qc14
Registered User
- Jul 1, 2024
- 151
- 262
From his time in PIT -- I will defend the Karlsson trade, where he probably should've had to pay a 1st alone to get out of all the bad cap he sent out. Bringing in another established star coming off a historic season was a good bet to make for where they were at as well. It was both strategically (the idea behind the deal) and tactically (actual mechanics of the trade) sound.
Since then, every other move he's made has been at best strategically and tactically misaligned and at worst straight up bad. Signing two complimentary top four guys to play with Karlsson and Letang was the right idea, but the talent ID on having those two guys be Graves and Gryczlyk is horrendously bad.
The Guentzel trade is the best example of this. In a vacuum, the return is OK, but it just doesn't make any sense direction-wise. If they were trying to still be competitive, the best option would clearly have been to just extend Guentzel, or try to get more NHL-ready prospects, or flip the draft/prospect capital for another established player. If they wanted to rebuild, they should've taken a lower volume of higher quality pieces and not explicitly asked for Bunting to come back.
The most infuriating thing to me though is this sentiment in the media that he's boxed in by Crosby/Malkin and that the kind of big moves they needed weren't available without torching the small amount of future assets they do have. It's your job to make those things happen! Their direct rivals in the Caps made not one or two or three but four of those kinds of moves this summer! Nashville and Seattle made things happen! Tampa significantly remade their core group! All Dubas did (in either direction) was tinker around the margins, and those tinkerings sucked!
He inherited a very tough situation, and probably has one more button to press by firing Sullivan. It wasn't an impossible situation though, and Dubas has completely screwed it.
Since then, every other move he's made has been at best strategically and tactically misaligned and at worst straight up bad. Signing two complimentary top four guys to play with Karlsson and Letang was the right idea, but the talent ID on having those two guys be Graves and Gryczlyk is horrendously bad.
The Guentzel trade is the best example of this. In a vacuum, the return is OK, but it just doesn't make any sense direction-wise. If they were trying to still be competitive, the best option would clearly have been to just extend Guentzel, or try to get more NHL-ready prospects, or flip the draft/prospect capital for another established player. If they wanted to rebuild, they should've taken a lower volume of higher quality pieces and not explicitly asked for Bunting to come back.
The most infuriating thing to me though is this sentiment in the media that he's boxed in by Crosby/Malkin and that the kind of big moves they needed weren't available without torching the small amount of future assets they do have. It's your job to make those things happen! Their direct rivals in the Caps made not one or two or three but four of those kinds of moves this summer! Nashville and Seattle made things happen! Tampa significantly remade their core group! All Dubas did (in either direction) was tinker around the margins, and those tinkerings sucked!
He inherited a very tough situation, and probably has one more button to press by firing Sullivan. It wasn't an impossible situation though, and Dubas has completely screwed it.
