I'm not a JD fan but I don't like the way some of this conversation just takes for granted that he is on the same level as Doug Maclean, or that he is obviously below average in some way. I don't think that's clear at all.
If you append the Jackets record from the first decade to other club's records since then, most of them will look horrible.
The first 8 years of JD's tenure here the Blue Jackets were 12th in wins, out of 30 clubs. Any hockey person would have told you twelve years ago that JD is one of the most respected people you possibly could have hired.
And that's the way it should be done. Hire the right hockey people and get out of the way. Your chances of getting better decisions from a rich non-hockey expert is minimal.
Obviously after that 8th year we had to start this rebuild. And we're also just taking for granted in this conversation that the current rebuild is some embarrassing never-ending failure. This is only our fourth year in a row outside the playoffs. That's not even long by NHL rebuild standards. Our kids are still kids! I do not like being in this position, but if you ever advocated the team blowing it up or tanking, this is what
you asked for. Jarmo made some terrible decisions recently but the overall shape of the rebuild is normal. I can think of a few better decisions that could have been made that would move us up to about where the Sabres currently are. But until Fantilli and company mature it is still a rebuild.
Now this may be controversial but since we can't/shouldn't blame individuals per say, should/could we blame the one constant in all of this, Ownership?
At the end of the day, they're hiring and putting people in these roles.
The Doug Maclean hire was a setback that cost us a decade plus. I'm from the Maritimes and I have family that is old friends with Doug, including some that have coached with him when he was just starting. They would laugh and say "he is full of beans" anytime he came up. Everyone likes him personally, but he's not the type you have GM a hockey team. Great salesman, built a great arena, but unfortunately he fooled our owner along with it.
As I argue above, that's where most of the extra losing comes from. After that you have very well respected people like Scott Howson AND later John Davidson coming aboard, with more mixed results. There's no reason to lump them all into one thing.
This is a league in which parity is key. The Jackets are near the bottom in terms of franchise value when they should be near the middle based upon potential market size and relative lack of competition for major league sports revenue in the city.
At some point, the team needs to stop playing nice and just accepting "bad luck" from the league. Think of pretty much any other owner or ownership group. Do you think they would quietly sit by and watch the franchise get passed over by talent, lottery luck, and national attention or would they become a pain in the league's side until something was "miraculously" done to even out that luck?
This is the major failing of Mike Priest to me. As the voice of ownership, he is too quiet and way too complacent when it comes to advocating that the team get its due.
The team doesn't get its due because it hasn't been good enough on the ice. They're not owed anything. They do not belong on national tv right now.
You want Mike Priest to complain that we have the worst lottery luck? You think that's going to change anything? The more quiet Mike Priest is the better, I don't want to hear from him or anyone on the ownership side.
From the beginning, it's seemed like the McConnells (and god love 'em for leading the charge to get an NHL team in Cbus) have been looking for a seasoned hockey person to handle a type of business with which they were not familiar. Smart, in a way, but generally they have ceded that aspect of the operation, with loyal lieutenant Mike Priest as a go-between.
What this has resulted in is a lack of personality, organizational philosophy, maybe vision is the right word, that even a hands-off ownership can/should provide.
Anyway, DM and JD are the prime examples of this, IMO. In between, we had Howson, with Priest attempting to handle some of the league business that I assume he decided he wasn't cut out for, leading to the JD hire.
This couldn't be more backwards. You want personality you don't go to some wealthy franchise owner. There aren't a lot of Mark Cuban's out there. Most of these people are boring and the few that aren't (Melnyk, Katz, Pegula, Dolan, Aquilini, etc..) are often batshit and deluded. I mean that literally, the public facing ones are often insane.
We've covered this "team personality" thing before. Good teams tend to have more personality but that comes mostly from the winning part. I'd like us to re-establish the nasty personality we had in the 2010s but that probably isn't going to show up until we start winning again.
The only real tank came in the Fail for Nail year where they ended up #2, taking Murray. Howson declined the Islanders offer for their entire draft class to move up from #4 to #2. Woof.
The Woof is that it was 2012. We weren't changing the course of the franchise in that draft, looking at who was available.
So they've never fully tanked/bottomed out, at least not in the right years to take the right players in the top 5.
They just did in 2023, in a great year to suck.
