I don’t think that’s the point @g00n is making here though.
@Todd Lazarchick wants to complain. And he’s angry.
Which is all well and good, but is a seemingly emotional reaction — one that does not jive with his posting history.
That’s all.
Speculation: Caps Roster General Discussion (Coaching/FAs/Cap/Lines/etc) | 2023-24 Regular Season Edition
- Thread starter AlexBrovechkin8
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@Todd Lazarchick wants to complain. And he’s angry.
Which is all well and good, but is a seemingly emotional reaction — one that does not jive with his posting history.
That’s all.
Miro and Lappy also need to be viewed in the vacuum of late first-round draft picks, which are generally not top-line players (my view on Lappy and Miro is in-between you and Langway).
I had serious concerns about GMBM's drafting ability going into the rebuild, but the returns since 2018 have been significantly improved as compared to 2014-17. This will continue to be crucial moving forward with 11 first, second, and third round picks (barring further trades) over the next three drafts.
(to others, not Cali) If you want to rail against GMBM - fine, but you have to evaluate him against a fair standard. Merely setting the standard as winning and then saying he has failed to do so does not recognize the critical context (Backstrom injury; Kuznetsov falling off the face of the earth ahead of the normal aging curve; Ovechkin still be paid top be a top line player even though he is no longer; Oshie's health issues; trading young guys and prospects to focus on 'winning now'; etc.)
For me, my biggest concern right now is building. I'm not really concerned about 24-25. We're not winning the cup next year unless something truly bizarre happens. I'm more interested in 25-26 and beyond.
True. But your “it’s not my job to figure out how he could be better” shtick is so fresh and new!!!
Lol
I agree, the shackles are off, this should be a relatively rambunctious summer.
That said, I’m sure a LOT of posters will kvetch at the prices GMBM will need to pay, to make said moves.
For some of you, the man simply cannot win.
-“Make the deal, you doofus!!”
-“How could you make THAT deal, you doofus!!!”
Kalopsia
Registered User
- Jun 25, 2018
- 818
- 1,230
You are attacking other posters. You can have your opinions about the GM, that’s fine. We all can. But we also all aren’t using words like “delusional” to each other…..unless of course, prompted.
Slow your roll man. You aren’t hearing people.
twabby
Registered User
- Mar 9, 2010
- 13,849
- 14,876
When can criticism be levied at MacLellan?
Last offseason was a disaster (Pacioretty and Edmundson? Not cashing in on a clearly declining Tom Wilson????). The Connor Brown trade was silly even removing the ACL injury. Darcy Kuemper is missing an eyeball. They wasted a first round pick acquiring Mantha. His drafts have largely been misses. He made Todd Reirden the head coach.
Yeah there are good moves too. I don't know if he should be fired or not. But let's not pretend a dude whose team hasn't been competitive in years is one of the best in the biz.
Last offseason was a disaster (Pacioretty and Edmundson? Not cashing in on a clearly declining Tom Wilson????). The Connor Brown trade was silly even removing the ACL injury. Darcy Kuemper is missing an eyeball. They wasted a first round pick acquiring Mantha. His drafts have largely been misses. He made Todd Reirden the head coach.
Yeah there are good moves too. I don't know if he should be fired or not. But let's not pretend a dude whose team hasn't been competitive in years is one of the best in the biz.
Is there some unwritten rule about not being able voice frustration of the lack of improvement for the last 6 years? You have this weird vibe around you that I can’t be unhappy about the state of the team unless A. I’ve never liked anything he’s done or B. You deem it ok time to be frustrated. If you’re cool with the mediocrity of the franchise for the last 6 years that’s cool. I’m not. The issues with this team have been clear as day for the last 3 years. We’ve heard “we tried” for the last 2 and don’t see that changing based upon his history of inability to bring in substantial talent.
Say it louder for the people in the back! Top 3/5/10 GMs don’t make those moves.
Come on twabs….
Criticism can always be levied, everywhere. Shit does happen, and results are results.
However this isn’t just “criticism”. This is asking for a replacement.
There is a difference, yes?
I have a weird vibe? Ok, fair enough.
Your vibe is anger. Nothing weird about it.
Be angry all you want. I don’t think anyone has told you how to “feel”.
