Confirmed with Link: Fletcher out as GM (contract not renewed)

[Dr Jan Itor]

The simple fact is, if Eriksson Ek is what we think/hope he is, then Haula isn't going to be missed. And if Greenway/Kaprizov/Kunin are who we think/hope they are, then Tuch isn't going to be missed.

Last year, we definitely felt both.

 

[57special]

Put another way(and I really liked Haula), retaining Haula and Tuch, even if we hadn't lost any of our present players (assume VGK had taken Kunin and Greenway), still wouldn't have put us over the top this year. Injuries, mediocre new acquisitions, and poor chemistry overall doomed this team.

Let's not pretend Tuch has been a world beater. He might end up being a good, or very good player, but he wasn't that this year, and certainly not last year.

 

[kfan22]

I have a feeling its going to be Fitzgerald over Fenton

 

[57special]

No, it's Flair.

 

[Uberdachen]

Cap dumping Granlund and buying out Eric Staal are pretty necessary steps if we're going to extend Tyler "You see, when selecting from the currency dropdown for his contract, you hit the End key and it selected Zimbabwe and changed the amount accordingly. Yeah, that does seem kind of ominous!" Ennis.

 

[Bazeek]

No, it's Flair.

Fletcher, Flahr, Fenton, Fitzgerald, Flair... I guess Leipold has a type.

 

[Wabit]

I think the deciding factor in Vegas choosing Tuch, out of the (reported) choice of Greenway/Kaprizov/Tuch, was Tuch was under contract already and the others weren't. Vegas didn't really have much in the way of (good) waiver eligible call-ups at their disposal for this season. Greenway could have decided to play his Sr. year and become a FA, and who knows if/when Kaprizov comes over to the NHL.

 

[2Pair]

I am sure Fletcher's thinking was "I am not going to re-sign Haula, as he would block JEE. So, do I value Tuch/Greenway/Kaprizov less than Zucker/Staal/Dumba/Scandella? Yes. Ok. It's a good deal."

It's just that wasn't the way to look at it. Vegas draft could have been looked at like an ok thing because it's a way to dump a cap space, even if a good player is that cost. Even if that was a player like Granlund. Or force Vegas to take back a bad contract.

As Russo said on his latest podcast, the real problem wasn't that the Wild gave Tuch and Haula to Vegas, its that they couldn't get Pominville also heading out as well. Fletcher could have just stuck to his guns.

The real problem was losing so badly on the Scandella trade. If Fletcher turns Pominville/Scandella into two better players than Haula/Tuch, nobody gives a shit about the expansion draft.

 

[nickschultzfan]

The real problem was losing so badly on the Scandella trade. If Fletcher turns Pominville/Scandella into two better players than Haula/Tuch, nobody gives a **** about the expansion draft.

You are right there. Russo had some interesting comments on Fletcher's not high opinion on Hall, Patches, Galchenyuk, etc., but then he dumps a quality Dman (no matter what the Scandella haters say) for a 4th liner.

Really makes you wonder if Chuck was offered Hall for Dumba and he passed that up. Then he did what he did. At the time, I wanted a center over Hall, but Hall is 4x better than Foligno.

Imagine if Wild traded Dumba for Hall, then just shifted Brodin to right-side (where he has always seemed more comfortable), and then protected 8 (Hall, Parise, Koivu, Pominville, Suter, Spurgeon, Scandella, Brodin). We wouldn't have even cared if Vegas grabbed say Granlund.

 

[Wabit]

The real problem was losing so badly on the Scandella trade. If Fletcher turns Pominville/Scandella into two better players than Haula/Tuch, nobody gives a **** about the expansion draft.

Pommer was going to get nothing of value in trade, even retaining half his salary he "might" have gotten a 2nd or 3rd round pick.

