Was Brent Burns valuable as an 18G/43A defenseman who played all 82 games for a team that got to the conference finals at a cap hit of $5.3M in his first year with the Canes? Or does the playoff thing only count when it suits your narrative?
Continue ballwashing Grier if you want but the proof will be in the pudding. Grier hasn't done anything with that cap space to justify you continuously referencing it
Of course he hasn't used the cap space, that would be stupid, he cleared room off a bottom feeding team's ledger and turned a perennial bottom 5 team that was locked into big money contracts with long term into the most flexible cap situation in the league in the span of 2 seasons and was paid 1st round picks to do so
Burns has worked out very well for Carolina but it was certainly a big risk for them to take him on at 37 years old coming off 3 straight down seasons with 3 more years under contract, that's why there was a limited trade market for him and why he returned so little value in a deal
I don't see how it's "ball washing" to be satisfied with the in/out of the last 2 years
Out:
Burns on a bad contract
Meier as a pending RFA who signed a questionable contract
Karlsson on a bad contract
Hertl on a bad contract
In:
NJD 1st (Musty)
PIT 1st + NJD 2nd (trade up for Dickinson)
Zetterlund
Mukhamadullin
Granlund
Rutta
VGK 1st + Edstrom (flipped for Askarov)
Not to mention these moves took the team from just below the cap to $13M below the floor (which the team DID use to aquire veteran help to insulate the youth movement) while stripping the team of enough talent so they could fall down the standings enough to draft Smith and Celebrini
Mike Grier took over the job 2 days before the 2022 entry draft, take a look at what the Sharks cap sheet and prospect pool looked like then and compare it to today, it's been a wild turnaround in a very short amount of time