Speculation: 2018 Off-Season: We fell short again... now what do we do?
- Thread starter These Are The Days
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I’m on the Fire Yzerman bandwagon if he does this. I’m dead serious about that - this would be the last straw for me as far as he’s concerned. He has a great head of scouting and took advantage of the worst GM in the league; beyond that he’s made more bad moves than good.
I don't think Yzerman would be overly concerned if some guy on a message board started calling for his head.
Your last line is pretty ridiculous.
Signing Miller ties up money in a player who might not deserve it, which could make it tough to sign our free agents next season. Simmonds has no long-term cap risks, and gives us the ability to spend the same money elsewhere, if we can and want to, when his contract is up. These aren't core players. It's risky getting involved in yet more long-term deals here.
Both guys seem to be worth a late 1st rounder, so I don't think the value is all that far off.
We aren't going to win with him as the captain and one of the main offensive threats. He will get his in the regular season but when the pressure is on he cracks and noshows. He's just not a winner.
That's what I am getting at, I think Stamkos would be a better winger than a center.
Agreed, trading Johnson would be necessary to make it happen.
I just can't see us fitting Stamkos, Tavares, Hedman, Kucherov, and Point under the cap. I think it's Stamkos who'd have to go. We'd just be replacing him with Tavares.
What great moves not involving the draft or prospects has he made? The McDonagh trade was horrendous, as was the Callahan signing. The decision to bridge Kucherov rather than lock him up before his breakout season is going to depend on what his next deal turns out to be but it’s not looking good. The Killorn signing was at best just over the line to “bad” even before you consider the opportunity cost. Morrow was useless and Cooper’s decision to play him over Drouin or Marchessault may have helped cost us the Cup against Chicago. Keeping Sustr around as long as he has speaks for itself.
Most his other NHL-level moves have been about neutral at best. The Coburn trade had to be made as we were in a playoff hunt; overall it’s a win but not a huge one by any stretch. He made the best of a bad situation with St. Louis but turned around and ruined it by resigning Callahan. I’ll give him a pass on Carle as we were desperate for defensemen at that point but that definitely doesn’t go into the plus column. Garrison and Filppula were good for a couple years before they fell off hard (though Flip did redeem himself his last season in Tampa); Girardi had a solid season but came apart in the playoffs. Kunitz was the definition of “meh”. The Stamkos deal was questionable but we all understand why he had to make it, while the Hedman, Palat, and Johnson deals were all market value given our tax advantage.
Probably Yzerman’s best move at the NHL level was signing Stralman - now that was a great move. Brian Boyle was excellent for what he was but you can only give so much credit for picking up a great fourth liner. And I may well be leaving out some others - it’s late here and I have neither the time nor the inclination to refresh my memory on every move he’s made. But all in all when you take away the draft picks and trade acquisition of prospects (which includes the likes of Bishop and Sergachev) you get a record from Yzerman where the clearly bad moves he’s made outweigh the clearly good ones. So how much of what we credit to Yzerman’s genius really came from him and how much from Al Murray?
If he dealt TJ, he absolutely could. I'd expect Point gets a bridge deal since Yzerman has done that for literally every player coming off of an ELC.
How much Tavares, Point, and Kucherov sign for will dictate whether we re-sign McDonagh and/or Stralman.
Sergachev and Vasy are due for raises but Callahan comes off the books, and who knows how much the cap goes up.
Jesus that's a long list. This guy breaks it down well
I thought the McD trade was great
That doesn't mean Point's bridge deal will be like the forced Kucherov deal.
You can have all five of those players, but can you surround them with anything other than sub-par talent? Especially as our current contracts begin to expire. Assuming Point gets somewhere in the neighborhood of 6, and Tavares and Kucherov get, let's say, 9.5, that's (by my rough count) 41.5m tied up in those players.
Not watching a 33-minute video for what should be a simple answer. Besides I’d rather hear your opinion: besides the Stralman and Boyle signings, what moves has Yzerman made that don’t involve the draft or trading for prospects that you think were clearly great moves?
You mentioned the McD trade. While it’s possible McD redeems this trade by coming back with a beastly season to lead us to a Cup win, based on his play for us thus far it’s not only not a great trade but is flat out awful IMO.
