Oh gosh no, I don't think any of us is overlooking that at all. I think we all agree with that. It just doesn't stop us from fantasizing out loud about what some better ways might be, because we don't want to be purely doom and gloom 24/7.
This is where I struggle. Tampa and Colorado both tore it down and yes it took time, but they got there. Florida took even longer and it took getting high picks on Barkov, Ekblad, Hubs, and some luck with free agents and trades to get to where they are. Pittsburgh almost lost their team because they tore it down. Chicago tore it down before getting their corner stones. Outside of one first round and exit they had 10 years of missing the playoffs.
Makes sense. Saw some conversation around it and decided to chip in. Been mentally checked out from the team since the Pärssinen waiver wire ..
While I agree with some of the sentiments, keep in mind that Vegas would NEVER treat ROR as if he had a NMC. If it betters their plans, he'd be on the next plane out.
I still don't think they fit in with the general tanking group of teams. Their top 5 picks were defensemen (and I'd send our later-drafted peak Weber, Suter, Josi and the prime year or 2 of Subban as easily being on par) and the most impact forward of that group (also not an "elite center") was drafted at 16. Petro was great that post-season but that was a Cup won on overall team depth and not top 5 picks and extended tanking.
That’s where Trotz needs to go full on Billy Bean and force Brunette’s hand with the roster.
They didn't take any gamble though and there were no "all-in" moves. Their in-season acquisitions that season were Jakub Jerabek, Jared Costeau, and Michael del Zotto. If they had failed they would have run back the next season and tried to be competitive again. They were in the spot they were in precisely because their general roster-building strategy (similar to the Bruins, etc...) has usually been to just yearly build as competitive and deep a team as they reasonably can. The trip into the cellar was on the heels of something like 20+ consecutive playoff appearances and the roster was completely depleted.St.Louis is an example of the "go for it" gamble case. Fire the coach, put all your chips on the table, hope for a miracle if you just get into the playoffs. Ok, that's a valid case study for why I always WANT our team to simply Make The Playoffs.
I just don't think that one-off example has anything to do with overall franchise-building strategies, however. It does say, if you are within any kind of shooting range of making the playoffs... Make The Playoffs. You never know what might happen.
Our problem is we aren't even in that shooting range, however.
Agreed, fine, I just mean if you are actually in "the mushy middle"... you can fire your coach. Maybe you get on a roll, make the playoffs. Maybe the roll keeps going on through the playoffs. That's kind of like us last season. Aside from the playoff roll. I'm all in favor of going that route. And maybe we could have fired our coach 6 weeks sooner and gotten there? It didn't happen though. So now we're in a different category, where simply making the playoffs is outright impossible. Once we chose to stick with Bruno, we took a different detour.
Poor Art Howe will forever catch strays because of that (very enjoyable) movie ("if he's such a great hitter why doesn't he hit good?"). IRL he was on board with the analytics/metric-based focuses that Sandy Alderson started focusing on before Beane and many of the trades were because the A's were already massive cheapskates
Yeah, as you said though, there's not really much there to tank with. I don't think trading Gus, Lauzon, Schenn, or bottom 6 guys will make us any worse if replaced by hungry young guys and filler. There's ROR, sure, but among other questions with him is how do we fill our center depth next year if we trade him and are trying to compete (and with those long-term NMC contracts we don't have much choice but to).
Yes, I agree. We can get some more 2nd or 3rd round picks for Gus/Lauzon/Schenn, or 7th rounders for Smith/McCarron/Jank. So that's not really going to move the needle either. It's more just replacing them with the younger(/hopefully faster) players that is the real benefit here.
The only issue I take with this is that it's in response to a discussion that involved an expressed desire for the team to stop winning games, and that has nothing to do with either of "luck" or "good scouting".
People are too quick to dismiss the margins between a good and bad team. (They are quite small.) The St.Louis Blues were a train wreck out of the gate the season they won the Cup. They didn't make a ton of crazy moves. They fired a bad coach, stapled a goalie in the net, and changed systems to suit the players they already had. Boom! They won the Cup. Matching the system to the players and using all those huge defenseman to support the rookie goalie was the right approach. Obviously.The only issue I take with this is that it's in response to a discussion that involved an expressed desire for the team to stop winning games, and that has nothing to do with either of "luck" or "good scouting".
Yep, we obviously have a horrific coach (at least in terms of fit to our player personnel). But we didn't fire him in November. So the ship has sailed for this season. St.Louis did it on November 19th. We don't have the new coach, we don't have a young goalie on a roll who is going to make a difference since we already have Saros doing well. We can't replicate that outlier St.Louis result. All we can do now is Miss The Playoffs. By how much? That's the only question.People are too quick to dismiss the margins between a good and bad team. (They are quite small.) The St.Louis Blues were a train wreck out of the gate the season they won the Cup. They didn't make a ton of crazy moves. They fired a bad coach, stapled a goalie in the net, and changed systems to suit the players they already had. Boom! They won the Cup. Matching the system to the players and using all those huge defenseman to support the rookie goalie was the right approach. Obviously.
Our team was viewed as a playoff team on paper at the start of the year. We had talent. Enough that we had some good players eating popcorn every night. Our coach couldn't figure it out and just kept square-peg-round-hole over and over and over. (One glaring issue was the second line was garbage, but the only trick Bruno could do was change the center on that line every other shift.) Talent evaluation and putting guys in roles to succeed was more the failure than our players being useless trash. Stammer could have/should have been plugged in at center before 3 months had scrolled off the calendar.
by the way, it's possible to go way too far with "burning it down". Arizona tried that approach, it didn't work, and now it's going to take them a few more years to win their Cup.
This Is a completely subjective question. I'm frequently a naive idealist, so while I like analyzing and armchair GMing more than an average fan, I still really just want to enjoy watching them compete and win as many games as they can.
I'm totally in the same boat... any time we could actually make the playoffs anyway. I'm always up for the ultimate hail mary hope.