What I DO find challenging, is your need to berate other posters opinions that don’t agree w you, yet have no foundational substance to what should be done differently?
“Just be better!!!”
Yeah, no shit man. My 5yr old son could tell us that.
Is that all you have?
If you think you or I are privy to information of who is/isn’t available in front office circles via trade and such you are sadly mistaken. Hence where the “it’s not my job” is fitting. Aside from MAYBE Leonard, I’d listen on anyone on this roster or prospect pool for the right player. Are Miro, Lapierre, CMM, Cristal, Chesley etc franchise altering players? Odds say no. GMBMs draft history screams hell no.
For the, idk 5th time now, this team has had a lack of putting the effing puck in the effing net. Made exponentially clear by their goal differential this year. Acquire talent that does just that. Whether that’s via FA or trade or drafting ready talent (highly unlikely). Personally I’d add two top 6 talents. One via FA. One via trade. You have a near 60G/100PT top line C/W (flexibility) available in FA. There shouldn’t be any excuse why he isn’t wearing a Washington sweater next fall.
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You mean Reinhart? So we should pay 12-13m a yr for what…6-7yrs, to ensure we get him?
Just so I am understanding you here
This is where we fundamentally disagree on how to build out a roster. You're focused exclusively on making the best team possible in the short-term, and I agree that Sam Reinhart would make the Caps significantly better in 24-25 (and almost certainly 25-26 too). However, to me, a great GM needs to have just as much of an eye on 24-25 as the future years.
Reinhart turns 29 next season. He is likely going to sign an 7 or 8 year deal at an AAV of around 11 mil (per Evolving-Hockey's excellent projection model). He is going to both regress next year (he's not shooting 24.5% against a career high of 15.6% again), and he will start hitting his aging curve over the next 2-to-3 seasons. If the team gets really lucky (Oshie-esque), maybe he's great for the next 4-5 seasons. That means you've just signed a boat anchor taking up more than 10% of the cap for a minimum of two seasons and up to 5+. In fact, if he regresses hard (Kuznetsov started falling off hard at 30), he may never live up to the deal he signs (which, as you said, is based on nearly 60 goal/100 point production on a high-scoring team).
Look at what the Skinner deal has done to Buffalo. Sure, you can trade the contract, but we're already railing on GMBM for giving away a 1st to shed Panik. What do you think it would cost to shed an older Reinhart scoring as a 3rd liner being paid nearly 11 mil per year?
I think we agree completely on the goal - the goal is to compete for and win Stanley Cups (and ideally more than one). We just disagree philosophically on how to get there. To me, you're either building for the future (to compete for cups) or you're competing now for cups. I see the Caps as bucket A (building for the future), so my focus is on adding pieces that can help win the cup in the future (and ideally help the team now too but that's less important).
Interesting pin points on your criticism.
1) forum wanted to move on from Sammy and Vanecek. BM does so and brings nr1 goalie from the free agents in. Sure, Kuemper has yet to proven his worth it, but at the same time BM wheeled in Lindgren. We have a solid goalie tandem right now for less than 7 millions and was a big reason of our playoffs spot, so i dont think thats the point im looking at. Id rather complain going too long with Sammy and Vanecek, but again its not like he tried to do that, Lunqvist was quite an interesting one. Problem was both young goalies also made progress at the start, so there was some actual thought behind it that they could figure it out.
2) edmundsson, pacioretty… really? Those are the depth acquirings. We lost nothing, actually got ourselves a better pick when trading Edmundsson out.
3) most in the forum liked Brown trade. His injury was just unlucky, and derailed him totally. He was pretty good with the Senators.
4) was there actually offers for Wilson that BM rejected?
5) everyone wanted to see ’a’ Mantha trade. It was time for that. But sure, ill give you that.
6) pretty much everyone and their mom agreed Reirden was the logical continuition for Trotz.
BM has mostly done moves that many were asking to happen, and when those moves didnt work out he is called out. Fair enough, thats his job. But none you listed is really anything close of ”worst GM in the league” esque some of here wants to think.
hb12xchamps
Registered User
Pacioretty was a dumb move now that we know how it worked out. Edmundson was not considering they flipped him and upgraded a 7th rounder to a 5th rounder.
