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weepingminotaur's Achievements

Hockey Guru / Grand manitou

Hockey Guru / Grand manitou (6/6)



  1. What is the likelihood of hiring a decent coach? What's more, the current coach is actively responsible for impeding the development of pretty much all our young players -- Tinordi, Beaulieu, arguably Pateryn, Eller, Galchenyuk, and Subban. So not only he is not a good coach, but he's having a negative impact on development, some of which could be irreversible damage unless he's fired soon. Which brings us back to the question: what makes anyone think that Bergevin will fire Therrien? Additionally, nobody has addressed our issue at center. Where is the depth down the middle? Nowhere, because the only two players getting significant minutes are DD (not a long-term solution) and Plekanec (entering the downside of his career). Briere is playing at wing now. Therrien has effectively ruined Eller's confidence. Galchenyuk is still on the wing two years after we drafted him. Leblanc is a bust in all likelihood. Tell me what team makes a deep playoff run without strength at center?
  2. I really don't understand why all of a sudden people think we're one piece away from being a contender. The D situation is terrible and we're locked into a number of bad contracts (Emelin, Bourque, Desharnais, Briere, Gorges). Our center situation is a state of crisis: we're feeding big minutes to a soft non-possession forward (Desharnais), while our other scoring center gets older (Plekanec) and the coach has buried Eller on the fourth line and refuses to use our supposed future franchise center at his natural position. We are one of the lowest-scoring playoff teams in the conference, in part due to a sagging power play. Don't let our current playoff standing fool you; this is not a contending team. In the playoffs, we won't be able to pick on bottom-feeders. We'll be facing good teams with better coaches who will shut down our current first line, force us into mistakes, and exploit our vulnerabilities.
  3. Still don't want him here for more than five years. I'm not going to be swayed by a nice stretch of production right now, when he's in his early '30s. The years we'd be buying up would be his late '30s on a long-term contract.
  4. Agreed with both of you. That line will get annihilated in the playoffs unless we control the OZone starts or switch personnel.
  5. FWIW, I heard the same arguments about our need for scoring when Gainey signed the little three back in 2009. And look how that turned out. We traded the best contract of the bunch (Cammalleri, who's still producing in Calgary). Gomez was a disaster. Gionta had two good seasons, became injury-prone in season 3, and has been in steady decline relative to his cap hit for the past two years. And while Gionta is still serviceable in a third-line role, it's a lot easier to swallow because it's only a five-year contract and the cap hit is lower (and occurred in an era when teams had the option to buy out unproductive players -- we no longer have that option). To go 8/8 or 8/7 on Vanek is a huge gamble. And as roy says, I don't think we're a contender in the short term, so going all-in for a high-risk contract this summer is just not that appealing.
  6. The risk isn't worth it. We have a number of important contracts coming up (Subban, Galchenyuk) and we're still tied to Bourque and Briere in the short term. We might also have to find a way to fit Markov under the cap for at least a year. This is in addition to the contracts of Price, Plekanec, Gorges, and Pacioretty that we're already carrying. I'd take a flyer on Vanek at five years. I would not go higher than a five-year term. I don't know why everyone is so confident he'd be good or even decent value through a seven or eight-year deal that takes him well into his late '30s. These are exactly the kinds of contracts that look attractive in year one but can look abominable very quickly if the player experiences even a mild decline. Vanek is a one-dimensional goalscorer with no defensive capability and little value as a possession player. He's not elite -- why pay him like an elite scorer? Let some other team give him eight years and then regret it by year four. I understand that we need goalscoring, but you can't pay any price for non-elite talent just because you have a deficit. There are other ways of finding that scoring, and those other ways don't carry the risk of a costly UFA signing, where you're always overpaying. Keep in mind that you are buying up a player's '30s here. So don't expect to get '20s production from a 30-something player. If you get it, great, but to enter into an eight-year deal gambling that you will get it? That's too much risk IMO.
