Rick Nash trade: one year later

[thebus2288*]

Oh please.

I forget that saying something sarcastic here has to be followed by a stupid smiley face that completely contradicts what i'm trying to do...SORRY

You must not remember or were never involved in our talks with Ranger(and other) fans on here during the rumor stage or after the trade even went down. There was a good amount of them that said some pretty ridiculous things. I'm talking Kreider for Nash straight up....and they'd say no.

 

[FANonymous]

Well said indeed. I wasn't a Howson fan (nor a supporter) but I will gladly give him his dues. He put the ground work in to the foundation for this team, and to that I thank him.

Really though, we have to credit XGMDM for the Nash trade. If he wouldn't have drafted Nash in the first place there could never have been a Nash Trade.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Really though, we have to credit XGMDM for the Nash trade. If he wouldn't have drafted Nash in the first place there could never have been a Nash Trade.

Doug gave himself enough credit, we don't need to do it.

 

[major major]

Hardly. Folks generally aren't inclined to trade roster players when they're in the middle of a run to the playoffs.

I could be misremembering it, but I thought the deal Howson bit on was similarly structured to the ones available in the winter. I think I was picking that up from Portzline. I don't remember anything about the offers improving over time.

I for one would rather have Anisimov, Erixon, and Rychel over Kreider, Thomas, and Miller.

AINEC. I wouldn't take all three for Filthisimov, and I'd need at least Kreider+ for either Rychel or Erixon.

But I didn't know that at the time, and luckily Howson did. That makes me admire the guy, because often when I don't like what he does he proves me wrong (see Bobrovsky trade).

 

[Sore Loser]

Really though, we have to credit XGMDM for the Nash trade. If he wouldn't have drafted Nash in the first place there could never have been a Nash Trade.

I couldn't agree more ... and, to add to that, the Sergei Bobrovsky deal. He was, in fact, the one that set the team up for failure over the course of many years, and left the Jackets in the position to draft Jakub Voracek, who in turn, was dealt to Philadelphia for Jeff Carter, which opened the door for talks involving Bobrovsky.

Clearly, we owe our entire success at this point to XGMDM.

 

[Crede777]

Agreed 100%, but I think Kreider will be a very good player. But ill take 3 over 1. Miller and Thomas are 3rd liners to me

Kreider is all potential but he always seems to struggle at putting up numbers at different levels. For that reason I'd rather have a slightly older but more established forward who is able to contribute now and in the future. That would be Anisimov.

JT Miller I like but I would compare to Rychel in terms of mixture of offense and grit. It's a wash for me, maybe slightly in Miller's favor.

Thomas in my opinion is too undersized. We have plenty of small, speedy forwards and I'd be hesitant to take another over someone like Erixon.

 

[NotWendell]

Love the Nash trade, then we acquire another lazy winger not much later in Gaborik. So that hurts the good feelings a little.

If he's truly lazy, you'll be happy in about nine months when he's traded for picks - or at the end of the season when his salary comes off the books.

 

[LetsGOJackets!!]

I understand Gaborik wasn't 100%

Love the Nash trade, then we acquire another lazy winger not much later in Gaborik. So that hurts the good feelings a little.

yet he out skated nearly everyone on the ice. When we learn to actually get the puck to him in stride he is going to make some filthy breakaway goals. With Anisimov and Atkinson, and Calvert, & Testtube all being capable of breaking out as well, and our having dmen that can put the puck on the net.. with Goalie Bob capable of erasing any defensive mistakes, I think I am happy with this team. I give a lot of credit to Howson, for helping to set the table. I give JD/JK the credit for bringing credibility and the knowledge on how to win to our club. I'm very excited, more than I can remember in years past.

 

[Palinka]

Agreed, Howson could have got the same value back if he had moved Nash when the request was made that winter.

But Howson also deserves credit for jumping on the combination of players he went for. (That is, if you do like Anisimov, Dubinsky, and Erixon, as I do). Dubinsky was going to be included one way or the other to take back some salary, but we could have ended up with Kreider, Thomas, and Miller instead of Anisimov, Erixon and the 1st (Rychel).

I don't care how often that last part gets repeated, it never happened. That offer was never on the table, nor was anything truly close to it.

I've spent the last several weeks working on an outside basis with a team, and it meant being surrounded by the same people nearly nonstop. Scouts, front office, and all sorts of people in hockey ops. Some of them were with different organizations, which is common at the hockey ops level below the GM's desk. Most meetings by the later stages involve questions of whether to take a flier on a kid from the AJHL who's possibly going to the WHL, and other crap like that. So when there's downtime, everyone basically shares stories and opinions. These aren't short conversations by any stretch. On a day with a morning meeting and the rest of the day off, I sat at a table at a restaurant with a handful of others and ate both lunch and dinner there without moving. The waitress got a nice tip for putting up with it.

