Don't think anyone is lumping them all together. There's been good and bad from multiple GMs. The constant (ownership) is the one that deserves the blame as they haven't proven to know how to build a winner.
A recap of the Jackets History
- Thread starter CBJWerenski8
- Start date
Don't think anyone is lumping them all together. There's been good and bad from multiple GMs. The constant (ownership) is the one that deserves the blame as they haven't proven to know how to build a winner.
TaketheCannoli
RIP
I wasn't referring to the draft. I'm sorry if my post gave that impression. I was referring to all player and for that matter hockey ops acquisitions. Teams are built by acquiring players who fit in the team's overall approach to the game.
As an example at a PSL holder event when Hitch was hired, when he was asked how to build the team he responded we need to start with glue guys. We don't have enough of that in the organization. He didn't say to draft them, to sign them as FAs or to trade for them. He just said we gotta get 'em. Good organizations use every available channel to build the team.
TaketheCannoli
RIP
I'm not sure you meant to call ownership a "villain."
Is it possible you meant to say the McConell's made poor hiring decisions, thus the franchise situation is a result of their decisions? If so, I think you are right.
I hope John McConnell seeks out solid counsel to help guide him in his decision making process. Surely Bill Foley doesn't have tremendous expertise in hockey operations and team building. He's a genius at winemaking and wine marketing. He must have some strong advisors who helped him get the right people in place. I'm hoping Columbus's ownership can follow examples like this.
Cyclones Rock
Registered User
- Jun 12, 2008
- 10,591
- 6,505
Didn't even think about him. McConnell should seek this guy's counsel. He may not give it, but he should at least try. The VGK organization could be a model for any franchise in the NHL (or maybe all of sports).
I've been to 3 VGK home games in the past 2 years and they dot every 'I" and cross every "T" in their game day operations as well. The showgirls coming on to the visiting players during warm ups makes an early arrival at every VGK a necessity
John McConnell felt a civic obligation to bring professional sports to this town and, therefore, he brokered the deal to bring the NHL to Columbus. He was hustled by MacLean. I don't think that makes him a villain. MacLean, I think is a villain. Beyond that JMac was able to hire JD who at the time was viewed as an excellent find for the organization. Since then there is a mixed bag of ineptiude and a few bright moments. The inept far outweighs the bright moments.
to be 100% clear: hiring JD was a home-run that brought legitimacy and led to a three-year window where they were legit contenders.
bringing JD back after the rangers fired him was a mistake.
You don't necessarily need a lot of pick/prospect capital to get a McCann / Forsling / Verhaege type player.
The issue is identifying the right players who are about to bust out or would bust out in your system.
And yes, in our case, it would require taking away roster spaces from rookies, which is hard for the dreamers out there.
NHL owners usually have no pretense of being the ones to build a winner. I've never heard our ownership claim that they know how to build a winner. That's not their role.
No offense to anybody, but I think a lot of this ownership nonsense comes from football fans, or some other sport where ownership is relevant.
koteka
Registered User
So what you are saying is Fantilli isn’t yet a top line center getting 18 or 19 minutes per night. I agree. I don’t think we should say we have the center issue solved until we actually have it solved.
It is because one of the constants I see is people complaing they want a winner now and tired of this rebuilding nonsense. Its only 3 years in and there's a large portion of the fanbase ready to demand to tear everything off the walls. They want us to start spending 1st round picks, including this year, and get free agents like Lindholm to make a push this year. I don't think people realize its not like football where if you can lock down an elite QB, 1 good WR, 1 strong edge rusher, 1 strong secondary and a good offensive line you have a strong potential to make a super bowl run.
I see legit criticism of embarrassing bad decisions like the Babcock hire, but then that is conflated with the exhaustion of losing in this rebuild. As if this would be a playoff team right now if only they didn't make poor decisions in the last two years.
When your most talented players are under 22 it is going to be a process. How old are the players in the NFL draft? 22? 23?
Requires 3 years in college so 22-23 plus depending on the position a year or so to really hit their stride.
