OT: Should Doug Armstrong get fired?

[Frenzy31]

Do you mean Bill Armstrong?

No the guy that he replaced

 

[Stealth JD]

I've heard folks describe Chris Pronger as the smartest hockey mind they've ever encountered, and speculate that he could run a club if/when he desired. I doubt he'd go to the head of the class without having paid his dues for several years in a lesser role, as MacInnis, Ryan Miller, Mellanby & Taylor have done; but if Army's shelf-life has been determined to have passed (and I doubt that's the case), I'd rather see Cptn. Happy given a shot rather than some retread like Rutherford, Chiarelli and the like.

 

[Xerloris]

I've heard folks describe Chris Pronger as the smartest hockey mind they've ever encountered, and speculate that he could run a club if/when he desired. I doubt he'd go to the head of the class without having paid his dues for several years in a lesser role, as MacInnis, Ryan Miller, Mellanby & Taylor have done; but if Army's shelf-life has been determined to have passed (and I doubt that's the case), I'd rather see Cptn. Happy given a shot rather than some retread like Rutherford, Chiarelli and the like.

I would like to see us hire Pronger to come in and coach our defense.

 

[Celtic Note]

I've heard folks describe Chris Pronger as the smartest hockey mind they've ever encountered, and speculate that he could run a club if/when he desired. I doubt he'd go to the head of the class without having paid his dues for several years in a lesser role, as MacInnis, Ryan Miller, Mellanby & Taylor have done; but if Army's shelf-life has been determined to have passed (and I doubt that's the case), I'd rather see Cptn. Happy given a shot rather than some retread like Rutherford, Chiarelli and the like.

If I had to guess Al Mac wouldn’t be interested. It seems like he likes the back seat role from the very little he has shared.

Pronger is the only one on the list that I would consider.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Only Stillman knows what the breaking point will be with Doug Armstrong.

 

[BlueSeal]

Only Stillman knows what the breaking point will be with Doug Armstrong.

Him and his investors. I honestly don't see a situation where we part with Army unless the investors start losing money - and faith - in the investment.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Him and his investors. I honestly don't see a situation where we part with Army unless the investors start losing money - and faith - in the investment.

Although its not really true, I think someone arguing to keep Armstrong would make a case that the team was ravaged by injuries. But in reality the injuries have probably had very little impact in the on-ice results. But maybe that buys him more time?

I don't actually think he's on the hot seat. I think they'll continue to allow him to handle this trade deadline and the offseason moves with a free hand as usual. I'm not sure what GM available would be better suited to this type of situation. Let's hope he has more deals like the Buchnevich trade up his sleeve.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Although its not really true, I think someone arguing to keep Armstrong would make a case that the team was ravaged by injuries. But in reality the injuries have probably had very little impact in the on-ice results. But maybe that buys him more time?

I don't actually think he's on the hot seat. I think they'll continue to allow him to handle this trade deadline and the offseason moves with a free hand as usual. I'm not sure what GM available would be better suited to this type of situation. Let's hope he has more deals like the Buchnevich trade up his sleeve.

Zackly! Only Stillman knows the breaking point and I think that point is still far away. Doug is going nowhere. Doesn’t he have only two years left on his contract?

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Zackly! Only Stillman knows the breaking point and I think that point is still far away. Doug is going nowhere. Doesn’t he have only two years left on his contract?

Thought he signed extension? He isn’t getting fired anytime soon.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Thought he signed extension? He isn’t getting fired anytime soon.

Just looked it up. Through 25-26. So three more years. I am confident he will be the GM through at least next season.

 

[Falco Lombardi]

I don’t think Army should be fired but this is becoming his worst move by far and it was entirely avoidable:



LOL as if the Leddy trade and extension weren’t bad enough on their own.

I can’t be bothered to dig up the threads from this offseason in part because I’m not petty enough but the number of people who were good with the extension at the time and ignored the stats because the eye test tricked them in the playoffs was staggering.

 

[ChicagoBlues]

Are we really missing Walman?

 

[BlueSeal]

I don’t think Army should be fired but this is becoming his worst move by far and it was entirely avoidable:



LOL as if the Leddy trade and extension weren’t bad enough on their own.

I can’t be bothered to dig up the threads from this offseason in part because I’m not petty enough but the number of people who were good with the extension at the time and ignored the stats because the eye test tricked them in the playoffs was staggering.

This is one of those you win some you lose some kind of things.

