Salary Cap: Chris MacFarland - Record as Avalanche GM (Updates In First Post)

[TruePowerSlave]

Let's be f***ing honest: the tight cap situation and lack of assets and prospect pool is what leads to a lot of these mistakes, a lot of which are reclamation projects. It's not a get out of jail free card for him, but we can all talk in retrospect what a horrible trade that RyJo was, or that it was silly to hope that Newhook would become a #2C, or that Georgiev might've found his groove in the playoffs and that with more responsibility they could become a passable tandem.

That's what the majority of this board talked themselves into, at least in one of these cases. If you thought all the time that all of this was dumb, good for you. The majority saw what CMac tried to do with limited assets.

CMac deserves no rope on these mistakes.

The RyJo trade was dumb day one. He was never going to be a #2C, I question if they even did their scouting in this case.

The goaltending was also pretty obvious. Georgiev should have never been on the team this season. Totally understandable that they kept him for the second season as the first went pretty well.

Boards often just hope for the best in the offseason, its the sunshine and rainbows period.

 

[shadow1]

In general (not specifically in this thread), MacFarland's successes have been minimized and his mistakes have been magnified.

2022-2023 was a wasted season, there's no getting around that. When the dust settles on this core, that year is going to stick out like a sore thumb. But I seriously doubt it would've been any different with Sakic at the helm. For as great of a GM as he was, almost every notable move he made came in the off-season. The Avs were notorious for in-season inactivity under Joe, with the massive exception being the year they won the cup.

MacFarland has been the exact opposite of that. Has there been a more active GM? He made eight trades last season. Eight. He's already made three this year (including the Brannstrom deal). For only the second time in this cup window, Colorado was all-in last deadline.

Has he made mistakes? Yes. The minor dice rolls (Brannstrom, Tatar) were converted into draft capital. The major ones (Johansen, goaltending) were addressed. Maybe not as quickly as we would've liked, but the trades themselves ended up being way bigger than anyone expected. Elliotte Friedman was linking the Avalanche to Nick Bjudgstad and Alex Kerfoot, yet they go out and get Casey Mittelstadt.

Over the past month, I've seen so much echo chamber parroting about how "stupid" MacFarland was going to stick with Georgiev. How many times in NHL history has a team traded both of their goalies before Christmas? Or how about traded both of their goalies in a span of 10 days?

I absolutely agree it shouldn't have gotten to that point. But ultimately it was addressed, and in aggressive fashion. Other contenders like Edmonton need goaltending, and they've done exactly two things to address it: Jack and Shit. I'll take the GM who makes a lot of moves (mostly good ones) and fixes his mistakes, thank you very much.

 

[MarkT]

In general (not specifically in this thread), MacFarland's successes have been minimized and his mistakes have been magnified.

2022-2023 was a wasted season, there's no getting around that. When the dust settles on this core, that year is going to stick out like a sore thumb. But I seriously doubt it would've been any different with Sakic at the helm. For as great of a GM as he was, almost every notable move he made came in the off-season. The Avs were notorious for in-season inactivity under Joe, with the massive exception being the year they won the cup.

MacFarland has been the exact opposite of that. Has there been a more active GM? He made eight trades last season. Eight. He's already made three this year (including the Brannstrom deal). For only the second time in this cup window, Colorado was all-in last deadline.

Has he made mistakes? Yes. The minor dice rolls (Brannstrom, Tatar) were converted into draft capital. The major ones (Johansen, goaltending) were addressed. Maybe not as quickly as we would've liked, but the trades themselves ended up being way bigger than anyone expected. Elliotte Friedman was linking the Avalanche to Nick Bjudgstad and Alex Kerfoot, yet they go out and get Casey Mittelstadt.

Over the past month, I've seen so much echo chamber parroting about how "stupid" MacFarland was going to stick with Georgiev. How many times in NHL history has a team traded both of their goalies before Christmas? Or how about traded both of their goalies in a span of 10 days?

I absolutely agree it shouldn't have gotten to that point. But ultimately it was addressed, and in aggressive fashion. Other contenders like Edmonton need goaltending, and they've done exactly two things to address it: Jack and Shit. I'll take the GM who makes a lot of moves (mostly good ones) and fixes his mistakes, thank you very much.

BRAVO!

I know this board in general trends negative, but the narrative that he's made more bad moves than good is counter to reality.

I'll tell you one thing that irks me about the "MacFarland was stupid to stick with Georgiev". I have yet to hear a single realistic trade proposal where they could have moved Georgiev in the offseason without having to pay to get rid of him. I'd also like to hear proposals about who the starter should have been instead.

 

[CobraAcesS]

BRAVO!

I know this board in general trends negative, but the narrative that he's made more bad moves than good is counter to reality.

I'll tell you one thing that irks me about the "MacFarland was stupid to stick with Georgiev". I have yet to hear a single realistic trade proposal where they could have moved Georgiev in the offseason without having to pay to get rid of him. I'd also like to hear proposals about who the starter should have been instead.

I get why they didn't, he rebounded in the playoffs and things were tight. Plus I don't blame them for hoping for growth not regression from Annunen.

I wanted him gone, but as you say there wasn't an obvious fit. I figured they'd try to upgrade possibly and knew he was a question mark. The evidence in that is no contract extension.

They've gone though Hepple and Klippenstein in pretty rapid succession. That at least indicates they are well aware the drafting isn't good enough and finally trying to take steps to fix that, though I can't say that whatever they're doing are the right moves, they're moves nonetheless. I'm still flabbergasted they let Pracey have another draft after the throwdown they had with him in 2013.

I'm also glad there's been a philosophical shift at least in terms of drafting a goddamn goaltender. They're FINALLY actually giving a f***, though again, I question their actual ability to get the job done.

So...I'm at a 3 right now. There are so many aspects to this job and to be sure, MacFarland has made his share of mistakes already. He was put in a tough position, what with a Cup-winning roster and very little cap space to work with, but even then he's made some bad decisions. Nevertheless I think he's done some good things to try and make up for them, we will see if it ends up being enough.

I will most certainly take this over what I'm watching in New York. There might have been some scrambling taking place in Ball Arena's front office to be sure, but it's nothing compared to the full-blown panic taking place in Madison Square Garden, and the ham-fisted way that Drury has been handling players (notably Goodrow and Trouba) has just been baffling to me. If he thought that was going to serve as motivation for the rest of the roster, well, it ain't workin'.

Yeah, I do not have a grass is greener view of him yet. He has proven he can, and will fix his mistakes.

It's legit scary to think about having some of these GMs, and Mr Y is on that list too lol.

Some good some bad, definition of #3.

I fully believe he has as many 4s and 5s as he does still because people forget, don't care, or don't know they can change it lol.

I dropped him from 4 to 3 just recently after seeing how the offseason went.

 

[pockets]

I'm going back up to 2. I'm still not a fan of CMac but got to give him credit for acknowledging the shit show in net and aggressively attempting to fix it. Let's hope he continues this trend and has a good TDL.

 

[Vaslof]

Fun hot takes from Finnish mag:

Avs won't make the playoffs, or if they will, they won't stand a chance in the playoffs.
MacFarland is panic trading and terrorizing future chances.
Trading Annunen was bad beyond belief.
Blackwood trade will also be regretted because he isn't much of an improvement over Georgiev.