Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
People complaining about the Brouwer and Neal signings might want to go back and look at the UFA markets at the time. When you need a top-six forward, and you don’t have anything coming up in the system to step into that role right away, you either have to trade away draft capital, or go to the UFA market. And the UFA market means overpaying for aging players.
So if people want to say NHL GMs should steer clear of UFAs and rely on drafting and developing, that’s a valid criticism. But there’s no alternate timeline where someone else in Treliving’s shoes in 2016 an 2018 do markedly better in the UFA market. The UFA market is what it is - a place to pick up proven NHLers without giving up anything except for bad contracts.
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That same team had Johnny Gaudreau, Elias Lindholm, Matthew Tkachuk, and Sam Bennett and instead of looking inwards and developing and playing what we know today to be top-tier NHL players with amazing chemistry, the team floundered, played everyone on separate lines, and threw in expensive spare parts from the UFA market that didn't fit. Looking to the UFA market and poor coaching were organization/Brad mistakes.
Given the poor choice at the supermarket, he should have stopped shopping and tried to make something with what was in his fridge.