Seravalli bodies Kyle Dubas

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Wasn’t Sullivan extended in 2022 under Hextall? While Dubas was still with the Leafs
Yes. Hextall gets the blame for that but it also came right after FSG purchased the team and likely they wanted to lock up their new buddy.

FSG has said several times Dubas has complete autonomy over hockey OPs therefore he could put an end to this ridiculousness of keeping a coach half a decade past his expiration date.

I’m not defending Hextall. He’s not a good GM. It is just funny how much the Pens media and fanbase portraits him as such a villain when Dubas has been worse.
 
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Dubas single-handedly destroyed the Leafs cap structure and championship-prospects by his piss-poor contract negotiations of Tavares, Marner, Matthews & Nylander. He may be a bright guy in general, but you can’t be sooo terrible at negotiating when that’s a core function of the job and still receive positive marks overall.

Guy is getting failing grades AGAIN. Any team that employs this fraud moving forward deserves the negligent mismanagement he’ll bring to the table.
Lou........would never have given those kids, so much money the way that Dubas did.................and as of this season Dubas's terrible management of the cap, still handicaps the Leafs. To this day, now their new GM gives out to the same crew more money again..........very strange.
 
The Guentzel trade is an absolute abomination, he got bent over and then some

How was the Guentzel trade an abomination? The Penguins got:

-Bunting: pacing for 56 points with the Penguins so far (44 points in 65 games)
-Koivunen: 2nd leading rookie scorer in the AHL with 27 points in 32 games at age 21
-Ponomarev: good bottom-6 C prospect with 19 points in 24 games in the AHL at age 22
-Brunicke: 2nd rounder that nearly made the Penguins out of camp and looks like a top RHD prospect

Carolina got like 20 games out of Guentzel. How was that a bad deal for the Penguins? I'm not wildly high on Ponomarev personally, but Koivunen and Brunicke look extremely enticing right now and Bunting has produced at good top-6 levels since the deal.

Not only that, but trading Guentzel and sliding Rakell into Guentzel's spot has massively boomed Rakell's production. Rakell has 22 goals and 38 points in 46 games this year playing in Guentzel's old spot.
 
Meh he still has time to improve. If he's in the league until 70 like most GMs, there's still more than 30 years of Kyle Dubas GMing to look forward to.
 
idk, 17 picks is pretty high, it's not like the 29th pick vs. the 34th pick

Sometimes the difference between a late first and a mid-second feels like a discussion from This is Spinal Tap. Yes, you'd rather have the #27 pick than the #44 pick. But would you rather have #27 or #44 plus a prospect if you're Pittsburgh? We saw Calgary turn down a 1st from Colorado for Chris Tanev (albeit it came with the having to absorb Ryan Johansen's contract) because they preferred a 2nd and a prospect.


And then quoting from Bob McKenzie's final survey last year:

Beyond that, though, the prospects ranked 21-32 would appear to be somewhat interchangeable with those ranked 33 to 50.

I understand why there's a massive perception difference between #27 and #44. The guy taken #27 is on national TV, the commentators treat him like a big deal and compare him to current and former NHLers. The guy taken #44 might be barely acknowledged on the day 2 broadcast (that even draft geeks might not watch) as the picks happen at a faster rate.
 
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The funniest thing about Dumbass is that his moves never have a consistent vision but all the "well ackshually's 🤓 ☝️" will bend themselves into a pretzel to try and justify the garbage.
 
I’m not defending Hextall. He’s not a good GM. It is just funny how much the Pens media and fanbase portraits him as such a villain when Dubas has been worse.

The insecure nerds in the media have never read "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Hextall and Lou Lamoriello are meaniepants poopyheads and not fake nice like Kyle Dubas so they get criticized despite accomplishing significantly more than Dubas. Although it's not hard to accomplish more than nothing.
 
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Sometimes the difference between a late first and a mid-second feels like a discussion from This is Spinal Tap. Yes, you'd rather have the #27 pick than the #44 pick. But would you rather have #27 or #44 plus a prospect if you're Pittsburgh? We saw Calgary turn down a 1st from Colorado for Chris Tanev (albeit it came with the having to absorb Ryan Johansen's contract) because they preferred a 2nd and a prospect.


And then quoting from Bob McKenzie's final survey last year:



I understand why there's a massive perception difference between #27 and #44. The guy taken #27 is on national TV, the commentators treat him like a big deal and compare him to current and former NHLers. The guy taken #44 might be barely acknowledged on the day 2 broadcast (that even draft geeks might not watch) as the picks happen at a faster rate.

This is especially true because the Penguins got Brunicke with that 2nd rounder in the Guentzel trade, who was so good in camp that he nearly made the Penguins and looks like a really good RHD prospect. I would have been happy with Brunicke if he was taken at 20, let alone 44.
 
