I think MacTavish is in a tough spot I don't think their is much he can do at this point.
If I was MacTavish first thing I would do is invite Eakins out for lunch and have a good long talk about how he feels about the team. I would tell him irregardless of what system he is trying to employ this team absolutely needs to have a stronger defensive presence in the slot, cause what we are doing now is not working. Secondly I would talk about the PK and how it's not delivering what it was before under the previous regime, I'd tell him I willing to accept worse numbers for the time being as he is trying to adjust players who haven't played on the PK before into roles they are not accustomed to and it could be to our long term benefit. I'd mention he might not want to try to adjust so many players at once who are not accustomed to it and while it can be good to keep your top players in the flow of the game and kind of force feed them some defensive principles, sometimes it's just a lost cause and if you have good quality people who excel at pk'g (e.g. Boyd Gordon) there's no sense not using them in that role.
Next order of business is I'd rattle chains to see if I can get an improvement in goal on the cheap. I'm thinking no one will really be to forth coming at this point of the season, and I don't think this team is really close enough to the playoffs to overpay substantially; but if Dubnyk is really stinking it up still around game 20-30 I'd probably bite the bullet even if the price is a little hefty the stink of losing is getting too strong here. We need to atleast keep the vibe that we're building something here.
Second most important thing would be to get a real stud who can anchor the D and be the focal point we build our D core around. One really solid D man can change the entire complexion of our D core which seems pretty ho-hum. A solid d-partner can hide a lot of holes if Chris Pronger can con us into thinking Bergeron is a stud, I'm sure Ryan Suter or someone of that ilk could do something similair with J. Schultz or Petry. Depending on the d-man is I might be willing to trade any of the kids with the exception of Taylor Hall, to trade Nuge it would have to be the "perfect" fit.
Thirdly I would try to get a power forward right wing who can play preferrably a top 6 role, but that can be expensive so I might settle for more a top 9 guy with some latent offensive upside and shoe-horn him into that role, just to improve our mix.
Lastly this team has way a lot of players who are offensively gifted and we have a few who are defensively gifted, but really not much of anyone who is solid both offensively and defensively. We really need more two-way players who can play in multiple roles on this team and can be put on the ice in any situation. That needs to become much more of a focal point on this team. Hopefully our young kids will learn to become much better two-way players cause that would go a long way to correcting many of our short-comings.
1st person I would dangle to get what we need is Smid, he's someone I wanted re-signed badly last season, but he's not a great fit in Eakins system or for the kind of team we are trying to build. While pretty solid defensively his complete lack of ability to make a forward pass to start the break-out and always sending it to side or back for someone else to get the puck moving is a glaring issue for someone who is playing significant minutes on this team. We just can't have that on a team that wants to create quick movement upto it's forwards. A player could be wide open up the boards and he still feeds it straight to Petry or J. Schultz to get the play started. One of Smids greatest strengths is his shot blocking which is really down played in Eakins system, where he wants the forwards going down up high from the source of the shot and the d staying up and defending.
Next I would look to move one of Eberle, Yakupov, or Hemsky. They are all skill based players who don't provide a lot of grit and believe one of these players will need to be moved out for someone who will play that way.
Then I would look towards our left defense prospects of which we have a ton, try to seperate the one's who will have an impact on the team from the one's that won't and trade the ones who we think will come up a little short on making this team before the other team's figure it out.
Lastly trade picks, if we are going to trade some I'd like to do it early where we have a good chance at improving our position and can hopefully turn winning into more of a habit. Really scary trading our 1st given where we sit, but if it's for someone that will really help us now and in the future I think I would be willing to make that bold step.
