Moving on from the question of are the owners the problem, here is what I would do if I was.
I would go to the management team and say what we are doing hasn’t been working and isn’t working. We aren’t on a path to winning a cup. Not even close.
I would ask for a plan that details what that plan to become a contender is. I would not time-box it or place other restrictive guard rails around the ask. I would ask the GM, as part of that plan, to detail what a realistic timeline is.
I would expect the plan to include:
- Details of timeline and milestones along the way so we know if we are tracking to expectation or not.
- Retrospective on why this re-build went wrong, what we learned and how we are applying those learnings going forward. With specifics.
Evaluation of the current roster and prospects
- Who do we think we can extract the most value out of to re-build the asset base in a sustained way
- Evaluation of when we should act to extract this value. Now? At the deadline? In the off-season? I would want this detail for each player that we would consider moving
- Which prospects do we see part of a future contending club
- What roster players are potentially part of that based on current age and upside
-Evaluation of the next 5 drafts to establish when ideally we should be bottoming out and how that aligns to the quality of those drafts. Kids are scouted in their early teens now – this is information that is available. The further out the less certainty, but still an important consideration.
- Overview of resources required including:
o Key positions including net-new roles requires and salaries required for each
o Overview of current scouting staff – amateur and pro. This would include specific summaries of which players they scouted, decisions and recommendations made, and if those proved to be positive and negative. This should be used to turn over anyone without a track record of being a strong talent evaluator
o Cap required by year
Plan for ensuring that when we are ready to contend we have maximum cap flexibility, or at least have maintained reasonable flexibility
o Other resources to be identified including if we are investing enough in scouting and analytics. Where can we fund more to create an advantage?
o Overview of key talent in front offices that we can try to recruit to supplement or replace the current management team.
I would then evaluate on the basis of the plan delivered if BT is the right guy or not.
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