The Connor Brown trade was pretty loved around these parts IIRC. We will never get the chance to know if that was a good move or not.
Kuemper hasn’t worked out, but they also got Lindgren for peanuts and avoided throwing money at Jack Campbell (yikes). He moved on from both Sammy and Vanny and those both look like solid moves at this point considering both might be on their 3rd NHL team this offseason (Vanecek already is).
The Panik signings and Hagelin’s resigning are two major blunders off the top of my head. Panik led to having to shed that 1st rounder in the Mantha deal. I think moving Vrana was the right call all things considered but I think that deal was rushed.
He’s hit on more free agent signings than he’s missed on. Strome,Lindgren, TvR, Dowd, Connolly, Milano, Sheary immediately come to mind. Most were signed to pretty insignificant deals too
I dunno man, the word "disaster" isn't really appropriate to describe a trade for a 6/7 Dman when you gave up a 3rd and a 7th and then a year later you get back a 3rd and a 5th. JE had potential to fill a solid need of a cheap, big physical defenseman with Cup winning experience, who could eat up PK minutes. For whatever reason, he wasn't very effective (could have been hurt), but they got back more in return for his rental than they gave up to get him, hardly a disaster. JE was not the reason we were cap strapped either.
Patches was a low risk, no reward move. It was a failure. It was not a disaster. Keeping Tom Wilson is not a disaster either, you're literally the only person anyone has ever heard of advocating for trading him.
A disaster, is trading Forsberg for Martin Erat. These moves weren't that.
twabby
Registered User
- Mar 9, 2010
- 13,849
- 14,876
I didn't like it. My comments were here:
Confirmed with Link: - Connor Brown to WSH for 2024 2nd round pick
I feel like BM has made plenty of good small moves but the team really needs an infusion of talent the likes we haven't really seen since Oshie and Niskanen were acquired ~10 years ago. Strome is probably his best move since then, otherwise he's been way too conservative with his targets.
I guess I should treat the decision on Tom Wilson differently because that very well could be an ownership decision. But man that is the most obvious get better move that isn't being made.
So you are ok on throwing a 7yr/84m deal to get Mr Reinhart?
I would think that would be the winning bid (but not by much)
Hivemind
We're Touched
Not gonna read thru every single bit of the back-and-forth over the past several pages, but I skimmed enough to get the gist. Some good points from both sides.
Some assorted thoughts:
Comparing GMBM to GMs from other franchises with multiple cups is pretty silly. GMBM did something we've never done in our franchise's history (win a Cup), and I have immense respect for him for that. But he didn't win multiple Cups, let alone multiple Cups with different cores.
GMBM is now the 4th longest tenured GM in the NHL.
It's fair to be critical of the "lost years" in a couple portions of GMGM's tenure (the post-Boudreau stretch in particular), but it should be similarly in bounds to be critical of the "lost years" under MacLellan's tenure. The past three seasons have been largely listless, without a clear direction for the franchise beyond 894. He stuck with Laviolette longer than he should have, given the roster's lack of a Lavi bump and Lavi's treatment of the key young pieces they needed to be evaluating. They didn't really start moving towards rebuild until the past 15 months, and even then it's been a lot of half-measures (not selling Wilson, Dowd) and short-term moves (Patches' NMC, retained salary slot usage).
People credit GMBM for only missing the playoffs once, which is correct. But let's not pretend that this season, for all intents and purposes, was a playoff worthy team. They scraped into the last spot in the East against a bunch of other teams who were tripping over themselves to also fall out of the playoff race. They had the infamous goal differential. And they got promptly swept by the Rangers without ever putting up much of a fight. All making the playoffs did this year was give Ted 2 games of home playoff revenue and set the franchise back a handful of draft spots.
This season also wasn't the first time they've been embarassed in the playoffs.
When they moved on from Reirden, GMBM himself said that first round exits two years in a row is beneath the standard that this team has set. Since then they've had three more first round exits and missed the playoffs the other year. This team is beneath GMBM's own self-defined standards.