I don't think the offers were really flying in for Scandella either. He didn't play well that season, and was recovering from hip surgery (sell low candidate). Could GMCF have done better (maybe)? Could he have done worse (oh yea)? Would he have been better off trading Brodin, Dumba, or Spurgeon, as far as the return vs loss? I don't know, but I'm glad he didn't make that decision based on his trade history.

It's hard for me to say either way because I wasn't in on the trade talks; which is the biggest mistake the Wild made, I definitely should have been involved.

Letting Folin (and Prosser to a lesser extent) walk was a mistake. Then he doubled down and signed Quincey.

 

[Bazeek]

You are right there. Russo had some interesting comments on Fletcher's not high opinion on Hall, Patches, Galchenyuk, etc., but then he dumps a quality Dman (no matter what the Scandella haters say) for a 4th liner.

Really makes you wonder if Chuck was offered Hall for Dumba and he passed that up. Then he did what he did. At the time, I wanted a center over Hall, but Hall is 4x better than Foligno.

Imagine if Wild traded Dumba for Hall, then just shifted Brodin to right-side (where he has always seemed more comfortable), and then protected 8 (Hall, Parise, Koivu, Pominville, Suter, Spurgeon, Scandella, Brodin). We wouldn't have even cared if Vegas grabbed say Granlund.

Not sure how much truth there is to it or what it actually would have taken, but the idea that we passed on Hall irritates me more than anything that happened last offseason.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

The real problem was losing so badly on the Scandella trade. If Fletcher turns Pominville/Scandella into two better players than Haula/Tuch, nobody gives a **** about the expansion draft.

I'm not sure that was a possibility, but I'd have to think that finding a middle ground between those two and Foligno/Ennis was.

 

[Wabit]

Imagine if Wild traded Dumba for Hall, then just shifted Brodin to right-side (where he has always seemed more comfortable), and then protected 8 (Hall, Parise, Koivu, Pominville, Suter, Spurgeon, Scandella, Brodin). We wouldn't have even cared if Vegas grabbed say Granlund.

One problem with that is how did you make the cap work with Hall's $3.5m more cap than Dumba for the 16-17 and the 17-18 season? The Wild signed someone for $3.5m as a UFA before the 16-17 season...

Yea, I'll easily take Staal+Dumba over Hall. That's without even considering that the 2C/3C would be filled by 2 of Coyle/Granny/Haula.

 

[HollaHaula]

One problem with that is how did you make the cap work with Hall's $3.5m more cap than Dumba for the 16-17 and the 17-18 season? The Wild signed someone for $3.5m as a UFA before the 16-17 season...

Yea, I'll easily take Staal+Dumba over Hall. That's without even considering that the 2C/3C would be filled by 2 of Coyle/Granny/Haula.

You take Hall and figure out the cap later. My goodness, Hall literally dragged a kicking and screaming Devils team to the playoffs where he still kept producing.

Staal signed 1 day after the the Hall-Larsson trade. One of our roster players could have easily been moved for like a pick to free up some money to accommodate both Hall and Staal.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

I thought it was always a Dumba/RNH thing.

 

[nickschultzfan]

How were they going to get Pominville to waive?

"Hey Jason, you probably going to be on the 4th line next year and who know thereafter, would you waive to go be a vet in Vegas with more playing time?"
"Sure."

 

[Bazeek]

I thought it was always a Dumba/RNH thing.

There was that as well. The Hall business comes from the last Russo podcast where he said that Fletcher and crew "weren't Hall people" as suggestively as he could without stating things plainly. The intended implication certainly seemed to be that Edmonton was at least interested in moving Hall to the Wild, presumably for a defenseman.

 

[Bazeek]

"Hey Jason, you probably going to be on the 4th line next year and who know thereafter, would you waive to go be a vet in Vegas with more playing time?"
"Sure."

This seems incredibly optimistic to me, but I guess nothing's impossible.

