It's pretty easy to take individual failures from Botterill. RoR trade, Montour trade, Skinner extension, Handling of Mitts, Sam's bridge etc. The bigger problem, by far, is looking at all the moves in the aggregate, and how little sense any of it made even if it had worked. RoR was and obvious downgrade in roster talent, so it’s obviously a bit of a reset. Then why would you trade future assets for Skinner? On that topic, you know when you make that trade that you want to extend Skinner, so why trade for Montour, who would also need an extension? And then bridging Reinhart when you’ve trade for all these expiring contracts?
There is no plan, seemingly, besides “get speed,” which means, to me, that Botts didn’t fundamentally understand why the Penguins won the cup in Sullivan’s first two years. It wasn’t just because they were fast, it was because they got meaningful contribution from ELCs, including a world class goalie. They had room to add a legit middle six winger in Hagelin and veteran leadership in Daley. Sheary at 800k is very different from Sheary at 3m. If he really wanted to emulate the Penguins, then instead of Sheary and Frolik and Montour, they’d have CJ Smith and Ogelvie, and have cap to add a cheap veteran D...and still have the extra first from last year. It’s all just so dumb.
