Quote:
Originally Posted by TOfan
Fair enough.
At the end of the day, Treliving did what he could to turn an untenable situation into a positive and it looks as though it has worked. I have a hard time being critical of the GM here. Even going back as far as the Neal signing itself.
Factors outside Treliving’s control; Neal showing up out of shape, Peters putting Lindholm with JG and SM (the right call), Neal’s subsequent obstinate attitude. Did it blow up in Treliving’s hands? Yep, sure did. But part of being a GM is assuming risk. You have to be willing to stick your neck out there to improve the team, which I suspect is the mandate from ownership. Improve the team. Again, I have a hard time laying blame solely at Treliving’s feet. Is he, or has he, done things other ‘reasonable’ GMs would not have done? I think so. I would say he has done better than ‘reasonable’.
Lastly, fairly certain if you look through each teams depth chart you will find ‘boat anchors’ occupying bottom 6/bottom pairing roster spots. Or worse, the player is in the AHL. It’s kind of an outdated argument saying ‘player X makes too much money to be on your fourth line’. I don’t think you can single out one, or two, contracts and say ‘that’s why it’s broken’. a skillful GM should be able to navigate the highs and lows to create a whole that fits the organizational philosophy. To date; Treliving has done that.
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I agree for the most part and would add that my own well sourced but still second hand info is that Neal just had to be traded for off ice reasons. My only disagreement would be on the Neal signing itself. The same reason they had to trade him could have been discovered beforehand with a little in depth digging, with Vegas insiders for example. I think Treliving focussed too much on Neal’s past production and even there he didn't look at the historical trends in that production over the course of those seasons. Nor did he ask why the previous teams were happy to shed themselves of a “consistent” scorer.