You know MacFarland was part of all the decisions Sakic made when he was GM, right? This goes beyond just Pierre Dorion saying that he and Fenton got the Duchene trade back on track. This goes to many articles talking about Roy's departure stemming from Joe leaning more on MacFarland than what Roy wanted, etc.
And what similar approaches? Seriously dude, Joe had some great trades that he pulled off while being ultimately in charge, but this isn't some crackpot conspiracy here.
I think MacFarland and Co. (which would include Sakic since it was always stated that he would still maintain a say in the player personnel decisions even with his promotion) made a BAD evaluation as to the strength of their roster (or perhaps the ability to withstand the depth that was leaving) this past season. They made an egregious error. They believed that Newhook was going to take the 2C role and thus didn't need to fill it (they were wrong), and they continued to ignore it all season. They ignored it at the deadline when they didn't push their chips in.
I think just about all of us--save for Sea Eagles--agrees with that belief. And right now I'll go as far as to say that CMac's bacon is getting saved by some of these solutions being available for CHEAP right now. Like it's easy for him or people who would be ardent defenders of his to look back and say "See! We didn't need to!" because they couldn't have known how this market would shake out (nor do we--the market is still taking shape imo). RyJo is a gamble that might pay off or might blow up in their faces, but at least they aren't going in to the season trotting out JTC or Newhook again.
But the bottom line is this--it's entirely possible for them to have made a terrible error in judgment this past season and begin rectifying it. The mere notion that they are does not in any way/shape/form mean that Joe is now secretly pulling the strings...he never f***ing left dude.
I agree with the jist of your message, good post!
Personally, I think it's just as MORONIC to think that
only Sakic has been involved in building this team into a contender and eventual cup winner as it is to suggest that
only McFarland is to blame for the so-called failure of last season.
They make decisions together. Besides, when you think about the timeline when MacFarland was brought in, just prior to that we had Roy making personnel decisions and we were signing Joe Colbournes, trading for has-beens like Brad Stuart and Maxime Talbot. Things changed immediately after Roy left... to me, not a coincidence. Sakic is no idiot - he listened to the guy that was bringing positive results with what he was saying.
For the bolded, personally I believe this is incorrect. I don't think they made 'a bad evaluation' of the strength of the roster because after all, we did end up winning the Division while just about leading the league in man-games lost.
This is what I believe happened : they decided last summer that they would give Compher, Rodrigues and Newhook a shot as the #2C. Maybe Newhook would be ready, maybe not and if not then you can address the situation at the TDL. After all, it worked great the year prior with the acquisitions of Lehkonen & Manson. Problem is - teams at the TDL got extremely greedy with the Cup Champs and Avs management decided to pass rather than get gouged like the former Cup Champs Lightning with the ludicrous price of Tanner Jeannot. So rather than get bent over a barrel, Avs management passed and decided they weren't going to get screwed over - win or lose. We lost but hey, I don't know many teams that win every single year... it's pretty hard to repeat under normal circumstances.
