It's unlikely that we'd want to spend significantly more, at least not on anyone with term, a big reason we had the low cap hit we had was entry level contracts for Tkachuk, Stützle, Zub and Norris.
The team was clearly looking to take steps forward, it was made clear by their words and actions. The team didn't meet internal expectations,
Nobody is saying they expected to be a playoff team right away, even with the signing of Dadonov and Murray, but it wasn't Covid that stopped us from spending significantly more, it was long term planing.
What set us back was poor performance by our big ticket signings, not Covid
Eh to each their own but I disagree. We could have had a higher cap hit if we decided to also sign a bunch of more expensive quality players to play with the kids, but we didn’t. They didn’t want better players, they said as much. They wanted cheap character vets, and that’s what we got. Save for TWO players who could have been better, but weren’t.
We also traded Daddy immediately before his bigger dollars were due instead of letting him try and bounce back. No, we weren’t trying to make noise.
I personally don’t see signing Daddy as any kind of win now move at the time, nor Murray afterwards.
I saw Daddy as a guy they wanted to score a little since we really didn’t have any other established scorers, they said as much at the time, and Murray was a gamble for the long term who was available at the time.
Those ‘big ticket signings” weren’t big ticket moves at all nor did they move the needle much when you considered the roster as a whole.
COVID didn’t stop us from spending, spending was never the point. COVID stopped us from being able to bank a couple years of gate revenues to spend later. We essentially didn’t get to build that warchest for the FYOUS plan.
In any case the owner then died and the noose was removed from the franchise and we are now a cap team looking make the playoffs.
We can agree to disagree.
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