No, I can already see one prominent poster on this page that was among the most critical about MB, that is feeling a bit more encouraged about hugo. We can't put everyone in neat little boxes for convenience.
I'm doing a wait and see approach but a poster above makes a good point. Hughes' background as a player agent gives him a pretty credible background to know exactly how far these "good hearted gestures" can go with respect to building an organization's external reputation.
It's an intangible move today, and we will see if any dividends come out of their approach as we move along in this build.
There aren’t many examples of agents going into GMing directly and succeeding. In typical Habs fashion, the organization thinks it is smarter than everyone else. I would caution against the “he knows what he is doing” line of rationalization. Bergevin was a veteran NHL player and widely known as a good, funny teammate and had positive experience with the successful Blackhawks organization. How did that work out?
Gorton was fired by his former organization. Adam Nicholas was unceremoniously allowed to leave his former organization. Bobrov doesn’t haven’t a particularly good reputation. MSL never coached pro-hockey in his life. We don’t need to pretend they’re all best-in-class in order to feel good about ourselves.
But that’s besides the point. Habs fans in general worship the organization, they (rightfully) have a religious devotion to the CH. What it does is it makes partisans and zealots out of fans.
You can be an anti-[former GM] partisan and then find yourself pro-[current GM] out of sheer desperation to feel good and positive about the team you worship. I’ve noticed this big time from my time on Twitter. Conversely, some big time Bergevin equivocators who attacked others as
Subbanistas and caused so much trouble within the Habs commentary space have been cautious about the post-Bergevin Habs.
So you’re right that fans don’t fit in neat boxes but in general everybody here loves the Habs so damn much that it borders on fanatical and
irrational. For example, I think it is lunacy to so openly want Shane Wright and Matvei Michkov’s demise and failure but that hasn’t stopped many commentators (and those in the media too, from Grant McCagg and up) from prancing on what they think are the graves of those teenager’s careers.
What matters most is Hughes demonstrating he knows how to build a relevant team. So far he hasn’t added the players to improve the roster — so, imo, the jury’s out. Not good but not bad, TBD.