We needed a RD who could give us simple, solid play while forcing Dotchin/Sustr out of the lineup. If you’ll recall my preference at the time was to either dip into our prospect pool and pay heavily for a young guy who could lock up a spot in our top four for years to come, or to acquire a cheaper defenseman for maybe a 1st and a decent but not top prospect who could act as a stop gap until we could develop our young guys. Instead what we did was gut our organization depth of two of its top prospects along with two high picks for a stop gap who was not only clearly our second worst defenseman in the postseason, but who plays the wrong side, thereby forcing Girardi to play out of his depth (which made him by far our worst defenseman in the playoffs) AND weighing Hedman down and limiting his effectiveness. Basically we paid a 1D price for a season and a half of someone who gave us 5D play AND who screwed up our pairings and caused two other defensemen to be less effective because he plays the wrong side for our needs. We could have either gotten what McDonagh gave us far more cheaply (not to mention on the side we needed it) or we could have gotten a long term solution for the price we paid; instead we have neither a long term solution nor even a satisfactory short term one and we significantly shortened our window in the process.
Again, this analysis may change if McDonagh comes back and plays like a 1D-caliber defenseman next season, but I’m not going to bet on it.
We paid a 1D price? We didn't even give up our best prospect. The beauty of the deal was we dealt expendable prospects from a deep pool.
Jeez, man. Yzerman doesn't win every deal, but he wins most. Otherwise, we wouldn't be making one of the top four or so teams in the league on a pretty consistent basis.
Stammertime91
TBL: TEAM OF THE CENTURY
I'm not sure how drafting doesn't count when people go crazy about how good Poille is when he drafted most of those defenseman. I mean, he's made a few questionable decisions that in hindsight I don't think he would make again, ie Callahan, Carle and Filppula terms but he made the most out of the situations we were in and it's not really that bad. The only dire thing we've had looming over us is Callahans contract. I mean, I won't like Yzerman if he moves to acquire Tanev but I'm not ready to give up on him. That's a bit over the top. He turned in three decisions in Vinny, MSL, and Drouin into a better future at the time and at the moment.
We landed a blue chip prospect who turned into a defenseman who looks ready for top 4 minutes already for a player who didn't even want to be here. And that player, after having moved, hardly had a promising season. People expected Drouin to put up BIG numbers and be an offensive juggernaut. After year 1, we are winning that trade. Sergachev is like landing a lighter version of Hedman in defensive capabilities but nearly equal in offensive capablities. Not to mention an incredible gap in experience, age and cap space. That was amazing the more you look at it.
Girardi and Kunitz were two good signings. Girardi alleviates pressure when on the 3rd pairing until another kid makes the jump. He fizzled against Washington but most players did as well. Kunitz had a fine regular season but showed he's pretty much done professionally when the going gets tough. Can't really fault Yzerman as Kunitz showed no signs of being an absolute dud, more of a dud than Callahan, this postseason.
I'm on board with not favoring a move for Tanev but I'm not on board with abandoning Yzerman altogether because of it.
We could have it much worse. Look at Washington not giving Trotz what he wants. Look at Bergevin basically working as a Bruins double agent in Montreal. I'm all for putting Cooper on the stovetop but not Yzerman. Eventually, we can and probably will do better apart from Cooper. I highly doubt we can do better with anybody else at the helm in comparison to Yzerman.
We landed a blue chip prospect who turned into a defenseman who looks ready for top 4 minutes already for a player who didn't even want to be here. And that player, after having moved, hardly had a promising season. People expected Drouin to put up BIG numbers and be an offensive juggernaut. After year 1, we are winning that trade. Sergachev is like landing a lighter version of Hedman in defensive capabilities but nearly equal in offensive capablities. Not to mention an incredible gap in experience, age and cap space. That was amazing the more you look at it.
Girardi and Kunitz were two good signings. Girardi alleviates pressure when on the 3rd pairing until another kid makes the jump. He fizzled against Washington but most players did as well. Kunitz had a fine regular season but showed he's pretty much done professionally when the going gets tough. Can't really fault Yzerman as Kunitz showed no signs of being an absolute dud, more of a dud than Callahan, this postseason.
I'm on board with not favoring a move for Tanev but I'm not on board with abandoning Yzerman altogether because of it.
