Some saw the potential risk in this trade, so not sure about the "everyone was in support of it part". Many (myself included) felt it was a short term focused move. It made some sense within the context of a team that was about to be sold, and a GM trying to have a good year for personal career reasons. There was always the tension of sacrificing long term objectives and benefits versus short term gains here.
Totally, it was a short term focused move and that's why I respect it. This team needed something, ANYTHING and the fanbase was done waiting. So PD made a move to sell hope with the upside of it being a catalyst for accelerating our path. How can we fault him for that?
We all need to rewind to how desperate this team was to send the right signals post EM. That's what ADC was, he was one part swing for the fences, one part symbolic gesture to the fanbase.
It cost us a 7th, which of course, very predictably people are clamouring about right now (before we know his fate I might add..) and that to me is really narrow sighted. Had he done nothing you can bet fans would have been crucifying him for the opposite. "We were a second liner away from being a playoff team..."
People are so quick to analyze things in a vacuum. We can all agree that this team desperately needed a pick me up last year. ADC was that. Had we made the playoffs, which we should have barring goaltending and a Norris injury, I don't think we would be having this conversation. We would be optimistic about a run next year with ADC resigned at his QO (which ironically is a worse situation.)
Instead, the plan didn't quite work out and predictably the revisionists among us who always seem to have the right answer are out in droves.
I'll take the GM that makes the odd gutsy move to improve the team and if it backfires I'm not going to hold him to the coals.