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That was “bodying” him? He could’ve been much harsher.

Hopefully now that Dubas’s own moves from less than 2 years ago have been exposed as trash, FSG has no reason to continue this charade. Hextall sucked, Dubas Sucks, Sullivan sucks. Since all three have helped waste whatever potential was left in this Pens core, fire the currently employed ones, and get someone in with fresh ideas and no more half baked mandates to “rebuild on the fly.”
 
Dubas is elite at appearing to be the smartest guy in the room until you analyze his moves with hindsight and realize he missing 75% and hits 25%.

Off the top of my head as Pens GM
- Jarry contract
- Karlsson trade
- Graves contract
- Trash return on Guentzel

Thats a lot of damage in like 1.5 years

I remember when he was hired he said he would hire a GM to do the day to do stuff and then promptly decided he would be the only voice in the room and named himself GM.
 
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How was the Guentzel trade an abomination? The Penguins got:

-Bunting: pacing for 56 points with the Penguins so far (44 points in 65 games)
-Koivunen: 2nd leading rookie scorer in the AHL with 27 points in 32 games at age 21
-Ponomarev: good bottom-6 C prospect with 19 points in 24 games in the AHL at age 22
-Brunicke: 2nd rounder that nearly made the Penguins out of camp and looks like a top RHD prospect

Carolina got like 20 games out of Guentzel. How was that a bad deal for the Penguins? I'm not wildly high on Ponomarev personally, but Koivunen and Brunicke look extremely enticing right now and Bunting has produced at good top-6 levels since the deal.

Not only that, but trading Guentzel and sliding Rakell into Guentzel's spot has massively boomed Rakell's production. Rakell has 22 goals and 38 points in 46 games this year playing in Guentzel's old spot.
Because finding a way to keep him would be better than all of that
 
Because finding a way to keep him would be better than all of that

How can you look at this iteration of the Pittsburgh Penguins and conclude "they should have paid Jake Guentzel $9 million a year"?

They suck ass. They desperately need to rebuild. And even beyond that, they've replaced like 85% of Guentzel's production by just sliding Rakell onto L1.
 
Basically a young kid with burgeoning success got a blank check from owners with more money than sense.

Only makes sense the kid spent the money poorly. He's a smart kid, but he's still got a ways to go in this league.

My guess is seeing as John Henry hired analytics wunderkind Theo Epstein many moons ago and the Red Sox proceeded to win two championships under him, they thought Dubas was the NHL version of Epstein.

Of course, Epstein was aided by the lack of a hard cap in baseball.
 
I also got the sense that Dubas was handcuffed into keeping the gang together. Reminds me of when Sather first got to New York that the owner wanted him to chase stars and that is what he did to no success. Things got better after they stopped doing that and tried to build things the hockey way.
 
Sometimes the difference between a late first and a mid-second feels like a discussion from This is Spinal Tap. Yes, you'd rather have the #27 pick than the #44 pick. But would you rather have #27 or #44 plus a prospect if you're Pittsburgh? We saw Calgary turn down a 1st from Colorado for Chris Tanev (albeit it came with the having to absorb Ryan Johansen's contract) because they preferred a 2nd and a prospect.


I understand why there's a massive perception difference between #27 and #44. The guy taken #27 is on national TV, the commentators treat him like a big deal and compare him to current and former NHLers. The guy taken #44 might be barely acknowledged on the day 2 broadcast (that even draft geeks might not watch) as the picks happen at a faster rate.
It's a fair point that the trade taken as a whole is what will be most relevant, and that we don't have a great read (only guess) of how Carolina and Pittsburgh may have valued the prospects involved in the deal, or Bunting, and how that impacted what various configurations of the trade would look like.

I just have to pushback on any implication that the difference between Pick 27 and Pick 44 is nuisance value. If a team was moving up 44 to 27 on draft day, they're going to have to offer something worthwhile. While all teams have different draft boards amongst their top 50 of course, they'd have to be pretty lucky if the guy they would have taken at 27 is available at 44 when there were 17 other opportunities for him to get selected... or very confident that their ranking is very "off-board" so to speak.

Recall that Carolina DID in fact trade the 27th pick that very draft, so we're not even speaking in hypothetical. They traded the 27th pick for the 34th pick and the 50th pick in the same draft to Chicago. Meaning, Chicago added the 50th pick in order to move up seven draft spots from the 34th to 27th. That 50th overall pick itself is much closer to the 44th pick being discussed here as the "evener" to speak, which is in turn further away from the 34th pick that was the one being traded up for.

This does suggest that a 17 pick difference between a late 1st and a mid-2nd does carry a good amount of difference in perceived value around the NHL.
 
It's a fair point that the trade taken as a whole is what will be most relevant, and that we don't have a great read (only guess) of how Carolina and Pittsburgh may have valued the prospects involved in the deal, or Bunting, and how that impacted what various configurations of the trade would look like.

