The thing about this post Is while I agree (and I do agree at the predicament), I also disagree.
You ALWAYS have to put the right people who are going to make a ****** situation (in this case: place) better
Have they chosen the right leaders: Ference, Horcoff, Moreau - not exactly Chara or Toews or guys who bring others together. Horcoff basically mailed it in after his contract. Moreau arrogant self entitled s.o.b, Ference is a good guy but your not getting the ultimate alpha male - which this organization begs for a Doug Weight/Jason Smith captain.
Lets look at management. I am sorry ever since Sather this organization has always acted like a big shot, old boys club fraternity who reeks of narcissism and arrogance to "certain types of players" I mean think of this for a second - there was incidents of management mistreatment back to the days of guys like Todd Marchant who talked about it (I know long time ago but it was there) then the infamous Comrie situation, then of course Pronger (which you can side with management) but you had Laforge, Nichols, Lowe all saying **** in the media (the whole burning furniture incident) .
Then you seen how they would be disloyal to good guys like Glencross, Brodziak while at the same time trying to lure guys that didn't want to be here (Vanek, Hossa, Heatley, Nylander, ect)
- smack talked about Corey Perry (in the potential trade for Comrie)
- insulted Bobby Ryan (a player he knew nothing about personally/privately)
- Lowe tried to trade injured players to L.A.,
- 100,000 dispute over Ryan Smyth (franchise player)
- tried to play a injured player in Souray - these are little minor things in the grand scheme but players talk (remember players talk)
Finally they couldn't get the big fish so they started a rebuild while firing a generally well respected good coach (Tom Renney) fired another well to do - not a huge downside coach in Krueger (over skype no less) hired a equally arrogant guy in Eakins - setting the franchise back 2 years.
They hired (which there many things I will tend to steer clear of being psychic or foretelling) but we all knew Tambo was a lame duck G.M. his highest position/ranking in 10 years with Vancouver wasn't even a sniff at G.M, ; and whats he now a pro scout.
Bring back a guy in Scott Howson who was a completely horrible G.M in Columbus
- a G.M. that was led by this baffoon to say he's been on the job 18 months and inherited a mess (obviously not the masters fault who led the puppet (Tambo)
- a recently fired coach saying Craig will need at least 5 years to reroute the ship.
With regards to our captains I don't know what happened to Moreau, but when crap started going south and he didn't like the direction the team was heading in him and Staios became very bitter and a negative influence in the room and formed their old man clique dividing the room. Horcoff I actually think was a really good team guy and the young guys from Hall, Ebs, and Yak all said he was really helpful to them; he just isn't the kind of leader to take the bull by the horns and lead a team into battle or to give a rallying speech, or hold people in the room accountable; he was just a nice guy who everyone respected and felt they could talk to but not a real leader. Ference is also a nice guy and does a lot of community work, I don't think all the guys respect him all that much and he just isn't good enough to lead the team with play on the ice, I think he is the kind of guy to call people out and try to hold them accountable, but when everyone can see he can't get it done and has the same issues it just rings hollow.
Wasn't the furniture burning incident entirely made up?
I don't recall Lowe speak ill of Perry at all, my recollection is he just said he liked the Flyers deal better and if Comrie wanted to go there he'd have to buy his way out, to make up the difference; we all ate it up here as we wanted to stick it to a spoiled brat, but this should of been the red flag to tip us off on how petty and stupid the people running the franchise are.
It was Tambellini who tried trading two different injured player to L.A., I know some people think Tambellini was just a puppet, but people in the media have asked the question and it seems like he had a lot of self-autonomy regardless of whether or not people want to believe it. Do you think if Kevin had 100% control he'd let his brother get fired?
I haven't heard of us trying to trade Souray while injured, what I heard is Tambellini had a deal in place to trade Souray for Hartnell but pulled out; went looking for another deal only for Souray to turn around and injure himself a couple games later.
Tom Renney wasn't technically fired, just not re-hired because he would not cave to management demands on how much time our young guys should be playing.
Tambellini being passed over multiple times as GM despite being the assistant GM in Vancouver for a long time should of been a major red flag. I remember hearing an interview just shortly before we ended up hiring him and he was just praising the youth we had on our team and how promising he thought the future of our team was despite still working for Vancouver at that time, I think Lowe hired him because he was a good ass-kisser and just loves having people blow sunshine up his butt.
I don't think it is fair to characterize Howson as a horrible GM, despite how much I like Jarmo Kekalainen as a GM there is no way he would of been able to turn Columbus around that fast if Howson didn't atleast do some decent things to get them in a position for success. Howson is a poor GM who doesn't deserve to be an NHL GM, but horrible is a stretch he made the bad first trade where he acquired Carter at too high a price when he didn't want to be there, but he got a good return on Rick Nash and Dubinsky became the heart and soul leader of that team, plus picked up Bobrovsky for a song, and Foligno at a reasonable price.
What I got from Eakins comments on MacT is he was certain MacTavish could turn this team around and was emphasizing patience and indicating most GM's get 5 years to turn it around not just 18 months. I'm personally at the stage where I would be ok with him getting fired, but I'm not really chomping at the bit for it, he screwed up pretty bad, but has done some good things; I think there are a lot of areas in our organization that are deficient and he is relying on people for information like our pro scouts who are horrible, crap advisors in Lowe and Messier, and a sub-par amateur scouting staff and it makes it a lot harder to do your job properly. With our "forensic" analysis I'm hoping we will properly remedy some issues and hopefully MacT learns from his mistakes and does a better job next year, I'd cap him at 3 years if significant improvement does not occur. If Paul Fenton was interested in being our GM though, I'd be willing to part ways with him now, no one else though really interests me for the role.
I poured through GM history, there are a lot of GM's who only got 1 year but those were mostly interim GM's woh took the job on a temporary basis while a new GM was to be found. A couple GM's who stood out as being horrible got just 2 years and then the rest who had mixed results got the 3-5 year range.