You can downplay it not happening however you want but this is one of the unspoken bottom 6 gems of the last few years easily. Hathaway-Dowd-Whoever was one of the best graded 4th lines in the league for like their entire tenure, and Dowd keeps carrying that torch because he's actually really good.
often times the EDM's and TOR's et al are lacking in Bottom-6 FWDs, defending against top lines, and PK
If that was the case, don't you think TB would have acquired him? Surely he's better than <looks up TB 4th line center> Luke Glendening. I think I'd want Dowd over Glendening if I was Briesbois. I'm sure he's a fine player but the idea that I have issue with is that there was a sweepstakes. That idea is laughable. In the TDL sense, that means there is a bidding war. Maybe MacLellan overplayed his hand and asked too much but the evidence says no relevant bids were had. No sweepstakes. This is really just a criticism of Mirtle and no one else.
This is the laziest argument in sports fandom, "team bad so player bad." Just as a reminder, since no one in this thread seems to have watched the Caps this year, they had a 9.2M cap hit center step away from the team for health reasons in the first month and a 7.8M cap hit center step away from the team for drug treatment. Dowd's ability to shut down other teams' top lines and ease the load on their remaining centers is a huge reason the Caps still have an outside shot at making the playoffs.
Well it should go without saying that addressing glaring holes like goaltending and a decent Top-4 D should come first