 

[Daley Tarasenkshow]

I've heard folks describe Chris Pronger as the smartest hockey mind they've ever encountered, and speculate that he could run a club if/when he desired. I doubt he'd go to the head of the class without having paid his dues for several years in a lesser role, as MacInnis, Ryan Miller, Mellanby & Taylor have done; but if Army's shelf-life has been determined to have passed (and I doubt that's the case), I'd rather see Cptn. Happy given a shot rather than some retread like Rutherford, Chiarelli and the like.

Probably a close to 0 percent chance Pronger takes that job. He seems to be very happy with his travel agency alongside his wife, and that’s the same reason he resigned from the Panthers. Wouldn’t think he’d have much interest.

 

[Linkens Mastery]

I don’t think Army should be fired but this is becoming his worst move by far and it was entirely avoidable:



LOL as if the Leddy trade and extension weren’t bad enough on their own.

I can’t be bothered to dig up the threads from this offseason in part because I’m not petty enough but the number of people who were good with the extension at the time and ignored the stats because the eye test tricked them in the playoffs was staggering.

I'll be honest, I'm not following how his 9P (5G 4A) makes him that good offensively percentile wise. He's on pace for 22 points. His +/- is good. His defense is ok. I don't really think this is a guy we are going to cry about losing 4 years from now.

 

[Xerloris]

I don’t think Army should be fired but this is becoming his worst move by far and it was entirely avoidable:



LOL as if the Leddy trade and extension weren’t bad enough on their own.

I can’t be bothered to dig up the threads from this offseason in part because I’m not petty enough but the number of people who were good with the extension at the time and ignored the stats because the eye test tricked them in the playoffs was staggering.

Get real dude, Walman f***ing sucked here and everyone knew it and saw it and everyone wanted him traded. Just because a player does well somewhere else does not mean they would do well here and they never did. Also, Leddy is doing just fine and no worse than anyone else on this team defensively.

 

[Falco Lombardi]

Get real dude, Walman f***ing sucked here and everyone knew it and saw it and everyone wanted him traded. Just because a player does well somewhere else does not mean they would do well here and they never did. Also, Leddy is doing just fine and no worse than anyone else on this team defensively.

To be clear, I never saw this sort of turnaround coming from him. That I don’t hold against Army. I believe Walman is playing with Seider so he’s obviously got a better d partner there than he was ever going to have here.

To the last sentence you wrote…..I really don’t know what to say to that. This is a terrible team defensively. So he’s not worse than any of the other players.

That makes it a good contract? You don’t regret that contract? We’d somehow be in a worse place with someone not tied down for 3 more years at 4 per? I’d rather be dead last with the little extra cap space and the lottery pick over whatever we are 9th, 10th and a third albatross contract on defense.

 

[Xerloris]

To be clear, I never saw this sort of turnaround coming from him. That I don’t hold against Army. I believe Walman is playing with Seider so he’s obviously got a better d partner there than he was ever going to have here.

To the last sentence you wrote…..I really don’t know what to say to that. This is a terrible team defensively. So he’s not worse than any of the other players.

That makes it a good contract? You don’t regret that contract? We’d somehow be in a worse place with someone not tied down for 3 more years at 4 per? I’d rather be dead last with the little extra cap space and the lottery pick over whatever we are 9th, 10th and a third albatross contract on defense.

Knowing what we know now about how terrible we are this season I would sign Perron to what ever he wanted and let Leddy walk but at the time we needed a LD and Leddy is far and away better at playing LD than Perron.

 

[Falco Lombardi]

Knowing what we know now about how terrible we are this season I would sign Perron to what ever he wanted and let Leddy walk but at the time we needed a LD and Leddy is far and away better at playing LD than Perron.

I think my biggest frustration comes from the fact that we (and we, I mainly mean Army and the organization, not us on the internet lol) should have seen this season coming.

Maybe not to this extreme (though I don’t think it’s a huge surprise) but regression was inevitable after playing so far above their heads a year ago.

 

[LGB]

Get real dude, Walman f***ing sucked here and everyone knew it and saw it and everyone wanted him traded. Just because a player does well somewhere else does not mean they would do well here and they never did. Also, Leddy is doing just fine and no worse than anyone else on this team defensively.

I thought Walman was pretty good. Great skater and solid defender. Would have definitely preferred we kept him rather than Mikkola.

 

[BlueSeal]

Knowing what we know now about how terrible we are this season I would sign Perron to what ever he wanted and let Leddy walk but at the time we needed a LD and Leddy is far and away better at playing LD than Perron.

