I dont. He's going to be an offensive cornerstone on one of the youngest teams in the NHL. If 2/3 of our potential top pair defenseman reach their potential things will be looking much different. I've got a feeling as Jones acclimates this team is only going to get better. I can already tell Jones from Saad is gonna get said a lot. Jones does his little drive the zone and gets two or three guys to chase him Saad, Hartnell, Cam basicslly any of our wingers crashing to the net are going to benefit from.
I really don't know where "selfish" came in, from what you quoted. He wanted something close to market and I'm not sure they could have paid much as they were also looking for a center - big reason they pushed for AA. I suppose Saad could have been content to Bickell money; but it's safe to say that he's worth more than that.
So yeah, Saad walked into something that no one really saw coming. I figured Bob would be good enough to cover up most of our short comings and make a strong push. Sadly it's becoming very obvious that we'll need more than getting Jones to stabilize this team. Last night we started off brutally slow, which happens a lot. We take too many dumb penalties. We have too many dumb defensive zone breakdowns. Last night we had a couple of brutal ones.
To be honest, we've got enough scoring to be a wild card team. However, we are just giving up way too many goals. We didn't address these issues in the past when Bob was covering up for our mistakes; now they are really obvious since he isn't playing.
Why the book? Well I think we need to do more than some of the small things people are looking at. I hinted at one of them; maybe it's time to look at what you can get for Bob. Perhaps looking at moving Foligno isn't a bad idea either. I suspect he's as nice in the locker room as he is when we see him on TV. I might even entertain moving Dubinsky but that would really hurt our center depth.
The players that are difference makers now seem to be more focused on our young core; the veterans don't seem to be having much of an impact.
This is all way too OT for the GDT tonight - just noticed the thread we are in but I don't really want to delete everything... lol....
I think Toronto is a nice example of what happens with great coaching. That roster is nothing remotely special but they are making strides. I wouldn't be surprised to see an 86-90 point season out of them if they don't do anything drastic at the deadline - although I'm not too sure what I see on their roster that could be described as drastic unless they moved Phaneuf (good long term) or JVR (not sure why they would).
Good luck to our Coach and guys today!
) Tkachuk or McLeod