Since Rick Nash in the playoffs was a major topic, there was a good amount of discussion over that. And I learned a couple of things firsthand with a lot of verification that I wouldn't have learned outside of this environment. The biggest one is that no one was offering anything of real consequence for Rick Nash at any point, and that the "inside" reaction around the league when there were four pieces traded from the Rangers to Columbus was one of surprise. Not because it was perceived to be so little, but because it was so much more than what anyone else had ponied up.

The second and lesser thing is that Scott Howson commands a lot more respect around the league than he does around here. I don't remember his exact words, but one guy said something like "Everyone knows the value of players around the league. If he had been offered that package that the media reported, he'd have taken it and then traded all the prospects for guys he liked." Two other things that came out of that was that only a couple guys thought that Chris Kreider has first-line upside, and that the belief (secondhand) was that the Rangers had tried to fight a war of public opinion against Columbus around the trade deadline in an attempt to get Howson to crack and dump Nash for the little that was being offered at the time. The public opinion part worked, but the actual hoped-for result didn't.

 

[and 99 others]

Ahh Not too much, just unneeded depth. It was a Quantity for quality, We have Dubi, Arty, Letestu and Jenner clogging up the Center and a slew of defenseman, I thought both deals were steals for us.

Did you just say Brassard is 'unneeded depth' and mention letestu in the same sentence?

 

[The Press Express]

Did you just say Brassard is 'unneeded depth' and mention letestu in the same sentence?

Yes I did, Anders

 

[Palinka]

Despite the loss of first-line scoring punch, and despite the perception that Columbus got absolutely hosed on the deal, this was the move that signaled the end of what one person has called "the Cult of 61". Besides the massive boost to system depth that the deal provided, it signaled a dramatic change in the way that the organization would be run from top to bottom. In a relatively short period of time, the idea that anything that took place had to go through #61 was expunged for all time, and some serious steel was shoved into the collective spine of the team.

I don't think anyone truly knows how far The Cult of 61 went. We know it went back several years, but the exact extent of it is unknown.

What we do know is that nearly everything in some way went through Mike Priest, and he was all too happy to push certain things off onto Rick Nash. I think this was based on some misguided notion of trying to channel John H. McConnell, and figuring that letting one guy rule the roost was how it would have been done. Obviously it wouldn't have been done that way at all, and that mentality is grossly incompatible with the realities of professional sports.

I won't claim credit for first referring to The Cult of 61. I overheard someone else use it, and I picked up on it. It certainly is a fitting moniker. In at least his last four years in Columbus, Rick Nash had every bit as much power as the biggest stars in the NBA. Those are the guys who have say over whether a coach is fired or not, who gets hired to replace him, and who he wants on the roster. He wanted Aaron Johnson around for another season, and that's what happened. He wanted the captaincy, he got it. He wanted that stupid Wolfmother song for the intro, he got it. These are three divergent examples that span several years, but these were basically unilateral decisions made by one guy that show how far-reaching this was.

Notice the lack of other things being mentioned, from practice schedules to meet-and-greet with fans to any of dozens of other things. That's not because the influence wasn't there, but merely because there's a lot of whispers and rumors about that but not much in the way of absolute statements.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Did you just say Brassard is 'unneeded depth' and mention letestu in the same sentence?

Letestu >> Brass As A cbj

 

[EspenK]

Did you just say Brassard is 'unneeded depth' and mention letestu in the same sentence?

Letestu >> Brass As A cbj[/QUOTE

I agree with 16 that for the Jackets, Letestu is a better fit.

Let's wait for a full season of Brass in NY before you make your final determination on him, I think most Jacket fans are a bit skeptical he can produce over the whole season like he did post trade last year.

 

[major major]

I don't care how often that last part gets repeated, it never happened. That offer was never on the table, nor was anything truly close to it.

I've spent the last several weeks working on an outside basis with a team, and it meant being surrounded by the same people nearly nonstop. Scouts, front office, and all sorts of people in hockey ops. Some of them were with different organizations, which is common at the hockey ops level below the GM's desk. Most meetings by the later stages involve questions of whether to take a flier on a kid from the AJHL who's possibly going to the WHL, and other crap like that. So when there's downtime, everyone basically shares stories and opinions. These aren't short conversations by any stretch. On a day with a morning meeting and the rest of the day off, I sat at a table at a restaurant with a handful of others and ate both lunch and dinner there without moving. The waitress got a nice tip for putting up with it.

Since Rick Nash in the playoffs was a major topic, there was a good amount of discussion over that. And I learned a couple of things firsthand with a lot of verification that I wouldn't have learned outside of this environment. The biggest one is that no one was offering anything of real consequence for Rick Nash at any point, and that the "inside" reaction around the league when there were four pieces traded from the Rangers to Columbus was one of surprise. Not because it was perceived to be so little, but because it was so much more than what anyone else had ponied up.

