Duchene and Zibanejad were never part of the same team. They were 1+ years apart
Karlsson was coming off a major injury and had posted a less than stellar year. At this point the return on Karlsson is decidedly in Ottawa's favour
The Hoffman situation was a mess. He was totally tainted.
Pageau was glorified by two games. Remove them from his resume and his name isn't likely in your post. He's a one time 20 goal scorer and the return on him was solid.
I edited the post to 6-7 years so no more confusion! Dorion started with Zibanejad, traded him for an older guy, then traded for Duchene and boom rebuild.
I don't care about the reason and excuses, the reality is I have NEVER seen a team going into a rebuild with having the luxury of trading assets like Karlsson, Stone, Duchene, Pageau, etc in their PRIME. It is basically never seen before
And your vision of the game is extremely superficial judging by your Pageau argument. If you think his value was built on his 20 goals season, then maybe that's why we see hockey so differently
It would have been helpful had we been able to take on bad contracts but cash flow wise Melnyk wasn't in that game. Not taking on bad contracts is referenced here from time to time, but only by posters with an anti mgmt view or by those that can't see the forest thru the trees.
Oh dear... the problem you and a few others have to blindly defend a GM (who hasn't been able to build a good team in 6 years despite starting with a good prospect pool and bunch of very valuable assets) is the short sighted view.
Yes Melnyk was "cheap" but what you are not seeing is we still spent a LOT of money on below average to barely NHL level players... Do you need names? Dorion DECIDED himself to spend that money on Murray, Gudbranson, Stepan, Dadonov, White, Tierney, Zaitsev, Coburn, Josh Brown, etc...
All this time thinking others "
can't see the forest thru the trees" when maybe you were literally stuck against a tree trunk all the way?
This is really the first year we should have been competing and before we got started we were derailed by the Norris injury. Citing a lack of depth is nonsense. Rebuilding teams don't have depth.
And yes, you can compare to Buffalo. Does Ottawa have two 1OAs as part of the rebuild? Did Ottawa have an Eichel that was moved out? At this stage the only real criticism of Dorion is the Stone situation. We needed more out of that.
OK, be satisfied with BELOW mediocrity and use the "rebuilding" excuse for a decade if you want. I have other standards
If you think "
the only real criticism of Dorion is the Stone situation", it's pretty clear you've been stuck against a tree trunk. In the meantime, I have been calling in advance everything that Dorion did or did not do that would blow up in our faces. If you leave your biases out at the door, it's actually stuff that is not that hard to predict.
By the way, I was not comparing with Buffalo. If you want to know what competent management is, just look at Gorton + Hughes. They basically got more for trading Lehkonen + Chariot + Toffoli + Kulak and taking on Monahan than our whole firesale minus the Karlsson trade (which is saving our BUTTS big time). People say Dorion was lucky there with the Sharks tanking that much and Norris becoming more than expected.
They started their rebuild 1 year ago, yet they are ahead of us in the standings after 33 games... this is EMBARASSING