Wasn’t criticizing your opinion. I agree for the most part. I was fine with the Hall trade when it happened so I’m not going to be upset about it now. IMO, where that really hurts is that Lucic has been a bust and that’s on Chiarelli.
When things started going south last year I tried really hard not to treat it as the end of the world. I tried to keep in mind that a lot of teams have a bounce year after finally finding some success and that’s what this probably was. By Christmas I figured it was a lost and thought it was probably okay to give these guys one pass based on the playoff run in 2016. It was harder to keep that attitude as the year went on. I thought Mclellan was so terrible he should be gone. Chia decided to keep him so that’s a used up pass on head coaching as far as I’m concerned. It’s year four now for this regime, the bounce year was last year. It’s time to start showing something this year. Starting in October, everybody is on the clock for me. Now is when the results matter.
I still say that the Hall trade was okay, and without it we would not have made the playoffs that year. I'd also say that that year, Larsson was simply better than Hall. This past season, Hall was definitely better, but that contrast is boosted by Larsson having issues with his health and personal life. I'm still okay with it though, considering that pretty soon Hall is going to get a big raise. If we had waited to trade him, we might have had to accept a rental price, and looking at the Skinner return, we could have expected more than that, but not a core player like Larsson. We would have gotten a first rounder with some lesser assets attached.
But ultimately, a GM's job is the results. When people called our playoff season an outlier, it was a stretch, even last season because of our many unpredictable issues. However, if this coming season is another "developmental year", then the narrative turns against Chiarelli in a big way, and that playoff season really is an outlier. Then all of a sudden it really looks like the only great things about this team are things that Chiarelli inherited: McDavid, Draisaitl, Nurse, Klefbom, Nugent Hopkins, Khaira. We are entering year 4 of Chiarelli. No playoffs now, and Chiarelli's likely fired and rightfully so.
So, if his answer to the Sekera injury is to fix this internally, or to sign a bottom pairing player, he should know that he's gambling his job on that decision.