GMs should be evaluated with a broader context than just results, and the state of the roster is definitely a large part of that. I completely agree. But the state of this franchise is also something that GMBM essentially created. This isn't a roster he inherited, it's one he's made. It's his contracts, his trades, his free agents, his draft picks. There's only three active players left that were initially drafted by GMGM (four if you count Kuzy's retained salary), and all of them are on contracts signed by GMBM.
There's the old saying that sometimes the best roster move is the one you don't make. That's a valid statement. But there's also the equally valid counter-point, opportunity cost. There have been opportunities to aggressively retool, or to clearly define a rebuild, and those opporutnities were passed upon. That's a big part of how we ended up in this purgatory-state roster situation.
Every team in the league had to deal with the pandemic and the flat cap. It didn't only impact Washington or GMBM.
I don't think GMBM is a bad GM, by any stretch of the imagination. I think he was the right GM hire at the right point in the franchise, and helped get this franchise to the promised land. The verdict has yet to be rendered to see if he's the right GM to lead a team through a core turnover and rebuilding period. I don't think there's a whole lot of argument to be made that he's a top 5 GM in the league, though.
Some assorted thoughts:
Comparing GMBM to GMs from other franchises with multiple cups is pretty silly. GMBM did something we've never done in our franchise's history (win a Cup), and I have immense respect for him for that. But he didn't win multiple Cups, let alone multiple Cups with different cores.
GMBM is now the 4th longest tenured GM in the NHL.
It's fair to be critical of the "lost years" in a couple portions of GMGM's tenure (the post-Boudreau stretch in particular), but it should be similarly in bounds to be critical of the "lost years" under MacLellan's tenure. The past three seasons have been largely listless, without a clear direction for the franchise beyond 894. He stuck with Laviolette longer than he should have, given the roster's lack of a Lavi bump and Lavi's treatment of the key young pieces they needed to be evaluating. They didn't really start moving towards rebuild until the past 15 months, and even then it's been a lot of half-measures (not selling Wilson, Dowd) and short-term moves (Patches' NMC, retained salary slot usage).
People credit GMBM for only missing the playoffs once, which is correct. But let's not pretend that this season, for all intents and purposes, was a playoff worthy team. They scraped into the last spot in the East against a bunch of other teams who were tripping over themselves to also fall out of the playoff race. They had the infamous goal differential. And they got promptly swept by the Rangers without ever putting up much of a fight. All making the playoffs did this year was give Ted 2 games of home playoff revenue and set the franchise back a handful of draft spots.
This season also wasn't the first time they've been embarassed in the playoffs.
When they moved on from Reirden, GMBM himself said that first round exits two years in a row is beneath the standard that this team has set. Since then they've had three more first round exits and missed the playoffs the other year. This team is beneath GMBM's own self-defined standards.
GMs should be evaluated with a broader context than just results, and the state of the roster is definitely a large part of that. I completely agree. But the state of this franchise is also something that GMBM essentially created. This isn't a roster he inherited, it's one he's made. It's his contracts, his trades, his free agents, his draft picks. There's only three active players left that were initially drafted by GMGM (four if you count Kuzy's retained salary), and all of them are on contracts signed by GMBM.
There's the old saying that sometimes the best roster move is the one you don't make. That's a valid statement. But there's also the equally valid counter-point, opportunity cost. There have been opportunities to aggressively retool, or to clearly define a rebuild, and those opporutnities were passed upon. That's a big part of how we ended up in this purgatory-state roster situation.
Every team in the league had to deal with the pandemic and the flat cap. It didn't only impact Washington or GMBM.
I don't think GMBM is a bad GM, by any stretch of the imagination. I think he was the right GM hire at the right point in the franchise, and helped get this franchise to the promised land. The verdict has yet to be rendered to see if he's the right GM to lead a team through a core turnover and rebuilding period. I don't think there's a whole lot of argument to be made that he's a top 5 GM in the league, though.