 

[HollaHaula]

I'm sure it's speculation on @nickschultzfan's part. I'm not sure Dumba was valued high enough by other teams to command a return of Hall. We likely would have needed to add a sweetener. But if it was Dumba (and perhaps a +) for Hall, I would have done it.

 

[Bazeek]

I'm sure it's speculation on @nickschultzfan's part. I'm not sure Dumba was valued high enough by other teams to command a return of Hall. We likely would have needed to add a sweetener. But if it was Dumba (and perhaps a +) for Hall, I would have done it.

Considering Chiarelli had also pursued Ceci and ended up taking Larsson, I'm not at all sure it wouldn't have been Brodin. Highly speculative in any case, though.

 

[nickschultzfan]

Granlund as a cap-dump is definitely one of the weirder ideas I've seen on here.

Challenging presuppositions is by definition weird.

Fletcher walked into the Vegas draft with the belief that it was bad because "they were going to lose a good player". He then sought to minimize the bad. What if he instead thought that it would be good to lose a good player. And then built his strategy around that.

And I am not just playing with words. For anybody who has played chess, a strange thing happens once that you accept that you are about to lose an important piece. You then become very creative and more dangerous because you stop playing by the rules you and your opponent were both in agreement playing 1 move before. You've shifted the entire game and your opponent hasn't actually calculated your sudden willingness to lose your rook or queen.

 

[nickschultzfan]

I'm sure it's speculation on @nickschultzfan's part. I'm not sure Dumba was valued high enough by other teams to command a return of Hall. We likely would have needed to add a sweetener. But if it was Dumba (and perhaps a +) for Hall, I would have done it.

Russo said on his last podcast with Souhan that Hall was discussed with the Wild but they didn't like him enough to pursue him. We know the Oilers talked RNH and Dumba. Yes, I imagine the Oilers were asking for Dumba+, but they ended up taking Larsson straight up.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

"Hey Jason, you probably going to be on the 4th line next year and who know thereafter, would you waive to go be a vet in Vegas with more playing time?"
"Sure."

Why does Vegas take Pominville?

 

[Bazeek]

Challenging presuppositions is by definition weird.

Fletcher walked into the Vegas draft with the belief that it was bad because "they were going to lose a good player". He then sought to minimize the bad. What if he instead thought that it would be good to lose a good player. And then built his strategy around that.

And I am not just playing with words. For anybody who has played chess, a strange thing happens once that you accept that you are about to lose an important piece. You then become very creative and more dangerous because you stop playing by the rules you and your opponent were both in agreement playing 1 move before. You've shifted the entire game and your opponent hasn't actually calculated your sudden willingness to lose your rook or queen.

I get that, but the entire strategy seems to exacerbate the problem we've been dealing with for multiple seasons: we've got a lot of good players, but lack high-end talent. Granlund and Dumba are the closest players under 30 that we have to that. Sacrificing one of them to keep/obtain 2-3 "good" players seems like a clear step backwards.

And while I get the idea of sacrifices in chess, I don't like the metaphor here. One of the things that makes high-level chess so dreary is that every imaginable move has already been documented and explored over decades and centuries. A lot of times it's just a game of who-screws-up-first?, so novelty alone can be a weapon in the right hands. Managing an NHL roster isn't like that; it's too chaotic and reactionary, so making weird moves doesn't really give you much of an advantage.

 

[HollaHaula]

Russo said on his last podcast with Souhan that Hall was discussed with the Wild but they didn't like him enough to pursue him. We know the Oilers talked RNH and Dumba. Yes, I imagine the Oilers were asking for Dumba+, but they ended up taking Larsson straight up.

Our management didn't like Hall enough to go after him? Sigh....give me a moment to scream into my pillow.

Okay, back. I wonder what the "+" would have been with Dumba. A pick other than a 1st or 2nd? No issue there. A roster player? If it was a 3rd or 4th line filler that would have been fine. Or...."Coyle is who you're asking for? Well, it would save me the cost of shipping him to the moon."