I'll try to keep my ramblings rather brief, as I doubt any of this is overly new to you. Simply will reply to your points and clarify my position...
I'm not alone on this. Here and there, including the odd post game caller, good points get made. Once again these are:
1.) Current record =/= current regime's competence. For that blame 7 year drafting ineptitude and aging core. Loosing was inevitable no matter the regime! We are where most expected us to be. Club pretense at playoffs was just that (mostly due to twins decline).
This one I heartily agree with... it's pretty unforgiveable that in all this time we've had the Sedin core, we haven't successfully implemented any kind of succession plan to alleviate the pressure/expectations of them in the twilight of their careers. I liked Gillis, and support him to this day, but this was a huge egg on his face and there's really no way around that
I would add this, however - that our situation has been made
worse by current management. Rather than patiently building, accumulating picks, etc etc, they attempted to take shortcuts by cutting deals. Some have been somewhat successful (i.e. Baertschi), others are too early to tell (i.e. RealGud) and still others have outright bombed (i.e. Loui Eriksson)...
Of course, none of this is quite so cut and dry as simply assessing the move itself. For example, in and of itself, getting a top six forward like Loui for nothing but cash & capspace isn't a *bad* move; but for a rebuilding club that somehow doesn't have much capspace, it's putrid. We could have had flexibility to take on short-term cap dumps... or just flexibility in general
2.) Too early to make conclusions about drafting or trades.
Sure, there's some truth to this but we can still formulate reasoned, informed opinions about the moves, and form a basis for a conclusion. Otherwise, all this discussion is just... noise... until we have full hindsight.
There's certainly guys - like Juolevi - who I'm willing to give some more time before I write em off or anything like that.
3.) Willie isn't remotely close to loosing the room (See Tort's 2nd half)
OK... I'm not sitting in "the room" or connected to the team so I really couldn't say either way. Considering some players don't even like playing for a highly regarded and respected coach like Babcock, it's probably safe to speculate not everyone loves Willie or what he's doing... but I digress, that's guesswork on my part.
At the end of the day, Willie deserves some credit for getting as much out of this roster as can be expected... but I still maintain a lot of his decisions and player deployment can be real head scratchers.
4.) Prospects are being developed and assuming the roles of vets.
Again, some truth to this but riddle me this - has it all been because of development and hard work, or have certain players been "gifted" spots?
I'm thinking of golden boy Virtanen skating in the NHL last year. To his credit, he got better for a while, but for the most part, he didn't deserve to be there (and he certainly didn't at the beginning of the year).
I was at the game the other night and they were pushing Granlund pretty hard as one of our "young guns" (i.e. highlight packages and the like)... I'm pretty tired of the obnoxious back-and-forth debate on this player, but it seems to me that this again is an instance of the team's necessity for youth causing a player to get more attention than he's really worth.
Point being that I feel sometimes these guys are pushed into certain roles before they've earned them. This is done, imo, simply in order to support this "We knew we needed to get younger and we have" narrative of management... nevermind the fact that this youth isn't necessarily always of the highest caliber and/or quality
5.) Dude has one year on his contract. What more will a new coach accomplish in that one year? (Even 5 extra wins will be viewed as a greater tank fail by the majority here).
Again, there's some truth to this point but I think you have a bit of a skewed outlook. Indeed, some want us to tank (and hard) and seemingly will be satisfied with nothing less than an 0-82 season & the best odds possible, but a lot of the concerns with Willie pertain to his player development/deployment... i.e. more or less benching Goldobin (I've taken to affectionately calling him Goldblum) in favor of Cramorossa earlier this past week... pretty hard to argue Willie doesn't seem to favor guys who skate miles & "play hard", albeit don't necessarily actually
do much
