Safe to say supposedly being deeper didn’t really help. f*** it, I’ll say it again. I much rather have Kadri and Mikko right now even if it meant having cheaper bottom 6 players.

 

[Foppa2118]

Of every trade Chris MacFarland has been a part of for the Avalanche, the Mikko Rantanen trade was his very best.

It was an absolute necessity, with Mikko playing hardball, the deadline approaching and the Avs having basically signaled the world the issue wasn't going to last past the deadline.

It takes time to set up trades. I appreciate that at one minute to midnight the princess decided maybe the size of the ring could be negotiable... the wheels of the deal where already turning. I'm sorry... after Mikko waited up until then to come to his senses, why would I believe he's doing this is good faith? He didn't accept their last offer, he just said he'd be flexible. Paul Stastny said as much, how did that go?

I honestly believe the team assembled and starting game 2 (Landy's first game back) was better than any lineup we've had since Game 6 against Tampa.

I give Chris all the credit in the world for assembling what should have been a slam-dunk. I blame Jared for being the most likely to find a way to f*** it up. All you need to do is look at his lineups. Do you honestly believe Jared Bednar gave this team the best chance to win a best of 7 with his lineups?

They may or may not have signaled it wouldn't last past the deadline, but then they stopped negotiating right after Mikko dropped his price, told them he wanted to stay, and said he was flexible, and traded him 1.5 months before the deadline.

That doesn't sound like they even wanted to negotiate. That sounds like they had made up their minds they wanted to trade him regardless, otherwise Mikko dropping his price and saying he's flexible would have led to more negotiations up until the deadline.

I also think they severely underestimated the impact on team chemistry by trading a core player in season. The team didn't feel like a team, and Nate and Cale seemed shook afterwards. Both of them underperformed in the playoffs and didn't look like themselves.

I don't think that's a coincidence, and if that trade had a negative impact on how their star players played, and that contributed to the loss, on top of Mikko being the guy that ended their season, it calls into question whether it was a good trade at all.

 

[the_fan]

We didn't win by being top heavy.. In fact that's the issue with the flat cap, they've never been able to build a team as deep or as complete as that team was while also having game breaking talent.

I mean in 2022 we weren’t the Dallas stars who have like three 2nd or 1st lines. We had 2 scoring lines and solid 3rd 4th lines. We didn’t rely on our 3rd and 4th lines to win us many games although they did chip in and scored few big goals. We did have a deep blueline.

This was our bottom 6 in 22

Burakovsky-JTC-NAK
Cogliano-Helm-LOC/Sturm

Burakobsky was a healthy scratch at times, and I wouldn’t call that deep offensive team as if we had 4 lines that could score any time, which makes us top heavy. Avs have always been built top heavy even during 96 and 01 runs

 

[expatriatedtexan]

They may or may not have signaled it wouldn't last past the deadline, but then they stopped negotiating right after Mikko dropped his price, told them he wanted to stay, and said he was flexible, and traded him 1.5 months before the deadline.

That doesn't sound like they even wanted to negotiate. That sounds like they had made up their minds they wanted to trade him regardless, otherwise Mikko dropping his price and saying he's flexible would have led to more negotiations up until the deadline.

I also think they severely underestimated the impact on team chemistry by trading a core player in season. The team didn't feel like a team, and Nate and Cale seemed shook afterwards. Both of them underperformed in the playoffs and didn't look like themselves.

I don't think that's a coincidence, and if that trade had a negative impact on how their star players played, and that contributed to the loss, on top of Mikko being the guy that ended their season, it calls into question whether it was a good trade at all.

The wheels were already in motion for a trade. The Avs we're not going to stop that for the player running in and saying i'll be more flexible. Had he run in and said, I'll take your last offer things would probably have played out differently. The fact is... he still wanted to negotiate and it was well, well beyond the time for that.

The only reason Mikko is in Dallas is because Mikko f***ed around and found out. It's 100% on him and his agent.

 

[Foppa2118]

The wheels were already in motion for a trade. The Avs we're not going to stop that for the player running in and saying i'll be more flexible. Had he run in and said, I'll take your last offer things would probably have played out differently. The fact is... he still wanted to negotiate and it was well, well beyond the time for that.

