Absolute disaster.
Dismal Failure.
That's just over the top in my opinion. Kipper and Iggy were in their 30's, and it was time to win now. Trade future assets for veteran players to win playoff rounds. It failed, yes. No playoff rounds won. Bare cupboard. No cap space. Long term deals and no compliance buyouts. Yes those are brutal results.
But Sutter was doing exactly what I (most) would have wanted a GM to do at the time... try to win right now. The Result was bad but the Process was understandable. Obviously by 2010 more people realized the window had closed and the 2010 trades were widely considered desperate and unwise in the long term.
I just expected the on-ice results to be better. A core of Kipper, Iggy, Regehr, Phaneuf, Langkow, Jokinen, Bouwmeester, Bourque should have performed better than they did.
Like I said at the beginning of this, Darryl should have put himself on the bench and either got more out of the core or moved them out if they wouldn't respond to him. Look at his coaching record. Does anyone deny that he would have done a better job with our core than Playfair, Keenan and Brent did?
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