Quote:
Originally Posted by N-E-B
Our worst move was probably the Iginla or Bouwmeester trades. Blowing the picks is understandable but none of the prospects we got were even close to being good enough, and probably hurt the rebuild.
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Revisionist history going on here.
Iginla had complete control over where he went and he approved a trade to one team only. Getting a 1st and 2 mediocre prospects was about as good as it was going to get. The package from Boston that everyone complained about missing out on was no better so I don't know what people were expecting. He should have been traded a year earlier but I'm confident that was an ownership decision.
Bouwmeester also had a NTC, was playing like crap and was getting paid 6.68M/yr which was about 10% of the cap at the time. Getting a 1st and 2 prospects was again about the best we could hope for. If we had retained half his contract (guaranteed ownership wasn't allowing that) and had the freedom to negotiate with all teams we would have surely gotten more but nothing earth shattering, he wasn't playing like an elite defenseman for a long time at that point.
Feaster wasn't a very good GM to push a team over the top, he clearly came in with a mandate to win now with Iggy and Kipper and he failed at that with the limited picks and prospects that he had. He made attempts to land a #1 centre that could have been disastrous, luckily they weren't. Once the decision was made to rebuild he did a great job however. He inherited a team with a declining overpaid core & crappy prospects. He left the team with no long term baggage, no bad contracts, good veterans on good contracts, lots of cap space, improved drafting, a younger core and much improved prospects. Feaster wasn't a great GM by any means but he left the team better than he found it.