I will agree that this team should have been trying a lot harder a lot sooner and that what goes on now is a little irrelevant. The time was like five seasons ago at the most to start making bold moves and truly reloading. But instead we got middling overpaid player after middling overpaid player. GMs just throwing around fliff on mediocrity... not even countin' it.
I just wish they actually looked at the results and determined ok this team is in need of a new voice and really you can pick any of the years, I think at best they give him a pass for 2020-21 and 2021-22 and even the Habs series where I wanted him gone, its close enough to the 2 cups where I feel like ok fine, I can see why ownership gave him a pass.
But 2022-23 should have been when he was fired, then getting Karlsson, we might have seen better results just from a new voice behind the bench. But to expect changes with how they play when it's been the same shit without results since 2018, I don't get how they keep seeing that there hasn't been a mix of anyone that makes it work under Sullivan and even when they had Jake they missed and were going to miss before they dealt him, missed again in a year Sid scored 42 goals and both Sid, Geno and Letang all played 82 games which hasn't happened before.
Cooper, the coach that some cite as "well see if you keep the coach that's good for a while, they figure things out" well no not really. For one, Tampa heavily cheated the LTIR to win their back 2 backs and Cooper hasn't missed back 2 back playoffs as a coach in Tampa and the one year he did miss in a full season as a coach, he lost Stamkos for all but 17 games, so that was understandable.