I’m going to be that guy and say in hindsight that we sign Leddy, re-sign Perron and traded Vladi.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I thought the Leddy trade was unnecessary from the moment it was announced. It was a move for the sake of making a move, that didn't make us appreciably better short-term and had the chance to make us worse longer-term if (when) Leddy was brought back. It pushed the team further into "win now" mode at the expense of someone who could fill an NHL roster spot with a chance to grow some, and bound our hands with respect to the cap at a time we already knew the cap situation was tight and we could use a little flexibility. [Losing Sundqvist, who's finally over the ACL injury and looking at least competent with the Red Wings and would have provided stability here, is just salt in the wound.]

Walman was someone I said for a while had max upside as the weaker half of a 2nd pairing. The question was whether he would ever unlock it. We can all question whether he'd have done it here, but certainly the Walman we saw showed flashes of potential, even if he would have stretches where he'd play tentatively and look poor defensively as a result. You know, like with Dunn: had potential, questions over whether he'd hit it, was showing signs he wouldn't. Except with Dunn, he'd make mistakes and get burned and go right back out and do the same thing like he hadn't learned anything and didn't care about learning anything. [Which is why we left him out in the expansion draft; if he "got it" elsewhere, awesome for him and them - but he wasn't doing it here, and increasingly acted like he really didn't care.]

Would Walman have benefitted from more playing time, more games to gain experience, gain confidence, play through his mistakes and learn? Possibly. At the time of the trade, Walman had 58 NHL games under his belt (57 regular season, 1 playoff); Niko Mikkola had 85. If you were banking on Mikkola's potential - I think he's nothing more than the weak half of a 5/6 with limited additional upside, who other teams will overpay for thinking there's more there - then there's a great argument to have done the same thing with Walman.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I thought the Leddy trade was unnecessary from the moment it was announced. It was a move for the sake of making a move, that didn't make us appreciably better short-term and had the chance to make us worse longer-term if (when) Leddy was brought back. It pushed the team further into "win now" mode at the expense of someone who could fill an NHL roster spot with a chance to grow some, and bound our hands with respect to the cap at a time we already knew the cap situation was tight and we could use a little flexibility. [Losing Sundqvist, who's finally over the ACL injury and looking at least competent with the Red Wings and would have provided stability here, is just salt in the wound.]

Walman was someone I said for a while had max upside as the weaker half of a 2nd pairing. The question was whether he would ever unlock it. We can all question whether he'd have done it here, but certainly the Walman we saw showed flashes of potential, even if he would have stretches where he'd play tentatively and look poor defensively as a result. You know, like with Dunn: had potential, questions over whether he'd hit it, was showing signs he wouldn't. Except with Dunn, he'd make mistakes and get burned and go right back out and do the same thing like he hadn't learned anything and didn't care about learning anything. [Which is why we left him out in the expansion draft; if he "got it" elsewhere, awesome for him and them - but he wasn't doing it here, and increasingly acted like he really didn't care.]

Would Walman have benefitted from more playing time, more games to gain experience, gain confidence, play through his mistakes and learn? Possibly. At the time of the trade, Walman had 58 NHL games under his belt (57 regular season, 1 playoff); Niko Mikkola had 85. If you were banking on Mikkola's potential - I think he's nothing more than the weak half of a 5/6 with limited additional upside, who other teams will overpay for thinking there's more there - then there's a great argument to have done the same thing with Walman.

This is all revisionist history. Leddy was huge upgrade last year. Without that trade we don’t get past Wild with our injuries. And if we still had Sunny wouldn’t have had cap space to resign Perron even without Leddy. And Walman is UFA after this season anyway, so dealing him away for better D was no great loss. The guy couldn’t beat out Miko.

 

[bleedblue1223]

I think my one real frustration with Army's handling of the defense was deciding to give Krug a big contract, instead of forcing Dunn into a bigger role and letting him sink or swim. And the more I thought about this decision, the more I believed that this was the mistake and how it was out of character for Army.

Compare it to how we handle centers for years. Army would involved on bigger names like Lecavalier, Spezza, Weiss, and I'm sure there are some others, but he never went to a point where it was a bad deal from the start, he'd pivot to less than ideal backup options like Derek Roy or Lehtera. And even when he'd make a big deal like Stastny, it was for relatively short term. In the search for the centers when we eventually got Schenn and O'Reilly, Army clearly valued getting the right guy and if that guy couldn't have been acquired, then maintaining flexibility to acquire the right guy when they were available was valued next.

If we had Dunn instead of Krug, even just comparing Krug's time in Boston and Dunn's play up to that point, I don't think we would've been that worse off. Neither were going to solve the Petro problem, both were going to need sheltering, and Dunn was going to allow us to have the flexibility to acquire the defensemen we actually needed.

 

[PocketNines]

I can't decide if the Krug signing was arrogance or panic. It was an extremely consequential franchise disaster from the split second it was announced though.