I think he has been pretty terrible. How much of that was Roy? I don't know how much of Roy's fingerprints were on that team. How much say did Roy have? How much did Sakic allow? I guess it all falls at his feet in the end.
As for the Avs, they're problem is that they lost a lot of their 'heavy lifting' guys with a lot of compete. Duchene and MacKinnon are stars, but they are the type of players that are 'elite gamebreakers'. Those are definitely needed, and they have (so far) been retained, but the only guy with legs left that does heavy lifting is Landeskog.
The two most important guys on the team that played strong 200ft games and were also really good along the boards were Stastny and ROR. They had (and still have) a porous defence, but those guys did a lot of the heavy lifting, including along the boards.
Now you have a couple of high-end gamebreakers with speed, one guy (Landeskog) left who plays a solid 200ft game and has the legs to do it, and a bunch of older complimentary (at best) vets, and a defence that can't defend well or move the puck well as a unit.
Oh, and they have great goalies, but even Dominik Hasek couldn't pull that team out of where they are at.
They lost a lot of what made that team click. They don't have an identity. They don't skate well. They don't move the puck well. They have 2 lines that can generate some offence, and no lines that are effective at checking. They are easy to shut down, and with their lack of capable defencemen, are a team that is easy to pressure and contain.
What they should have done is realized how important Statsny and RoR were, and made sure to retain them. Instead they let Statsny walk for nothing, and made a relatively poor trade with RoR. They had ONE good defencemen in Johnson.
Flames are really lucky in a way comparatively. When they started their rebuild, they had a Backlund who was breaking out as a guy who could do that heavy lifting, a top-pairing Defencemen in Giordano and a guy who was breaking out as a top-pairing defencemen in Brodie. Wideman was left over from 'trying to compete' still, and he put up HUGE minutes and kept this team afloat, and rather unheralded trade (and one that was mocked at the time from people not knowing the particulars) in obtaining Russell solidified a very good top 4 that was the envy of any rebuilding team in the NHL.
Meanwhile, the Avs decide to sign has-beens to try and solidify a terrible defensive core. Roy was also using Hartley's system. Great for Johnson's and Barrie's numbers, but probably not a good system to use when you don't have at least a top 4 that are capable of playing both ends like Calgary's was.
Calgary managed to identify and retain enough talent to see them through the rebuild. Avs - for some strange and idiotic reason - gutted their puck-possession and defensive-minded guys.
Sakic is rumored to be stepping down after this season apparently. Read somewhere that he stated if the Avs don't make the playoffs this year, that he will voluntarily step down.
|