The only reason Mikko is in Dallas is because Mikko f***ed around and found out. It's 100% on him and his agent.

If by wheels in motion, you mean they had already decided to trade Mikko, and weren't interested in negotiating, I would agree. I think that's probably what happened.

Otherwise, if there was a price they would accept to keep Mikko, and he dropped his price and said he was flexible, with 1.5 months to go before the deadline, there was plenty of time to continue negotiating.

I just think the early talks with Carolina about Marty (either early season or off season can't remember) signals they weren't going to keep Mikko unless he signed the kind of low ball offer they knew he wouldn't sign. Nobody, including anyone here, would leave $1-2M a year on the table over 8 years. That's turning down potentially $10-15M.

So I think the "negotiations" were more for PR so they could say they tried to keep a fan favorite core player. That's why Mikko, his agent, Nate, Cale, Landy, EJ, and probably others seemed so confused at what happened, and why he was traded so early.

I wonder how much of that applies to Kadri's negotiations as well. They could have kept him, EJ, and Manson if they wanted by trading Compher, but they didn't.

I think they might have just decided to move on from Naz because of his age, unless he similarly came at a low ball price they knew he wouldn't sign, and I think they actually wanted to try Compher at 2C and save some cap space, because they got by with him at 2C for a bit in the playoffs, while Naz was injured.

 

[Alienblood]

I'm in Florida right now and the weather is great. Got kissed by a jellyfish this morning though. Wasn't my favorite moment ever

We fry those and eat in NS better than

 

[sethro109]

We fry those and eat in NS better than

Jellyfish edible? I had no idea.

 

[Alienblood]

Jellyfish edible? I had no idea.

I'm not serious haha

 

[expatriatedtexan]

I agree. Bednar wouldn’t be able to get much out of guys like Ceci, Lyubushkin like DeBoer is doing, but I’m not necessarily talking about getting players like that to replace Girard.

I mean this is the 10000000000th time I’m gonna say this but, everything that has gone wrong with this team isn’t just recent mistakes by CMac. It goes back to 2022 after the cup win.

I’m not gonna mention Kadri again how CMac messed up there.

Also could have traded both JTC and Girard for draft picks.

Could have kept Byram who was making less than Girard and Byram was actually there to help us win the cup and he was great.

All the mess CMac has created since 2022, is the reason Avs are where they are and haven’t won more than 2 rounds since that cup year

And I won't go back to all the times we got bounced prior to 2022 when CMac stubbornly would not move Mikko to the second line.

I think in actuallity what we are saying is that nothing less than a full sweep will do. Both managmenet and coaching sucks donkey balls.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

They may or may not have signaled it wouldn't last past the deadline, but then they stopped negotiating right after Mikko dropped his price, told them he wanted to stay, and said he was flexible, and traded him 1.5 months before the deadline.

That doesn't sound like they even wanted to negotiate. That sounds like they had made up their minds they wanted to trade him regardless, otherwise Mikko dropping his price and saying he's flexible would have led to more negotiations up until the deadline.

I also think they severely underestimated the impact on team chemistry by trading a core player in season. The team didn't feel like a team, and Nate and Cale seemed shook afterwards. Both of them underperformed in the playoffs and didn't look like themselves.

I don't think that's a coincidence, and if that trade had a negative impact on how their star players played, and that contributed to the loss, on top of Mikko being the guy that ended their season, it calls into question whether it was a good trade at all.

He dropped his price right after the FAFO curve expired. Like I said, had he come to management and said, I accept your last offer things very well could have gone differently. But the fact is he said he's be "flexible". That's akin to Stastny saying he'll take a "hometown discount". Mikko didn't do anything by going to management other than try a new negotiating angle. The thing is, he was still wanting/demanding to negotiate. The Avs had a deal in the works that had certainity.

I understand you love Mikko, but at no time was he reasonable in these negotiations. In fact, the first time he may have taking these negotiations seriously was his final attempt apealling directly to management rather than through his agent. But he still didn't accept their offer. He just said he'd be flexible. Fact is, much like my wife on the the Crazy/Hot curve, Mikko came out on the wrong side of the FAFO curve.