Nashville has now lost 5 straight series in the 1st round and hasn't had home-ice in any of the last 4 playoff losses. This is what Blake was shooting for, and sadly he has gotten it. You just can't expect to win in today's NHL without multiple stars in their prime, the league is an arms-race now, everything has adapted to offense, because that is what the fans want, in all sports.
Both teams are stuck in purgatory. Both of these teams are one dominant center away from being legit contenders. It has overtaken goaltending as the most important position in the sport. I think for the Kings, they could win a cup with Talbot as the goalie but not Kopitar as the 1C. You put a J Hughes or Eichel type on either of these teams it's a completely different story.
That is why I was on board with what Blake was doing for a couple of years once they abandoned ship on the contending, it seemed that the Kings were starting a traditional rebuild. They had three very high picks in a row, they traded a lot of veterans for picks but also for established guys further down the path by a couple years (Durzi and Grundstrom). I think Blake fairly analyzed in 2019 that if he got Kopitar and Doughty a 1C and 1D as good or close to as good as they currently were in the 19-21 drafts that they could contend before Kopitar's contract ended and if it went well, even beyond that. This thread probably does not exist if the Kings hit their 14% and win the Hughes lottery, if Turcotte ended up being Toews 2.0 or Vilardi was Getzlaf 2.0 and they don't trade Faber. So in a way you feel for Blake, butin the summer of 2021 he just completely lost his way, he didn’t correctly navigate that he didn’t draft his Kopitar and instead of trying to find that in 2022 or 2023 he just decided to try and trade for it.
Dubois's contract isn't excessively high like a lot of you think it is.
Don't get me wrong, I think it sucks, but the deal he got is what a player of his ilk and age is going get if you want to lock them up long term with the cap expected to go up over time.
This is true, there will be another PLD for some other team, it happens every summer. The biggest issue with PLD is that it’s year 1 of an 8 year deal.
Sitting on the toilet and just finished reading that Hoven trash on my phone. Was holding more shit in my hand than what's in the bowl.
Patience? Pretty sure DL just finished a WCF appearance in his 7th season and was about to win another Cup in Year 8. Bowlby has blown the pipeline and created a roster that has glaring holes and has gotten worse.
Wonder if I can still cancel my seats.
I still can’t believe he posted that garbage, and only a couple of days after he went on his podcast and said anyone who thinks he is carrying water for the organization is a “clueless knucklehead”
The part that really got me the most was referring to DL’s “grave mistakes” and “horrific blunders”, when this guy is completely unwilling to use the same terms to describe Blake’s moves such as the PLD and Fiala trades, the Turcotte pick and the Cal Petersen signing. It’s just so incredibly unprofessional from a guy who says in the post he’s “trying to be as objective as possible”
We won’t get objectivity from Hoven until Blake and Luc are gone, and maybe not even then, because it’s clear he has more of a relationship with them than he did with DL. Even after BLuc are gone and the only thing left is the ashes of their destruction he won’t want to call a spade a spade because those are his boys. No journalistic integrity whatsoever.
