bleedblue94
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2004
- 9,274
- 9,745
It's unreasonable bc it expects him to be perfect. No one is perfect and that includes Igor, but by almost any metric he is the best in the league and has been consistently there for a number of years. This isn't a small sample size. He is elite. People point to a bad goal or game here or there and use that to act like anti niemi would be a suitable replacement or act like we would use the money in a better way. We won't. The org committed to its structure of the roster and slotted players where it wanted. That won't magically change with some more cap and a worse goalie, and they literally have no other option long term in net, and no assets to trade for a goalie (quick is an elite backup, but he is a backup at his age).
The issue with Igor is the same that happened with henke and even Richter during the dark years. Having a top goalie on a badish or even average team forces the team to push forward bc the goalie drags the team up. If Igor wasn't a thing and Georgiev was here this team would have been drafting in the lottery for years, and the same people complaining about paying Igor now would be complaining that nyr needs a top goalie to not suck.
Igor has been a luxury, and one that almost this entire board complained about when he signed his last contract bc you all felt he was overpaid. The org has had elite goaltending for years at half the cost of what it should be and the org still hasn't been able to build a good team that can compete 5v5, and now some of you want to dump Igor, replace him with a worse goalie that would make the same money Igor is making now, and somehow think the org is going to build a proper roster based on decades of evidence showing you all that the priority is marketability over championship roster construction (no, they are not the same). This org needs a culling, it needs the entitlement removed. Igor is not one of the entitled on this roster, if he was he would be throwing his teammates under the bus everyday for their awful play, especially when he is in the midst of his career payday contract negotiation.
People are targeting kreider and trouba but the biggest long term grenade is Mika (you know the guy that this board didn't want to risk losing to get eichel). They can't touch Mika bc of his contract (again handing out clauses to players who would sign here anyway bc NYC fits their off ice life), so they are attacking his BFF and threatening to trade him. If kreider is moved it is almost certainly only to piss Mika off and rattle him into considering accepting a trade as well after they take away his friend. For NYR to move kreider makes no sense based on their decades long history of marketability and the recent eyesore of watching an nyr staple in another jersey at the end of his career with henke. Kreider is most likely going to have his jersey retired (save the scoffs) with what he has done in historical nyr numbers, his longevity with the org, and the tremendous success the org has had at times while he has been here (no cup, but how many deep playoff runs, although mostly thanks to elite goaltending).
Drury tried to go at this core quietly this summer and rock it. They core used the media and shut their own GM down. Drury usually doesn't lose these one on one battles and he is scorned. He has been anti media since day one as shown by firing long time beloved staff that leaked anything. Yet suddenly he is actively going at his roster through the media with numerous reports of trade emails, players on the block, and potential letters being removed. This is an all out calamity right now of a gm that f***ed up by giving out nmc and ntc to players, locking in a roster with term contracts and no cap flexibility, and then thinking he would still be able to do what he wanted to them as contracts aged. The players stood up to their boss and he recognizes the entitlement of the core, yet through the org's own mistakes with the clauses he can't do anything about it without engaging the media machine and starting a public process against them that he will most likely lose.
That interview kreider did about his back was the exact same thing trouba did by suggesting he wouldn't report if traded. It was a strategic move to disengage trade interest from other teams through the media. Who the hell wants to trade for a mid 30 years old 5v5 black hole with a documented bad back? Kreider was scaring the league away from him bc he wants to stay w nyr. He only needs to scare half the league away from himself. Drury can try and negotiate deals all he wants but he's screwed bc of these clauses.
This year has the potential to turn into a circus and in some ways I think Drury is also making these attempts for change public so Dolan knows that Drury tried to trade two guys that were signed by gorton and that he couldn't trade them bc of the contract clauses. This summer I think it's reasonable to expect a quarter of this roster to be turned over with names like kreider, trouba, lindgren, Smith, kakko, vesey, and even Miller all gone (I actually think Miller needs housley gone before a determination is made on him, bc of nyr moves him and he connects with an actual good defense coach he should establish as an elite shutdown top 4 d man, but he has no idea what to do right now defensively like the rest of the roster but he's become the trendy whipping boy).
This season may become one that they write a book about. Instead of "Nightmare on 34th Street" this can be "The Country Club Strikes Back"