  7. Have to disagree with you here, Manatee. First of all, making a good move shouldn't mean being perfect all the time. We're not nitpicking a decision to waive an AHL callup making minimum wage. We're talking about whether to go all-in on a guy whose production seems to be in decline, to the tune of seven or eight years, paying him top dollar well into his '30s. That is a decision that good teams think long and hard about and land on the right side of more often than not. Second, the Gorges example is inapt, because it's actually an example of a poor contract we gave out to an overrated fringe-top-four d-man based on one good season he had playing with ... eventual Norris-Trophy-winning P.K. Subban. Third, I'd flip that argument on its head. You suggest a worse-case scenario if we only made "perfect" moves, but if we only made good moves, maybe we wouldn't have traded a stud D prospect to acquire Scott Gomez, whom we were later forced to buy out. Maybe we wouldn't be stuck with Brian Gionta in year 5 of a contract we knew was going to be an albatross at precisely that time. Maybe we could have used the money we spent on Daniel Briere to address an urgent need on defense. Maybe we wouldn't be looking at four more years of Alexei Emelin because we inexplicably handed him an extension without checking to see if he could be the same player post-injury. Maybe we wouldn't be stuck with Rene Bourque and his endless contract and would instead have an extra goalscorer (Cammalleri) entering the final year of his contract. Given the resources we have as a franchise and enormous, bloated management team Bergevin assembled, we have every right to expect good moves. Not perfection -- just good franchise management.
  8. One thing I want to emphasize that roy_133 already said: if we sign Vanek to a long-term contract, we're essentially buying up his '30s based on production from 2006 through 2009. That's not a good hockey move to me. If the opportunity comes to add a guy like Vanek with acceptable term, I think you do it, because you're not overpaying and if he can regain his form, you're getting great cap value. But to pay him assuming he'll be that guy through most of a seven-year contract? The odds are not in our favour and as others have said, Vanek is just not a good enough player to warrant that kind of risk. IMO you go 6+ years on core franchise players, not risk/reward types. I'd still be nervous in the fourth and fifth years of any contract we gave Vanek, but I can live with five years. Six or seven? That's too much risk for not enough reward.
  9. Ted, it's hard to overlook the fact that Vanek's numbers are definitely on the downside post-2009. As for making the one-dimensional comparison to Jagr, Iginla, and Robitaille, it doesn't work, because all three were simply flat-out better players offensively than Vanek. So they brought more to the table, even after they were past their prime.
  10. Ted, I wouldn't put Vanek in the same category as any of the players you mentioned in your first paragraph. Not saying I don't want to get rid of Bourque and not re-sign Gionta, but let's not jump from the frying pan into the fire.
  11. Vanek's at a weird age to be UFA. And it's risky. I wouldn't go more than four or five years on any contract. If he wants term, he should get it elsewhere. He's a sniper, but pretty one-dimensional, and not good enough to risk buying up years when he'll likely be in decline and overpaying for those years.
  12. I like what I've seen of him so far, but I'm sure we can find a way to ruin his productivity if we try hard enough.
  13. For all that everyone talks about the big bad Bruins and their formula for playoff success, they were within a hair of losing in the first round to us in 2010-11 and within a hair of losing to the Leafs in the first round in 2012-13, not to mention the infamous meltdown against Philly when they blew a 3-0 series lead and lost in seven. It's funny how narratives turn on a dime. If we win that 2010-11 playoff series, Julien is probably fired and there is no big bad Boston playoff model. Chara was exposed in this series big-time. Looked out of gas and was on the ice for many Chicago goals against, including the backbreaking Toews goal in game six. At 36, can he continue to be the no. 1 d-man in Boston for more than one or two years? Boston's Cup window is closing pretty fast...
  14. Waiting to see how long it takes everyone to push the reset button on memory and start trotting out the "grit and size are EVERYTHING in the playoffs" talking point.
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