Well, there's a salary cap, and the Caps had those perennial all star types already on the roster, in Ovi, Backie, JC and Kuzy. How many $10M/year players (in todays dollars) can you cram into one roster?
There's a salary cap for every team I believe, including model GMing franchise Dallas Stars. They had Benn and Seguin making 10M/year yet somehow that didn't stop them from getting Hintz, Heiskanen, Oettinger, Robertson, Johnston, Harley or Duchene and adding them to their roster. They didn't just throw their hands up and go aw shucks we already have enough 10M/year players, lets run it back and plug as many Paniks/Hagelins/Hathaways into the roster as we can.
Suggesting "why didn't they trade for Eichel" when they were already maxed out on the cap paying Ovi, Backie and JC, just doesn't add up. This team was winning Presidents Cups and one Stanley Cup over the last ten years while Ovi was still dominating the goal scoring department. They didn't need more stars, they needed their supporting cast to fully gel, which only happened in June 2018. They kept the 2018 Cup winner intact trying to run it back, but injuries derailed that effort. Then the core suddenly aged (or quit (Kuz)) all at once in the last three years.
Not sure why you zero in on Eichel of all people, but Vegas was pretty maxed out when they traded for him as well paying Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty, Alex Pietrangelo, as well as having a ton of supporting players making over 5M. My problem isn't that they didn't trade for Eichel or any specific player, its that they
didn't draft, sign, trade for, claim, import from Siberia, etc a single player of that tier in all of his 10 years. Its that he managed to miss for all of them.
Keep in mind they were pretty maxed out during the Young Guns era when the cap was 2/3 of what it is now and Ovi was making more proportionally than McDavid is. And seemingly had all the talent they could need with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin, Green, Varlamov. Yet GMGM still got Carlson, Orlov, Kuznetsov, Holtby, Forsberg, Wilson somehow even though apparently we were full. And I don't think anyone really considers him a great GM since he was absolutely terrible at other parts of the job, but the fact remains that he could bring in more high end talent in a couple years in his sleep than GMBM has in a full decade.
So suggesting GMBM failed at acquiring all stars, when they already had a fair share of them taking up the cap space, misses the point. If you want to fault him for not adding players who became available, then explain which core roster players you would have dumped to make the cap room for those additions?
You can't just waive your hands and replace Lars Eller with Jack Eichel in the salary cap era. If the Caps were stingy on spending cap space then you might have a reason to fault them for not adding top line talent over the last 10 years. But that's not the situation. They always spent to the cap and always had their own home grown stars to pay.
Ok. You see that trigger happy Jim Rutherford is thinking about trading JT Miller. You see that he signed Mikheyev and imported Kuzmenko (would have been nice to use the Ovi Russia connections to get someone like him or Panarin from the KHL even once a decade, but nah), and sell him on Kuznetsov in 2022-23 before he completely collapses. Add the 1st they incinerated on Rasmus Sandin, McMichael whose spot Miller would take anyway, some late pick throw in. Suddenly you have a 100 point version of TJ Oshie signed for what Kuznetsov was already commanding who can anchor a much more meaningful attempt at contending team for the duration of Ovechkin's career, then still have mentorship/trade value after
No? Sure, maybe you see that a Jonathan Marchessault or Gustav Forsling or Carter Verhaeghe or Brandon Montour is likely to break out and get them cheaply, getting yourself a few years of top line/pairing play for pennies on the dollar. Not all of them, just a single one across 10 years. But nah, get married to TVR and play him on his off side if you have to instead.
No? Maybe you get lucky in the draft and grab an Igor Shestyorkin (drafted with a Caps draft pick dealt by GMBM), Tage Thompson (drafted with a caps draft pick dealt by GMBM), or hell even Wyatt Johnston or Dmitry Buchelnikov (see any pattern at all?) Or someone random like Anthony Cirelli or Jesper Bratt or Drake Batherson or Kirill Kaprizov or Roope Hintz or Brayden Point or Brock Faber. Not all of them, just a single one. Across all of these.
No? Ovi is a god in Russia, maybe they can lean on him to go for a Panarin, Kuzmenko, Nikishin or Michkov. See a player overlooked due to the Russian factor and get him cheaply, getting competitive advantage out of it. Again, not all of them, just a single one. Something McPhee pretty much did with Kuznetsov in 2010. He did draft Miro, yeah, and its looking like one of his better picks so far, but Miro slid due to Hodgkins lymphoma and went around where he'd have been gotten by anyone rather being way overlooked.
I don't think GMBM is a terrible GM per se, but his record at getting players. And the biggest reason everyone else doesn't think he's a terrible GM and the Ovi era wasn't a colossal Sharks tier waste was because of 2018, when the hockey gods pretty much grabbed a team that wasn't even aiming to compete that year, that almost fired their coach, pretty much stood pat at the deadline and got a player who was amazing for 3 months and never again, and dragged them to a cup when they were an OT post away from going down 3-0 to Columbus. This doesn't take away from the Cup win in any way, but they were built very much like 2006 Canes and 2019 St. Louis in a one and very firmly done category, as opposed to teams like Pittsburgh, Chicago, LA, (in the 2010s) Tampa, or even Boston that keep or kept meaningfully punching for it. If we consider him a top tier GM just because he won that cup, do we consider Peter Chiarelli and Ray Shero and Brian Burke top tier GMs as well? The issue is that he's GMing a team in a league where many other GMs acquire star or top line/top pairing players semi regularly, something he hasn't done ONCE, and you have to go through those GMs' teams to get to a cup or even a conference final.
One of the best picks the Caps ever made, like, ever. But you can't count on franchise cornerstones that late in the draft, every year. Most 27th overall picks, become Brian Sutherby or Jeff Shultz or Joe Finley. The Caps history in the back half of the first round is pretty good overall, but still well less than 50% success rate.
Its a little funny that under GMBM like 3 other teams have the Caps be on the Eminger side of the Carlson trade but its no big deal to anyone.
Everybody fumbles things. The Lightning, who I think everyone would agree has an excellent scouting and development operation, let Carter Verheaghe walk for nothing after playing him less than 10 minutes a night on the fourth line. They let Jonathan Marchessault walk for nothing after not giving him much of a chance. And then they traded a bunch of picks to try and build scoring depth.
Right. And Dallas had their huge infamous miss with Gurianov in the stacked 2015 draft as well as Nichushkin. Vegas traded Suzuki for Max Pacioretty. But the difference is those teams still hit repeatedly. Its not about fumbling, its about never hitting. 10 years of GMBMing and 7 of their most meaningful 8 players were from McPhee for all of their competitive duration.
