Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
LOL, we’re playing the “they would have/should have drafted X” game are we? Then subtract Tkachuk, and add Puljujarvi. And Barzal should have gone higher than Calgary’s pick (which wasn’t used to pick him - it was used on Zachary Zenyshyn).
You’d also be missing Hamilton and then Lindholm and Hanifin. You’d have Ferland (no longer playing) and Fox who wouldn’t have signed.
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What a ridiculous assumption, if Fox could not be packaged with Hamilton he could not be traded.
I was merely responding to your assertion that he had no assets to trade. He traded those assets. He spotted a #4 dman in Hamonic and backed up the brinks truck. My assertion was that he needlessly and without a plan traded away picks when the team was nowhere close to being competitive. He almost never identified ways to accumulate assets, just traded the assets that each team starts the season with.
There are folks on this board that think you have to pick high to be competitive. There are a number of elite teams in the NHL who prove that to be a fallacy. Brad could have had assets by not making those trades and trading other high picks on a bubble team.
The collective body of work by Brad is bad. Good teams accumulate assets. Teams like Brad’s do not. The Carolina Hurricanes have a 13th overall pick for eating 6.25 million in cap space for one year. Brad used more money to clean up on aisle 3 for the Neal signing and to buyout Brouwer and Stone. Brad took over a team that had the 17th most points in the NHL over the 7 seasons before he came. He will (god willing) leave a team at the end of this year after 7 seasons that had the 19th or 20th most points in the NHL over his tenure. He alleged inherited a team that had no assets, he leaves a team that certainly does not have any blue chip prospects the likes of Gaudreau and Monahan, who were both unable to legally drink in the USA when he took over.
But the writing is on the wall (hopefully). Even longtime supporters of Brad’s now are basically saying “he did everything he could, he has a great body of work, it was impossible for him to improve the team, nobody can do that without top 3 picks, teams just cannot accumulate assets over 7 years, etc. But Brad is probably gone but he will be picked up by someone, he built a team that was in the top 20 in the NHL during his tenure.”