You claim that in 2021 we had the brightest future of any team which would mean you largely agreed with our drafting up to that point.
Absolutely. I am on the record for saying that the Sens 2020 draft will be among the bests in NHL history. As usual, some fools laughed at it on the main boards. Well, it doesn't look too silly right now. Stutzle, Sanderson, Greig, Kleven and maybe more. That's insane.
2019 was good too although the 1st pick wasn't great. 2018 wasn't much outside of Tkachuk (high pick) and JBD. We had very few picks in 2017 but still found Batherson and Formenton. 2016 looks like a flop
Then in 2022, Dorion moved to accelerate the rebuild by bringing in a proven goal scorer in Dabrincat and in doing so traded away an asset that was going to have zero impact on our quest to gain playoff experience, the 2022 first.
There's a possibility that a guy we could have chosen 7th OA plays in the playoffs before us (Kasper or Savoie for example)
I believe PD made the Dabrincat trade for exactly what you are clamouring for, to get us into the playoffs and begin building experience ie. learning to lose in them as you say. I agreed with the move at the time even knowing that we could lose Dabrincat for nothing after two years because I felt learning to lose was going to be invaluable to this teams true window of contention and was worth the 7th.
You have been hyper critical of his asset management with the Dabrincat dealings as your most recent ammunition.
I didn't have a problem with the trade itself and wasn't mad at all because I thought the price we paid was pretty reasonable. However, what happened after that resulted in bad asset management. "
Yeah but GMs don't have a crystal ball yadi-yada"... well, having foresight is actually the job of an executive
So you gotta see the contradiction here, no? On one hand you're saying that the team was primed less than 2 years ago and that getting into the playoffs even if to learn to lose (which I wholeheartedly agree with) was important yet on the other you are vocal about how debilitating deals like Dabrincat, which was designed to do exactly that, have been to the team. I feel the 7th OA was a fair gamble to take on the experience you're calling for but you don't I suppose.
I don't quite get how you can reconcile these two positions you have, it seems contradictory to me, or at the very least a hindsight opinion.
Sorry but no, there's no contradiction. I have never said that Dorion shouldn't make
the right moves* to get this team closer and closer to the playoffs, then making them and starting to learn "
losing in the playoffs". It's actually HIS JOB and I have been asking for that since the 2020 draft. So we failed 3 seasons so far (I don't count being eliminated in November a great learning experience)
* Speaking of the right moves, I have been very vocal about this in every off-season, lack of quality veterans, lack of depth, lack of 2-way forwards, awful bottom-6, awful RD, non-efficient hockey systems (coaching)... Doesn't seem like I was hallucinating
So I'll try to clarify but first you need to see players as stocks. If ADB was worth 7th OA + 39th OA + 3rd, getting late-ish 1st + 4th + UFA + depth prospect doesn't look like a good ROI right now. The thing is I didn't believe DeBrincat was the
right fit/need. The value to get him was fine but I thought we should have went a different way (like a RHD + Bjorkstrand for example)