We could have it much worse. Look at Washington not giving Trotz what he wants. Look at Bergevin basically working as a Bruins double agent in Montreal. I'm all for putting Cooper on the stovetop but not Yzerman. Eventually, we can and probably will do better apart from Cooper. I highly doubt we can do better with anybody else at the helm in comparison to Yzerman.
I’m not saying it doesn’t count; what I’m saying is the vast majority of the “Yzerman is a genius” notion comes from our drafting and our shrewd trade acquisition of prospects like Bishop and Sergachev, and while it’s impossible to say for certain without insider knowledge it’s quite possible that Al Murray was more responsible for those successes than Yzerman. When you take those away and look solely at his free agent signings and his NHL-level trades he’s made more clearly bad moves than clearly good ones. So is Yzerman somehow a genius at prospect evaluation while on the whole oddly poor at signing and trading for NHL players, or is somebody else picking out those great prospects and Yzerman’s simply signing off on them?
How was the McDonagh trade horrendous? We made it to game 7 of the ECF and we have him for another run next year. We gave up the 29th pick this year, the 27th and 37th picks from two years ago and another pick. Nothing earth shattering in that deal, a few good pieces but McDonagh is the best piece in that deal. The Callahan signing wasn't even bad either, he just got hurt and couldn't play too his ability the whole time. When we signed him out RW depth was Teddy Purcell, JT Brown and an 18 point Kucherov. We traded Purcell 4 days after Callahan signed so we had no proven top 6 RW. He put up 50 points the next season so the deal looked good, injuries have made a lot of trades look bad but it wasn't a bad deal at the time.
What's wrong with the Kucherov bridge? We got 3 years of him for less than 5mil. He would've got 7.5 on a long term and now we pay him 9.5 with the cap rising. We needed that space to compete which we did. We also get him until he's 34 instead of 31 so all his best years. Killorn has been producing just fine for his cap and he also is a very well rounded player who's not declining so should be good the rest of the deal. Marchessault played 2 games in the regular season and playoffs the year we had Morrow, Morrow wasn't taking his ice time unless you think Marchessault is a 4th liner? Keeping Sustr was dumb, why keep a guy that helped you get to 3 ECF in his 5 seasons here?
Stammertime91
TBL: TEAM OF THE CENTURY
No but I think it's unfair to expect a player you sign for 5 years to perform at an even par or progress each year in production. It doesn't work that way. People were wondering if Malkin was going to get out of Crosbys shadows at some point when they went several years of not winning a cup. Elite players, good players and all the way down to mediocre players have down years. It's unrealistic to expect otherwise. At the time, and really for 3/5 years Carle was good to serviceable until his skating took such a dive and turned him into a pylon. I noted his decline in skating and argued with somebody here and the next 18-24 months got worse and he retired. I highly doubt Yzerman thought something like that would happen. Or even Matt Carle himself. As much as I couldn't stand the guy, the last two years were the worst but we got by. He was pretty much the only decent thing aside from Hedman on the backend when we got him. A muffin shot but we started building a decent blue line.
Garrison for 2 years was one of the better trades we've had since he's been our GM. Again, lack of foot speed and the guy is now in the AHL and probably will never play another game in the NHL without injuries promoting him. Yzerman still managed to move a year off the books where he would've lingered like Sustr.
The Coburn trade got the game 7 winner against the wings iirc and he did really well and has been steady for us minus 40 games this year where he looked like a taller Carle. Another year under 4M is not bad. He's not a tire fire and he's only a 3rd pairing guy.
The Bishop trade was one of the best in franchise history. I guess it was somewhat lucky considering LOLback was a failure and Bishop doesn't look the same but we got him for a guy who returned to feed Sustr popcorn in the postseason. Unreal.
The Callahan trade was great for us at first and continued to go downhill, can't argue that one. Not gonna torch Yzerman for it but other GMs have bad contracts. Admittedly this is one of the worst.
Taking gambles on Girardi, Kunitz, Morrow, etc sometimes pan out for teams (ie Hainsey for Pittsburgh), and some times they dont. I think Morrow sucked big time and playoffs Kunitz but Girardi was a good signing.
Adding a backup for a small cap hit that can win us games as opposed to relying on Budaj or taking a flyer on a career backup gives Vasy competition and gives us a chance when Vasy isn't playing. He also added Cernak who should make an appearance soon.
