I've come around the full way on Hextall. Not that I was some massive Hextall booster, but my frustration and tiredness was so much more focused on Sullivan. I know this is "duh" territory for many of you, but Ron should just be gone. When you stack up the fact that our depth scoring has gotten significantly crappier, when it was one of our strong suits last year its hard understand. Some of this is down to a stale coach whose tenure has curdled right before our very eyes, but so much of it seems to just be a GM who was made the wrong decision whenever he was forced to make a choice.
Carter worked out initially. Poehling looks like a fine player. Aside from that, every other decision has been wrong. ERod went while Heinen stayed. McCann gone while Carter was protected. Stuff like Marino >> Petry is harder to judge because, as mentioned above, everyone seems to look worse under our system, and better when they move away. People have been harping on about these moves already, but when you see the bigger picture, and how the same issues are costing us night after night as our season unravels into shit (GK depth, no scoring outside of the top 6, lack of willingness to change things) it just brings the bigger picture
There is being patient as a GM, and then there is conservatism to the point of impotence. Rutherford was a madman, but by god he tried his damnest to shake things up if we were in a funk as bad as this. Just get both Sullivan and Hextall out, and start with a clean slate in the summer. I hope ownership or Burke (probably not) exercises veto power over any big moves Hextall tries to make in the next two weeks. Paying a big price out of desperation, only to squeak into the playoffs and get bounced in 4-6 games is a waste of everyone's time and assets.
