Behind Enemy Lines
Registered User
Chiarelli is absolutely to blame for the Reinhart trade. He referenced several times watching him live at Memorial Cup and early pro games. New guy who coming in with negotiated title beyond GM and ultimate organization decision making power, this was Chiarelli's first power move.Chia fell into the same trap as MacT.
Some good early trades, MPS for Perron, Scrivens for Kassian, Maroon for a song and a dance... But fixing the issues of your predecessor is easy, it's a lot harder when your solutions fail. But good news for those two: that was just impossible. *Fingers in ears* LALALALALALALALA
Nikitin and Ference are top 4 defencemen, on-ice results be damned; Jultz will always be the golden boy, while Petry needs to prove himself; Eakins is a top-tier coach and definitely not a snake oils salesman; Lucic is a top 6er, 30 games without a goal be damned; Pulju at 18/19 is ready to replace Ebs, he just he's a broken down Jokinen to unlock his endless potential...
Say what you will about Holland, but he doesn't keep trying to beat that dead horse to get it to work.
AA was cast off asap when he didn't click McDavid or Drai. Same with Campbell, who probably got too little rope, but that's the price when you make 5mil in a tight cap world.
Plus his bold moves actually worked out more often than not. Hyman, Ekholm being the two biggest gems.
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The only one I'll defend Chia on: Imo Reinhart wasn't his mistake. He had only been with the organisation for 2 months and had no experience with Reinhart. That one was entirely pushed for by Green.
But what should have happened was Chia saying sure he's a great prospect, but the team already has Klefbom and Marincin showing decently at the NHL level, Davidson and Oesterle playing well in OKC, and Nurse drafted 2 years previous. Why the hell was another young LHD a need?
Not pushing back after the team depth chart is where Chia f***ed up.
Fact that the Oilers and Green specifically had years of information on Reinhart unfortunately sealed the incredibly bad decision. This 'bold' Chiarelli decision making is consistent with his big blunders with Saguin and Hall. Reinhart was foreshadowing of the buffoonery to come that culminated with his awful try to save his job desperation work that further hollowed out a thin NHL roster.
“He has to make our team,” Chiarelli said. “We’ve got eight or nine D who are challenging. I believe he is. I know his year last year wasn’t great and there’s reasons behind that and that really is, not excuses, but there are reasons that explain it. But what I saw in the Memorial Cup is that you’ve got a player here who can dominate, that can lug the puck, and that can make plays and for a bigger sized man, he can move well.”
About Holland he tried to re-sign AA after rolling out two quality picks for him, but, (thankfully) covid cap saved him from overpaying a largely mediocre player.
Chiarelli set his course right from the McDavid draft trying to speed up the rebuild with a big pro level prospect d he was confident in from his own direct scouting and evaluation. Spoiled the quality second first rounder MacTavish left him and high second round pick that would have given this organization a couple of quality adds to a lean prospect pool. Master of his own demise.