Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov
Tre should have been fired years ago for building such a 98lb weakling,soft as butter team.
This has changed after Sutter arrived but I'm sure Sutter had some input into making this team harder to play against.
and i still can't believe he signed diving ass piece of crap James Neal to this team. he should have been instantly fired after that.
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It's kind of funny that you say the team was too soft...but then in the same breath critize a move he made to bring more of a edge / nastyness on to the team in Neal.
And honestly James Neal is still a really weird signing because it shouldn't have been that bad, that fast. There were no real indications that such a sharp decline coming.
Neal might be the best recent example of a player signing a big contract and just not caring any more. He honestly just gave up that season and I think that's why I hate him more than I actually hate that signing.
In the 5 seasons before signing in Calgary James Neal was a legitimate 1st line forward from a produciton perspective.
Goals: 129 (22nd)
Points: 241 (72nd)
And the underlying numbers were good too.
Evolving Hockey had him rated as the 24th best forward in the league by Goals Above Replacement, and the 23rd best player in the league by Expected Goals Above Replacement over those 5 seasons.
In the 17-18 season itself he was 26th in xGAR, and 44th in GAR. So still a pretty elite clip just the season before signing in Calgary.
This wasn't a Troy Brouwer scenario where they signed a player that was average to start with, and already declining, to an overvalued contract.
Neal was a top end player for 10 straight seasons before signing in Calgary (ranked 21st among forwards over those 10 years according to Evolving Hockey's model)...and then fell off a cliff.
Honestly outside of just signing a big deal and then not caring anymore I'm not sure what happened to Neal during that 2018 off-season.
Treliving made some bad signings and decisions - but there was a ton of bad luck involved in back to back offseasons when he signed James Neal only for him to become the worst player in the league in 2018, and then the trade for Kadri and Brown being blocked by Kadri, only for Kadri to then go to Colorado and help them become a powerhouse.