Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
I am far from convinced ownership forced him to bridge Tkachuk. He had the best chance to lock in Gaudreau before the previous season started and rolled the dice and we lost him for nothing. While people in the org say they believed he always wanted to stay a lot of fans and media were not remotely surprised he headed to eastern US. I think he misjudged things with Tkachuk where he structured a deal to allow him to get all the leverage.
I think Treliving was given a mandate to win and had the ability to spend to the cap to make it happen. I don’t believe Edwards was over his shoulder telling him to hand out 6 years to Coleman or 5 years to Neal, trading picks for Hamonic. Thank goodness the Zucker deal never happened.
Certainly not absolving our owners here but they are an easy scapegoat for fans to point at when the GM makes incompetent decisions. I have examples of terrible moves he has already made in Toronto.
|
This exactly. The ownership says “we will spend to the max”. But the likelihood that they were insistent on signing Neal or insistent on trading for Hamonic is ludicrous. That was all our hockey braintrust identifying those guys as the missing pieces.