He has shown great capability in acquiring and maintaining his core. Great trade for Hamilton. Good pick-up of Frolik. Great job signing Brodie, Backlund, and Giordano to appropriate contracts. I have full confidence he will sign Monahan and Gaudreau to good contracts. He has also found a great balance between staying competitive while building towards the future. This is what is important so I give him a strong B.
But I do have concerns with how he manages the depth. I put this in another thread, but the top half of our roster is paid 33-million while the bottom half is paid 36-million. He inherited some of those bad depth contracts. But he created a number of them as well. It isn't just the dollar figure that is disturbing. Most of these players have term.
How he handles Hudler / Russell at the TDL and leading to next summer will tell us a lot about him. You can give him a bit of a pass on the Raymond / Engelland contracts because he was overpaying for leadership during a rebuild. But we are beyond the point we should be overpaying for players.
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