If I go back into your post history, will I find your initial reaction to the Darling signing? I'm willing to bet it was like 95% of the fanbases and you were really happy/excited for the signing.
You can go back and look. I wasn't here when it happened. And even if anyone did post enthusiasm about it, we're not paid to evaluate talent. I'll admit I had hopes for Darling but reservations as well. He has/had potential, but he also had some red flags. His contract was what I was worried about most. People can argue all they want about that's what it took to sign him, but sometimes the best you moves you make are the ones you don't make. We only gave up Ottawa's 3rd round pick for his rights, if he signed elsewhere it wouldn't have been a huge deal (even more so in hindsight).
We should clone him and sign the clone to be our number one center.
I like this idea. He can probably still play hockey better than he can GM, even at his age.
In all seriousness, I'm hoping he turns out to be a Kevin Cheveldayoff (another patient GM who was roasted for his timidity to make player trades before looking like a genius recently) but I won't hold my breath.
I have to give credit to Francis for drafting Aho though. To me that's his only major redeeming quality.
Not a huge Teravainen fan so to me that trade is pretty much whatever. Someone has to rack up icetime and score points. That's Teuvo to me. If he's one of your top forwards something is wrong with your forward group. Even if you're high on him, you can't expect to be able to regularly take advantage of cap situations to acquire players like that.
As for the defense, which looked good last year but is regressing this year, I'm not sure how much you can attribute to Francis anyway, when JR was actually GM when we selected everyone but Hanifin and Fleury. The jury is still out on those two. But all the sudden the defense doesn't look too hot either.
We just have way too many major problems for a team that's been rebuilding for what seems like an eternity. I don't/didn't expect us to be Cup contenders in the 3-4 years Francis took over, but I did expect to see definite improvements. And if we're talking results, there are very little improvements. Something has to give eventually.
Anyway, it's just my opinion, and obviously I'm in the minority. I don't expect many people to agree with me.