I'm not going to break it down trade by trade and signing by signing but he ridded us of a lot of players we didn't need for guys we did and it worked - for the most part. Verdict is out on the McDonagh deal, whether it was the "right" move but when you look at what we gave up, its hard to argue he messed up. He didn't jeopardize the future for two runs. Give a guy like Bergevin, Gorton, Hextall, etc a pool like ours and we'd be sitting here pulling our hair out longing for OK hockey.
Sky04
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- Jan 8, 2009
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lol @ the Kucherov deal not looking good, you do know we competed this year beacuse of said deal right? I'm not sure how you can't see that fitting in a larger caphit later when we aren't as capstrapped isn't better then fitting in a slightly cheaper deal when we're in our tighest cap years. Yeah looks real bad to have Kucherov for 11 years locked down instead of 8 #eyeroll
Stop. Please. This is a really good thread that I’ve enjoyed following. I’m enjoying it less now because you won’t let this go. I don’t want to argue with you. Make a separate thread for those that do and leave this one alone.
Your assessment of Yzerman is profoundly misguided. More often than not, he has won the trades that we have made, some by an incredibly large margin (e.g., Bishop and Sergachev). I tend to think we won the McDonagh/Miller trade fairly substantially, too. And color me in the minority, the Coburn trade was a very good one. It is not easy to find 6'5 defensemen who skates as well as he does. He is starting to slow down, but Coburn gets too much grief on this board for what he has offered at his cap hit.
Yzerman's performance goes far beyond trading assets. He has done a wonderful job with asset management (e.g., Stammer, Hedman and Vasy). To be sure, the Kucherov bridge is easy to point to and second-guess . Yet to follow that logic, one must gloss over the fact that the team would not have been as deep if Kucherov's contract was closer to the 6.5-7M (at a longer term) that some predicted he would get. Yzerman correctly concluded, however, that our 2016-2019 window was probably the best it will be for the next decade or two. So I think the Kucherov bridge was by far the right decision. It was a calculated gamble worth the marginal risk.
Moreover, Yzerman has been instrumental in bludgeoning his peers when it comes to identifying undervalued assets, like smaller, skilled players and Russians. Al Murray indeed deserves significant praise for our draft successes. But Yzerman is the man in charge who sets the strategy. He gets credit here. And even if we were to follow your logic, does that mean Yzerman is exculpated from the Connolly and Koekkoek decisions? Putting my rhetorical question to the side, I think we can all agree that Yzerman had no real connection to the Connolloy decision. The Koekkoek one, however, continues to be head scratching. (Oh, what could have been with Forsberg.) Yet, in any case, we have been one of the most successful drafting teams for nearly a decade now. It is impossible to hit on every pick, let along every first round pick. Our calculated approach has paid dividends, which has allowed us to bring up many skilled players to our roster to fill out the third and fourth lines. And the extra ammunition has also allowed us to make trades like the McDonagh one without emptying our coffers.
Turning to free agency, Yzerman largely has made good moves. Boyle, Flipper, and Strals were all strong signings. Kunitz was above average. Girardi was a wash. Admittedly, Morrow and Condra were below average if not poor. But the pickings in free agency are limited unless you have a war chest. Fortunately enough for us, Yzerman has been able to rely more on resigning our stars at acceptable rates. He hasn't had much money to throw around to secure top free agents. Neither Yzerman, nor any other GM, will sign a 70 point forward or top 4 defensemen for 2 or 3 million. This isn't a video game. If this bothers you, you can always go back to your xbox and play in dynasty mode.
All told, winning the Cup takes an enormous amount of fortune. Luck is involved. So Yzerman's performance cannot be measured by whether the Bolts have won the Cup. What we can evaluate, however, is the team's overall competitiveness. Since Yzerman has taken the reigns, we have made the ECF four times, and we have played in one SCF . Very few GMs in the league compare. He has consistently made fantastic decisions that have transformed our team from the laughing stock to one of the most enviable franchises in about a decade. It has been a herculean effort.
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No, you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t post. I stated an opinion, it was called ridiculous, so I backed it up. If you don’t like the direction the discussion has taken then don’t read the thread until the topic changes again, but I’m not going to take orders from you.
Todd1a
Kucherov or prospect
our drafting before Yzerman got to tampa was pretty horrible after Richards and vinny in 1998 from 1999 to stamkos in 2008 we pretty much drafted nothing.
These Are The Days
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