The fan base and media here are as much of a drag on the team as the Leafs' were the last decade. Players like Bealieu and Emelin are thrown under the bus and dumped. The fan base and the media shout about their weaknesses. They get traded for mediocre players and the GM can say it's an improvement, "look, we have a mediocre defence instead of those losers we dumped" and then they get scored on over and over and the defence is unable to get the puck to the forwards.
The previous group had flaws, well, other than Subban, he was pretty much good at everything, but they all had positives. Beaulieu could skate, Emelin could hit, Markov could pass. Sure they all had obvious problems, but as a group they did pretty well.
Back in the early '90s the habs did the same thing. They had a really good defence and they started trading them for other random cheaper guys. Then they didn't have a good defence.
There's no point in hating the players. It's all in the usage. Desharnais was good but overused, so was Bouillon. There are better guys in the league than Emelin overall but he made up for a lot on a non-physical defence. There are better overall players than Beaulieu but most of them make more than $1 million/year and none of them skate like him.
The team has to stop getting rid of people and start acquiring players who can help. Was the trade for Weber a case of getting Weber or of jettisoning Subban? Was the trade for Drouin a trade for a dynamic center or a trade for a francophone player since the habs haven't drafted any?
How many trades since '93 would the habs make with hindsight? Half? A quarter? A very small fraction? How many of those trades were pushed by incorrect fan and media pressure? Undervaluing your own players and trading them for league average guys only works if the team is already bad. Doing it for a winning team just loses value. Beaulieu and Emelin are flawed but they are both better than a lot of the guys here.
Thread is about Schlemko... No issue with Schlemko, but he's yet another sort of OK player replacing guys who were here. As with many of the other moves he's fine, and the move to acquire him was OK on its own but the total impact of those moves was bad (less so this one than many others). These moves would happen less if the habs, the media, and the fans could avoid flaming reasonably good players quite so assiduously.
The previous group had flaws, well, other than Subban, he was pretty much good at everything, but they all had positives. Beaulieu could skate, Emelin could hit, Markov could pass. Sure they all had obvious problems, but as a group they did pretty well.
Back in the early '90s the habs did the same thing. They had a really good defence and they started trading them for other random cheaper guys. Then they didn't have a good defence.
There's no point in hating the players. It's all in the usage. Desharnais was good but overused, so was Bouillon. There are better guys in the league than Emelin overall but he made up for a lot on a non-physical defence. There are better overall players than Beaulieu but most of them make more than $1 million/year and none of them skate like him.
The team has to stop getting rid of people and start acquiring players who can help. Was the trade for Weber a case of getting Weber or of jettisoning Subban? Was the trade for Drouin a trade for a dynamic center or a trade for a francophone player since the habs haven't drafted any?
How many trades since '93 would the habs make with hindsight? Half? A quarter? A very small fraction? How many of those trades were pushed by incorrect fan and media pressure? Undervaluing your own players and trading them for league average guys only works if the team is already bad. Doing it for a winning team just loses value. Beaulieu and Emelin are flawed but they are both better than a lot of the guys here.
Thread is about Schlemko... No issue with Schlemko, but he's yet another sort of OK player replacing guys who were here. As with many of the other moves he's fine, and the move to acquire him was OK on its own but the total impact of those moves was bad (less so this one than many others). These moves would happen less if the habs, the media, and the fans could avoid flaming reasonably good players quite so assiduously.
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