[Larry David]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

It's where the 14-15 season was a curse to be honest. The season was great fun, and the only official playoff round this team has won in 16 years but it threw off the trajectory of the team from "Rebuild" to "Win Now" too quickly. The team wasn't ready to be in "Win Now" mode but that season pushed ownership, management, and the fan base to that space again. But the biggest thing is that since the expecations changed the coaching style went from "development" to "win now".

So what ended up happening is we didn't properly develop our young players, and instead deployed them in the way that was going to end up with the best short term results.

-Instead of Monahan getting time as a 200ft center, he was leveraged in a sheltered offensive center role that was getting fed offensive zone starts, and no PK time.

-Bennett was bounced around the lineup, shifted between C and LW and didn't really find a role. Also was never used on the PK to help develop defensive awareness.

-Gaudreau also didn't really develop a 200ft game and was used in sheltered offensive minutes as well.

-Tkachuk came in and made an impact which helped, but really he has holes in his game (poor skating, doesn't PK) that also weren't developed.

-Guys like Janko, Gillies, Poirier, Klimchuk, etc didn't develop as anticipated either, leading us to make other moves to try to accelerate the rebuild and add to the core.

Plus over the next two seasons they signed Brouwer and Frolik to big, longer term contracts to add to the core. Traded 1st, 2nd, 2nd, for Hamilton. Traded a 2nd, 3rd for Elliott. And looking further down the line they made the ill advised Hamonic trade. So the team started looking for short term stop gaps to help in the playoffs, instead of what should have been along term plan still.

In retrospect that season was probably a curse more than a help because it changed the expectations and people thought the rebuild was further along than it actually was.

I get your point to a degree in regards to fan expectations, I think the 14-15 season did change our perception of the team, but in regards to the ownership and management, I have a different opinion. Perhaps their perception of where the team was did change, but if they weren't properly developing players because of a little taste of success, wouldn't that be a detriment to the organization? They can't try to win and develop at the same time? Especially in regards to things like Monahan and Gaudreau developing a 200 foot game. How do they expect to win anything meaningful if players aren't developing a 200ft game?