Following from a distance I hear the rumblings and where the balme lies. Everyone needs to take some of the blame, but bringing in a "superstar" doesn't always work. In the case of this "superstar" he has a habit of dividing a room. He accomplished this when he got to windsor, he took 10 of the guys out for steak dinner. Didn't iclude Maggio or Peer to name a couple. Mostly GTHL guys were in attandance. Maggio was your superstar not Wright.
Unless you have source info, I think this is irresponsible to post and try to place blame on one person for issues. As someone who does have source info (but not to Wright), Wright did not do this or anything else to divide locker room. In fact, he did some things that were super nice like helping rookies w equipment unpacking and players said he was quiet but nice guy. If anything there may have been dynamics between older players but no one
Having said that I do know locker room never same after all the trades and giving up so many future draft picks. Why that is, even the players don’t fully know why. I do know that locker room wasn’t as cohesive/fun after trades because team was really bonded in a way I haven’t seen a lot in my many years. It was across age groups. 05s had developed really good relationships with older players especially after such a long run last season. 06s were getting acclimated. The build versus buy and always have a strong team mentality BB preached was something guys could get behind for their own development. Obviously older guys aren’t going to care about rookies or future draft picks or others being traded if they can win, but while fans were all excited, there was noise in locker about who was traded and what was left for future. Whether that had any impact is anyone’s guess.
My guess: yes to some extent. That’s I guess why I believe in strategy of build versus buy and development. Plug some holes but don’t decimate an entire year of very young talent (1st 2nd and 4th round picks just a year ago) and then trade away all your picks for next couple of years. 06s are great but already impacted by injuries and they are not ready to help carry team next year. So that can hurt them. Example: Greentree stats great but it will be interesting to see how he does once he doesn’t have a 1st line of NHL draft choices to carry him. How will Spallacy due after months of injuries? How will Cristoforo do when he doesn’t have as many strong forwards keeping it in O zone?
When 05s got moved to weaker teams in Kingston and Niagara all were impacted. Miedema got moved and his stats suffered big time. Ride and O’Flaherty got hosed because even though savard didn’t play early season stats showed real promise based on what I saw. Idk if the three of them would have been good or not but they were all huge guys and ride and O’Flaherty were physical, which Windsor desperately needs. All well respected guys. So why trade that all away in Jan and leave no 05s for future? Why not trade for D or a goalie instead? Offense was NOT Winsdsor’s issue since day 1. And Miedema was 4th round pick in entire draft. If he didn’t perform then I also place blame on coaching. It’s not often draft lines up that you get a 4th pick.
From what I’ve seen Savard isn’t about development at all and that isn’t the right leadership for an OHL league. Seems to overplay his top players just to pad his stats and wins to move on to next best thing. Just watch games this and last year where we were winning by many goals and he’d continue to rotate top lines to point of being ridiculous. Recruiting will suffer as guys talk. If I was an 07 or 08, I’d think hard about going to a team that just traded away its entire 2nd year group to get knocked out in first round. Clearly no loyalty, something wrong with coaching or mgt etc. or whatever conclusion is drawn, it won’t be positive. So if they have options, they might decide to pass on Windsor. That sucks for Windsor and fans.
But as we all know, hockey is a business. If they treat it like such, Windsor will regroup, make some coaching changes or otherwise and will recruit in another group of kids to play. One thing we know is there is always another player they can recruit or call up. May be a tough few years perhaps.