Can we just accept that, with a rapidly declining Ovi, a nearly done Oshie, Backie not coming back at all, and Kuzy quitting on us all happening at once, there's no combination of moves in 2022 or 2023 offseasons that would have made this team competitive for a Cup win. We all expected this to be the beginning of a slow rebuild while keeping Ovi happy for another year while he chases the record. Every other move we could possibly have made would have been tinkering with the bottom 6 or bottom 4 D and none of those moves would have changed our overall prospects much. Those moves were essentially to bring up the youth, ready or not. Much of the youth showed they were ready to contribute at the NHL level, which will help fill out those bottom 6 and bottom 4 roles. But now that our Cap crunch - caused by paying two top line centers for delivering absolutely nothing - is coming to an end, we will see how GMBM finally decides to fill top line and top pairing roles. He hasn't had a chance to trade or sign players at that level in the past without dumping key, expensive players in return.
The fact that they made the playoffs at all is a testament to the new head coach and the youth playing at a higher level than expected, considering we got nothing from Ovi, Backie Kuzy or Oshie for most of the year. That problem will solve itself soon, and then we can grade GMBM on his ability to find stars in the rough.
The fact that they made the playoffs at all is a testament to the new head coach and the youth playing at a higher level than expected, considering we got nothing from Ovi, Backie Kuzy or Oshie for most of the year. That problem will solve itself soon, and then we can grade GMBM on his ability to find stars in the rough.
Jags
Mildly Disturbed
As has been said, this is the "I don't care how" part of your argument writ large. We were hamstrung by Backstrom's contract. His hip blew up before the ink was dry, and Kuzy went in the toilet and Samsonov and Vanny flopped in a way that cost to fix. We simply haven't been in a position to take big swings over the last 3 years or so.
There's no blame in those things. He's not responsible for Nick's health or Kuznetsov's dipshit behavior. He backstopped the goalie situation in a pretty great way on paper. How does he predict a career-ending heart condition?
Your response to that is essentially, "I don't care about the excuses. Not my job. It's his job to turn shit into gold and if he doesn't, he sucks!"
How? Nick wanted to give it another go and GMBM couldn't make him retire. That was the cap space we needed to acquire anyone decent. Every player we pay big money to can only be moved at a loss. So we couldn't just shop in free agency and the pieces we'd need to move to make that space are damaged goods.
Our window finally, officially closed. And the second that became the case, our GM pivoted his strategies to building back up the right way. It's going to take time. If you don't have the patience for that, that's your cross to bear.
Yeah, I'm with @g00n and @HTFN on this one. It's relevant to the discussion because of the context of his recent posts. If he thought GMBM's reasoning was sound or smart at the time but wants to hang him for those exact same decisions now, it undermines everything he's saying and underscores the fact that the bat he's hitting MacLellan with has HINDSIGHT etched into it.
"It's okay for ME to be wrong! I don't get paid to be right!" is a horseshit take. Mac couldn't have foreseen the biggest issues that've hamstrung us lately. No GM could have, and they couldn't have traded old, damaged, expensive pieces for young, fit, cheap ones, either. The draft criticism directly compared to pre-Mac drafts despite the fact that Mahoney's been in the driver's seat the whole time AND our last two drafts have been strong?
All of these arguments are build on foundations of nonsense, and it's not inappropriate to point it out.
IF they convince Oshie to retire, sure. If not, it's not exactly a boatload of cap space. We absolutely have room to make one splash, but that's about it. We're not teeming with assets to make it happen via trade. Easy to outbid us for the most coveted guys available, but not impossible to make something happen. So it's most likely free agency, and we're back to being a not-so-sexy hockey destination...
I'd temper your expectations. I wouldn't hate him breaking that one big splash into two smaller ones to spread the love around a little. But yeah, if he breaks it up any more than that, that would suck.
You don't like Tom Wilson? Is it that time of year already? Hi, @twabby!
Far be it from me to call my favorite Cap ever selfish, but Backstrom's Last Stand cost us any chance at making bigger moves last year. Kuzy being a shithead was a sad but distant second. Mac was pretty open about his doubts regarding Nick. It's speculation, but given that he doesn't usually speak publicly about that type of thing, his comments felt like he was encouraging Nick to hang it up. I think we'd all have preferred being able to use that huge cap chunk on something sexy, but Nick wanted to try saddling up again...