The second and lesser thing is that Scott Howson commands a lot more respect around the league than he does around here. I don't remember his exact words, but one guy said something like "Everyone knows the value of players around the league. If he had been offered that package that the media reported, he'd have taken it and then traded all the prospects for guys he liked." Two other things that came out of that was that only a couple guys thought that Chris Kreider has first-line upside, and that the belief (secondhand) was that the Rangers had tried to fight a war of public opinion against Columbus around the trade deadline in an attempt to get Howson to crack and dump Nash for the little that was being offered at the time. The public opinion part worked, but the actual hoped-for result didn't.

I don't know of any specific offer, only that reporting had all those players in play, as well as Stepan and Del Zotto. When you say "package that the media reported, he'd have taken it.." what package are you referring to? And the implication is that Howson would have taken it? Who do you think really was being offered from the Rangers last summer as alternative offers to the one Howson jumped on?

 

[Viqsi]

I forget that saying something sarcastic here has to be followed by a stupid smiley face that completely contradicts what i'm trying to do...SORRY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

 

[and 99 others]

Yes I did, Anders

Fair enough, I only know the Mark Letestu who didn't contribute anything to a championship caliber penguins team.

Lookin forward to the Jackets joining the Rangers division this year!

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

I forget that saying something sarcastic here has to be followed by a stupid smiley face that completely contradicts what i'm trying to do...SORRY

You must not remember or were never involved in our talks with Ranger(and other) fans on here during the rumor stage or after the trade even went down. There was a good amount of them that said some pretty ridiculous things. I'm talking Kreider for Nash straight up....and they'd say no.

FWIW I got it, Poe's law be damned. (Of course, I always assume people are being sarcastic. No seriously.)

 

[thebus2288*]

Sounds like Poe's Law was invented for people who just can't understand sarcasm. With just a couple sentences of some substance it pretty easy to tell what type of point somebody's trying to prove. Unless you somehow think Kreider is worth anything near Anisimov AND Erixon I don't see how it wasn't obvious.

While I like Rychel so far and Erixon is a decent roster player I still would have liked to get Hagelin with Artem and Dubi. We could've tweaked things and added 1 of the 3 that went in the Gaborik deal.

 

[Viqsi]

Unless you somehow think Kreider is worth anything near Anisimov AND Erixon I don't see how it wasn't obvious.

There were people legitimately telling us this exact same thing in the early discussions of the Nash trade. Repeatedly. Multiple people. With complete sincerity. And getting insulted when we suggested that they were being sarcastic because that couldn't possibly be accurate.

Seriously. There is nothing so unbelievably outrageous that it will not be sincerely adopted and passionately defended by somebody. Especially online.

 

[JacketsDavid]

The 2 best things that happened to Nash while he was here was Hitchcock and day he was traded. GMDM did not hold him accountable at all. No one did until Hitch. Then when Hitch left it truly became Nash's team. Nash is a good guy but not a leader. He's not vocal and (this is more IMO) not necassirly a hard worker. I would go as far as to say he is generally lazy - not in a bad way he's just always been better than everyone else and he didn't need to work that hard. He took on the captaincy thinking he was in the same class as Crosby, etc. Don't get me wrong Nash wants to win, but he doesn't really know how to win. People don't naturally follow him.
In most trades you want to get the best player, but we needed a culture change. Nash could easily be a top 10 player in the league but he wasn't going to get there from Columbus. ot sure if he'll ever get here but both he and the team needed a change.
it's a win for Columbus and a win for Nash. Will take some time to see if it will be a "win" for the Rangers though.

 

[LetsGOJackets!!]

Bottom line, I like our team

it's a win for Columbus and a win for Nash. Will take some time to see if it will be a "win" for the Rangers though.

I like the way they play. Adding Horton & Gabby brings us some scoring punch to what has become a pretty tough team. I'm gonna love the rivalry with NYR and the rest of the division. It's not just the pieces we got for Nash, it's Testtube, Goalie Bob, Prout adding to a pretty decent squad. We don't coast anymore and that is reason enough to be happy with the Jackets.

 

[BobbyClarkeFan16]

This was a good hockey trade for Columbus. They needed to change the culture and moving Nash was the best thing in terms of changing the environment. Yes, Nash wanted out, but at the same time, nothing was going right for the franchise and they needed to do something drastic to change the whole feel around the team. They got two key forwards in Dubinsky and Anisimov. Dubinsky brought a lunch pail/grind it out approach to the forwards and Anisimov is a skilled player in his own right that offered some toughness. The addition of Erixon to an already deep blue line just made it that much more of a great deal.

 

[Jackets440]

Just curious, but does anyone have any idea what other teams were offering for Nash? Like were there any reports saying such and such team offered a specific package to us?

 

[SuperGenius]

Just curious, but does anyone have any idea what other teams were offering for Nash? Like were there any reports saying such and such team offered a specific package to us?

I don't think anyone knows anything outside of Howson, CBJ brass and the other teams. Lots of rumors, no idea what is true or even partly true.