Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
The narrative of how last year played out is starting to change here.
I didn't see Peters letting things fester. I didn't see Neal riding the pine or being treated poorly.
I saw Neal being given regular ice time, all season long - arguably, too much of it. I saw a fanbase that questioned, on an almost daily basis, why Neal was getting so much ice time and PP time, despite his play not warranting it. There were countless posts throughout the season lamenting the fact that Neal was getting more ice time than Ryan, Bennett, Mangiapane and Frolik.
Neal was 6th in ice time, behind the big 5. Did he deserve that? It was almost unanimous that he did not. However, many felt that we needed to get Neal going, so you could argue that it made sense.
Suggesting that Peters and Treliving did nothing, or sat around and let things fester is laughable. Neal garnered a tremendous amount of attention last year. The only thing he didn't get was a gifted spot on the top line (which would have been completely unjust if he had). Yet, even saying that, he did get the shift after penalties with the top line, for much of the year - did he do anything with that which would have suggested that he might have warranted more opportunity? Nope.
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What I find laughable is the assertion that things have changed so dramatically for Neal because of... magic? Some kind of mystical voodoo force that was never going to visit him in Calgary? And that adding Milan effing Lucic was the only solution to this problem.
What is Edmonton doing differently that Calgary could not possibly have done? Was there really nothing that could have massaged this situation behind closed doors that could have prevented this? No kind of early intervention that would have drastically changed the outcome of all this?
I don’t buy for a second that this was inevitable from day one, and that this was the only outcome that could ever make sense. Somewhere, things failed. My question is where and how.
I don’t expect we will ever get a definitive answer for these questions, because we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. We only know that the people who do control those things didn’t do a very good job. Like I said, the results speak for themselves. The evidence is now showing they mismanaged an asset that could have helped them, and took on a known commodity that amounts to $5 million of dead cap space as a last resort.