Once that shook out that way, he had to bargain hunt. The guys he got were low-risk veteran hopefuls. *shrug* What'd you want him to do? (Waits for the "Trade Wilson!" eruption.)
hb12xchamps
Registered User
I agree on the small moves. We really haven’t had the cap space to genuinely target guys outside those salary structures though. In hindsight, Backstrom really bent us over. Signs the big deal and then his hip turns into mush. We finally have some space now so I think the fair approach is giving the GM time to show he can make another Oshie/Williams/Niskanen/Orpik level move.I didn't like it. My comments were here:
Confirmed with Link: - Connor Brown to WSH for 2024 2nd round pick
forums.hfboards.com
I feel like BM has made plenty of good small moves but the team really needs an infusion of talent the likes we haven't really seen since Oshie and Niskanen were acquired ~10 years ago. Strome is probably his best move since then, otherwise he's been way too conservative with his targets.
I guess I should treat the decision on Tom Wilson differently because that very well could be an ownership decision. But man that is the most obvious get better move that isn't being made.
Which Reinhart are we signing though? 50-65 point Reinhart or 57 goal, 94 point Reinhart? This season is a big outlier for his career. His previous career high was 33 goals. Do we really want to throw $11 million at a guy like that?
So let me get this straight. A GM shouldn’t but judged by his failures because “he can’t see that coming” but I should lol? That’s a hell of a take.As has been said, this is the "I don't care how" part of your argument writ large. We were hamstrung by Backstrom's contract. His hip blew up before the ink was dry, and Kuzy went in the toilet and Samsonov and Vanny flopped in a way that cost to fix. We simply haven't been in a position to take big swings over the last 3 years or so.
There's no blame in those things. He's not responsible for Nick's health or Kuznetsov's dipshit behavior. He backstopped the goalie situation in a pretty great way on paper. How does he predict a career-ending heart condition?
Your response to that is essentially, "I don't care about the excuses. Not my job. It's his job to turn shit into gold and if he doesn't, he sucks!"
How? Nick wanted to give it another go and GMBM couldn't make him retire. That was the cap space we needed to acquire anyone decent. Every player we pay big money to can only be moved at a loss. So we couldn't just shop in free agency and the pieces we'd need to move to make that space are damaged goods.
Our window finally, officially closed. And the second that became the case, our GM pivoted his strategies to building back up the right way. It's going to take time. If you don't have the patience for that, that's your cross to bear.
Yeah, I'm with @g00n and @HTFN on this one. It's relevant to the discussion because of the context of his recent posts. If he thought GMBM's reasoning was sound or smart at the time but wants to hang him for those exact same decisions now, it undermines everything he's saying and underscores the fact that the bat he's hitting MacLellan with has HINDSIGHT etched into it.
"It's okay for ME to be wrong! I don't get paid to be right!" is a horseshit take. Mac couldn't have foreseen the biggest issues that've hamstrung us lately. No GM could have, and they couldn't have traded old, damaged, expensive pieces for young, fit, cheap ones, either. The draft criticism directly compared to pre-Mac drafts despite the fact that Mahoney's been in the driver's seat the whole time AND our last two drafts have been strong?
All of these arguments are build on foundations of nonsense, and it's not inappropriate to point it out.
IF they convince Oshie to retire, sure. If not, it's not exactly a boatload of cap space. We absolutely have room to make one splash, but that's about it. We're not teeming with assets to make it happen via trade. Easy to outbid us for the most coveted guys available, but not impossible to make something happen. So it's most likely free agency, and we're back to being a not-so-sexy hockey destination...
I'd temper your expectations. I wouldn't hate him breaking that one big splash into two smaller ones to spread the love around a little. But yeah, if he breaks it up any more than that, that would suck.
You don't like Tom Wilson? Is it that time of year already? Hi, @twabby!
Far be it from me to call my favorite Cap ever selfish, but Backstrom's Last Stand cost us any chance at making bigger moves last year. Kuzy being a shithead was a sad but distant second. Mac was pretty open about his doubts regarding Nick. It's speculation, but given that he doesn't usually speak publicly about that type of thing, his comments felt like he was encouraging Nick to hang it up. I think we'd all have preferred being able to use that huge cap chunk on something sexy, but Nick wanted to try saddling up again...
Once that shook out that way, he had to bargain hunt. The guys he got were low-risk veteran hopefuls. *shrug* What'd you want him to do? (Waits for the "Trade Wilson!" eruption.)
