Thrive
Scoish Velociraptor Maloish
I had confidence in DS but admittedly, was always concerned that Neely would not let him fully control operations and make the changes he wanted to make. Seems like that concern was unfounded.
I felt the same exact way.
Firing Chiarelli was absolutely the correct move at the time. Replacing him with Sweeney has proven to be a good move. Retaining Claude for 2 more years? Not so much. While I like what has transpired over the course of the last year and a half, let's not pretend it was all rainbows and unicorns. There were some mistakes and miscues along the way, but the current direction of this team is really exciting to watch.
One possible reason that would make a lot of sense, is that in knowing that this youth revival was coming perhaps they just didn’t want Claude around a lot of the youth for a long amount of time. Perhaps they didn’t want the players to develop Claude-installed habits that up to that point would be the only style of NHL hockey that they would have known and would’ve taken work to undo? Essentially they were just biding their time until they felt the timing was right?