That's just false.
Ownership chooses people for these roles. They're responsible for building a culture and making your franchise a desirable destination based on how well it's run.
Whether you or anybody wants to admit it, they're responsible for the product on the ice. After 20+ years I don't know how anyone could say they're not responsible. They're literally the only constant for entirety of the franchise. Look at the big picture.
It wouldn't be the worst idea in the world if McConnell brought back in an advisory position Craig Patrick. The team with Patrick working with Howson seemed to be less frenetic and were heading somewhat in the right direction.
How many people on the hockey side does ownership hire? One?
I would say the person they hire is the one responsible for building a team culture. In hockey there should be minimal interaction between ownership and those below the Team President.
Thats fine to have that opinion but whoeever is hiring people should be held responsible.
They keep firing everyone except the guy doing the hiring.
I would think "fire the owner" requires substantially more proof of incompetence than three hires, the last two of which have found mixed success.
It's an extremist argument and I think it is offensive to the people who put the team in this community.
It's been 24 years, how much proof do you want?
There's a difference between being sincere and trying your best and being competent hockey people who know how to build a winner.
The ownership aren't bad people, they just don't know what they're doing.
I feel like we have better things to argue about than tilting at the ownership windmill, guys.
Double-Shift Lasse
Just post better
The point I was trying to make seemed evident to me, but I either wasn't making in well (the counter never seemed to actually grasp what I was trying to say) or it's not as evident as I thought. So I dropped it.
I'm not tilting at windmills. I just didn't think it was too much to assume that ownership sets an overall tone for the operation - the acquisition and development of players being just one aspect of that. But whatevs. I'm good.
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
The only one of those that is unequivocably a terrible hire is MacLean. The rest is belief bias and fundamental attribution error.
It wasn't hiring him that I was annoyed with per se; I didn't think Howson had gotten a fair shake and Kekalainen's first moves were so incomprehensible to me I thought he was doing nothing of value at best and random nonsense at worst, and I absolutely lost all patience with him when he went and made a move that I thought was going to destroy us forever. That move, of course, was hiring John Tortorella. And suddenly the stuff Kekalainen had been up to started to gel together, and the team went on its most successful run ever, and I concluded that maybe I'd been a bit hasty to condemn the guy.
I do think his removal was necessary and prudent. The Babcock fiasco made that inevitable, and it was clear that, regardless of whatever good he'd done before, he was now making bad decisions under the pressure - some of which were catastrophically so. I entirely reject any suggestion that he was Bad All Along and have no tolernace whatsoever for folks who want to play the historical revisionism game in an attempt to retroactively condemn his work. He had to go because he was bad now, not because he always had been.
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
No, it's not. That's the fundamental point I've been working to make here: sometimes there is no villain. Folks are pointing to ownership becuase that's the last remaining original link in the chain left to potentially blame - given the desired premise of "it's always been terrible all along and there is exactly one (1) fundamental thing that needs fixing to make it better" - and that's all the evidence anyone has.
This isn't going to be solved by Finding The Right Owner and then having everything good happen from there, and so the motivated reasoning that follows from that and leads to insisting that JP Mac is therefore a bad owner is unnecessary, untruthful, unhelpful, and antiethical.
EDIT: In the IT world, there's a concept refered to as "cargo cult programming". It's attempting to make a program work not by understanding what your code actually is going to do, but by finding snippets and examples that look like they might accomplish what you're after, blindly including them, and hoping for the desired result. Sometimes you do get what you want (if you're lucky), but frequently all you end up with is a confused mess. I submit that this notion of "well, we've replaced everyone else but the owner, so now we have to replace the owner" is a prime example of proposed cargo cult franchise management.
Last edited:
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
Every historic great NHL GM has also previously been hired with 0 years of prior NHL GM experience. This is not a valid diagnostic.
It is completely valid that they had no prior NHL GM experience when they started here. Why do we have to be the club where GM cut their teeth and make their "learning" mistakes? We don't.
