Speculation: When Does Bruno Get The Boot?

[Soundgarden]

We're tied for 30th, if the goal is to pick high he's not going to come right out and say what he means.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

Time to rename this to when does trotz get the boot? His words means absolutely nothing now. He's like a parent that threatens his kids but does absolutely nothing to punish them. Threatened with rebuilld talk. We have heard wait till Thanksgiving then I'll evaluate where we're at. Then it became Christmas, now it's ill buy if you win a few games before the trade deadline. This is terrible display of gming. I look at all the moves he has made and not one has turned into a good move. Trotz is a terrible and the sooner he's fired the sooner this team can take the necessary steps towards becoming a contender

To be fair, I think picking up O'Reilly and Nyquist on the contracts he got them on has turned out overall well for us. Even Marchessault now that he has come around is looking pretty good for the money he's getting.

There was a middle ground he could have walked in terms of bringing in SOME of these veteran UFAs without breaking the bank or throwing away other players. I don't know if O'Reilly was really contingent on Duchene being bought out or not, it really shouldn't have been the case. Anyway, Trotz just went too far too soon, and abandoned his originally stated philosophy of letting the veterans mentor the youth and seeing what the youth could do.

He was too impulsive with his player personnel decisions. But then over-patient with the failed coaching hire. It's maddening.

 

[jumb0]

The optimist in me says he'll be canned after the season.

The Predsimist in me says Trotz is going to look at this season as a one off and give him another year.

 

[Viqsi]

The optimist in me says he'll be canned after the season.

The Predsimist in me says Trotz is going to look at this season as a one off and give him another year.

The latter is where I've been from Day 1. Not so much out of a sense of despair or whatever as it's just familiar territory.

 

[nullednumbed]

To be fair, I think picking up O'Reilly and Nyquist on the contracts he got them on has turned out overall well for us. Even Marchessault now that he has come around is looking pretty good for the money he's getting.

There was a middle ground he could have walked in terms of bringing in SOME of these veteran UFAs without breaking the bank or throwing away other players. I don't know if O'Reilly was really contingent on Duchene being bought out or not, it really shouldn't have been the case. Anyway, Trotz just went too far too soon, and abandoned his originally stated philosophy of letting the veterans mentor the youth and seeing what the youth could do.

He was too impulsive with his player personnel decisions. But then over-patient with the failed coaching hire. It's maddening.

Yeah Marchessault if he can keep it up can end up around is normal point total. Stamkos not so much. But man that the Preds are on the hook for 6 more years at 7 million for Skjei. That makes my head hurt.

 

[Predsanddead24]

He was too impulsive with his player personnel decisions. But then over-patient with the failed coaching hire. It's maddening.

Yeah this is my number one issue. How are you so aggressive in the offseason but then seem to be willing to just punt on this season because you like the guy you chose as coach? Especially when you have built a team with a bunch of key players on the wrong side of 30.

 

[GeauxPreds1]

To be fair, I think picking up O'Reilly and Nyquist on the contracts he got them on has turned out overall well for us. Even Marchessault now that he has come around is looking pretty good for the money he's getting.

There was a middle ground he could have walked in terms of bringing in SOME of these veteran UFAs without breaking the bank or throwing away other players. I don't know if O'Reilly was really contingent on Duchene being bought out or not, it really shouldn't have been the case. Anyway, Trotz just went too far too soon, and abandoned his originally stated philosophy of letting the veterans mentor the youth and seeing what the youth could do.

He was too impulsive with his player personnel decisions. But then over-patient with the failed coaching hire. It's maddening.

While orielly wasn't a bad signing it just wasn't the right time to be signing vets like that. Especially right after getting rid of your best defensive defenseman. Trotz doesn't know what he wants to do which makes every decision a bad one in my opinion. While orielly and marchessault are decent signing their signings doesn't have us anywhere close to contending. Quite the opposite.

 

[Predsanddead24]

I still think if Trotz had actually stuck to the plan he outlined in the 2023 offseason we wouldn't be in too bad of a place. O'Reilly and Nyquist were good signings to short term fill some gaps and most importantly had no trade protections which made them easy to move out when the time came. Dumping half of Johansen's salary was a good choice too. Moving out Duchene was questionable but in a timeline where we spent two to three seasons actually retooling I can see some rationale of going ahead and trying to clear the cap space. The problem is once the young players struggled to start last season we seemingly threw out the retool plan and then the hot streak convinced Trotz we were actually close to competing when we weren't. But even then I feel like we could have made some more conservative moves to still try and bridge the gap without tying ourselves up to much. Keep McDonagh instead of bringing in Skjei, sign one of Marchesseault/Stamkos and not both, and hold off on re-signing Saros and see how things play out. At least in that case we would have retained a good amount of flexibility moving forward, but now we're stuck with a lot of big contracts in the medium term (3-5 years) and a few in the longer term (5-8 years) as well. With the cap rising I don't think it'll be insurmountable but it is a bit unfortunate and will also potentially clog up some roster spots.

 

[predfan24]

The optimist in me says he'll be canned after the season.

The Predsimist in me says Trotz is going to look at this season as a one off and give him another year.

I can see where Trotz is coming from if he is staying all season. Why not write off this season as a failure and see how the beginning of next season goes?

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I still think if Trotz had actually stuck to the plan he outlined in the 2023 offseason we wouldn't be in too bad of a place. O'Reilly and Nyquist were good signings to short term fill some gaps and most importantly had no trade protections which made them easy to move out when the time came. Dumping half of Johansen's salary was a good choice too. Moving out Duchene was questionable but in a timeline where we spent two to three seasons actually retooling I can see some rationale of going ahead and trying to clear the cap space. The problem is once the young players struggled to start last season we seemingly threw out the retool plan and then the hot streak convinced Trotz we were actually close to competing when we weren't. But even then I feel like we could have made some more conservative moves to still try and bridge the gap without tying ourselves up to much. Keep McDonagh instead of bringing in Skjei, sign one of Marchesseault/Stamkos and not both, and hold off on re-signing Saros and see how things play out. At least in that case we would have retained a good amount of flexibility moving forward, but now we're stuck with a lot of big contracts in the medium term (3-5 years) and a few in the longer term (5-8 years) as well. With the cap rising I don't think it'll be insurmountable but it is a bit unfortunate and will also potentially clog up some roster spots.

We didn't even save much Cap on the Duchene thing though, since his buyout was so high.

We still wouldn't have had a good answer at Center. But...

Josi - Fabbro
Ekholm - Carrier
Wilsby - McDonagh
Stastney
... that would have been a pretty great D.

Lankinen
Askarov in goal? Or anyway, don't sign that Saros contract extension so soon and leave that TBD?

Forsberg - O'Reilly - Marchessault
Evangelista - Novak - Duchene
Nyquist - Svechkov - Tomasino
L'Heureux - Parssinen - Sissons
Smith
... I dunno, we're probably waaaaay under the Cap with that lineup, so could also have found some better ways to tweak things.

In some ways it doesn't look super different than what we have right now, aside from on D maybe. But it's also a better use of our internal assets and without doing the math I bet it's a far cheaper lineup that would have given us tons of flexibility to look at other options.