I just have to pushback on any implication that the difference between Pick 27 and Pick 44 is nuisance value. If a team was moving up 44 to 27 on draft day, they're going to have to offer something worthwhile. While all teams have different draft boards amongst their top 50 of course, they'd have to be pretty lucky if the guy they would have taken at 27 is available at 44 when there were 17 other opportunities for him to get selected... or very confident that their ranking is very "off-board" so to speak.

Recall that Carolina DID in fact trade the 27th pick that very draft, so we're not even speaking in hypothetical. They traded the 27th pick for the 34th pick and the 50th pick in the same draft to Chicago. Meaning, Chicago added the 50th pick in order to move up seven draft spots from the 34th to 27th. That 50th overall pick itself is much closer to the 44th pick being discussed here as the "evener" to speak, which is in turn further away from the 34th pick that was the one being traded up for.

This does suggest that a 17 pick difference between a late 1st and a mid-2nd does carry a good amount of difference in perceived value around the NHL.

Again my argument isn't that #27 and #44 are equivalent, but that the perceived gap isn't as much as many fans make it seem. If the choice is #27 or #44 plus a prospect, I can understand if a team takes the latter. In this context, Pittsburgh picking up a couple younger prospects in Koivunen/Ponomarev is arguably more desired than a couple additional draft picks or a slightly higher pick.

In a vacuum yes, I would rather have #27 than just #44. You risk sweating out missing out on certain guys. Florida apparently would have been all over Jason Robertson at #40 in 2017 but Dallas sniped him at #39.

I think Seravalli was just going out of his way to frame the Guentzel deal in a poor light when it's still TBD to see how Koivunen/Ponomarev/Brunicke pan out. He just makes it seem like a late first is a slam dunk asset when we all kinda know but don't like to acknowledge that it's not.

And then you just reminded me that there was a Carolina fan sitting in the row in front of me at this past draft. He patiently waited 3+ hours for them to make the pick then laughed to himself when they traded out (he wasn't attending Day 2, and the Day 1 ticket wasn't cheap). Their owner has an edict about not drafting a defenseman in the first round, so Carolina's traded down into the top of the second round to get around it a couple times.
 
No he didn't.

He got the boot because he tried to leverage one first round win during his tenure into a promotion and significant pay increase. He found someone to give him both, but it wasn't going to be Toronto.
You're right. Then Toronto got
someone to replace him and is worse then him
 
How was the Guentzel trade an abomination? The Penguins got:

-Bunting: pacing for 56 points with the Penguins so far (44 points in 65 games)
-Koivunen: 2nd leading rookie scorer in the AHL with 27 points in 32 games at age 21
-Ponomarev: good bottom-6 C prospect with 19 points in 24 games in the AHL at age 22
-Brunicke: 2nd rounder that nearly made the Penguins out of camp and looks like a top RHD prospect

Carolina got like 20 games out of Guentzel. How was that a bad deal for the Penguins? I'm not wildly high on Ponomarev personally, but Koivunen and Brunicke look extremely enticing right now and Bunting has produced at good top-6 levels since the deal.

Not only that, but trading Guentzel and sliding Rakell into Guentzel's spot has massively boomed Rakell's production. Rakell has 22 goals and 38 points in 46 games this year playing in Guentzel's old spot.
Also Cruz Lucius, who was been a PPG player in college.

As a neutral party, I’d say Pens got a pretty good haul for rental Guentzel.
 
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The Guentzel trade is an absolute abomination, he got bent over and then some
What SHOULD he have gotten? Like give me a realistic example of what he should have got for a pure UFA rental that would make people say "he did well".

If it is suggested "a 1st", given what we knew then and now about the 2024 draft, specifically what player should the Penguins have taken over being happy with Brunicke taken at 44?
Sometimes the difference between a late first and a mid-second feels like a discussion from This is Spinal Tap. Yes, you'd rather have the #27 pick than the #44 pick. But would you rather have #27 or #44 plus a prospect if you're Pittsburgh? We saw Calgary turn down a 1st from Colorado for Chris Tanev (albeit it came with the having to absorb Ryan Johansen's contract) because they preferred a 2nd and a prospect.


And then quoting from Bob McKenzie's final survey last year:

I understand why there's a massive perception difference between #27 and #44. The guy taken #27 is on national TV, the commentators treat him like a big deal and compare him to current and former NHLers. The guy taken #44 might be barely acknowledged on the day 2 broadcast (that even draft geeks might not watch) as the picks happen at a faster rate.
Yeah, I remember the consensus was "1 through 10 are good, and 11 through 50 are the same player". There were two "consensuses". #1. Celebrini is 1ov. #2. There is no consensus beyond that.

If there was ever a draft where a late 1st vs an early 2nd is nearly irrelevant, it was this draft.
 

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