GDT: carwpg

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Any analysis of Francis' mark on this franchise is decidedly premature. Ridiculously so.

I don't see why. There are three main ways to construct an NHL team. Drafting, trades and free agency. Francis was evidently not even aware of two of those areas. IMO, in the salary cap era, rebuilds should be no longer than three years. You can do two or three things at once, because of the nature of the cap. Francis was only ever focused on one thing. There are a bunch of examples of teams that dipped for a year or two then came right back. We didn't, in large part because Francis ignored the here and now, which is simply not necessary in a salary cap world. Good GMs have short-term, medium-range and long-term plans. Francis only ever had the long-term plan.

IMO, his mark on this organization is barely a dent. He treaded water for four years. End of story.
 

Big Daddy Cane

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Francis inherited an organization that lacked true high-end players. While Faulk, Slavin, Skinner and Aho flirted with a top-level at various points, it was only for brief stretches. It's hard to win consistently without that type of talent, unless the depth on the roster is super strong. It wasn't. JR didn't do him any favors in that regard. That 14-15 team is rather awful on paper and a sign of a failed retool or two.

For those organizations that choose not to bottom out, it can take a lot of time for everything to come together. Watching Winnipeg the other night, I was reminded of how they were built. Starting in the Summer of 10, it took 7 years of mediocrity until the preponderance of talent acquired via trade, non-elite draft picks and an unexpected lottery win resulted in a team that looks poised to be a serious threat in the West consistently.
 

tarheelhockey

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Sitting and waiting on draft picks is not rebuilding. It is treading water, unless you're hitting home runs on lottery picks. Which he ****ed up. Routinely. Those are the only draft picks a GM is generally directly responsible for, and our first round drafting was flat out bad.

Teams routinely go from bad to good in a single season in this league. A 5 year plan, with absolutely no upward trend in actual results by year 4, is not a success. And remember, the plan was supposed to make us a contender, not just sneak into the playoffs. It was a miserable failure. That's not revisionist history, that's just facing the plain reality. Francis was a do nothing GM who kept this team wallowing in failure.

I hate to trash a guy like Ron Francis, but this pretty much the unavoidable conclusion. The key is the bolded line.

Yes he found Aho and Foegele, and to some extent can take credit for certain earlier draft picks. Yes he resolved the drama with Semin and Staal, and cleared a bunch of other crap out of the system. Yes he made a couple of decent trades to find Teravainen and TVR. But if you look at the final outcomes, the team he put together wasn't even close to a Cup contender. Not remotely close.

A big part of that was making losing gambles on high draft picks and goalies (Lack and Darling) and a head coach who didn't pan out, but even if you resolve those issues that core group was fundamentally never going to be a contender. It wasn't a well constructed team and there was no obvious direction that was going to fix it.

The amount of damage that his failed rebuild did to this organization is hard to calculate. I guess the fact that relocation was an actual possibility, kind of sums up the direction that he took things during his tenure.
 

Big Daddy Cane

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A big part of that was making losing gambles on high draft picks and goalies (Lack and Darling) and a head coach who didn't pan out, but even if you resolve those issues that core group was fundamentally never going to be a contender. It wasn't a well constructed team and there was no obvious direction that was going to fix it.

Isn't that more of an indictment of Rutherford than it is Francis? The core of the team 4 years ago was rotten, I agree, but it was Rutherford that built the E. Staal/J. Staal/Skinner/Semin/Lindholm/Faulk group that Francis started out with. There's only so much you can do when you're trying to walk the tightrope of competing in the present and building for the future simultaneously. Perhaps Francis should have recognized that it wasn't going to work out with those players sooner and bottomed-out like a Toronto, but that's a tough call to make with half of that core being so young. Would any of us not attempted to salvage it, if in that position?

E. Staal and his mid-career malaise deserves blame here too. He was that franchise player to build a team around and his play just deteriorated there at the end. That missing franchise center has hurt significantly in recent years.
 

CanesFanBudMan

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Love RF the player - not so much GMRF:

Positives:
- Drafted Aho
- TT trade
- Drafted Foegele
- Slavin and Pesce deals

Negatives:
- Hired Bill Peters and let him become one of the longer tenured coaches in the NHL
- none of his first round draft picks have become game changers to date: Fleury, Hanifin, Bean, Gauthier, Necas (of curse the jury is still out on some of these guys)
- Lack and Darling
- Rask Deal
 

The Faulker 27

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Negatives:
- Hired Bill Peters and let him become one of the longer tenured coaches in the NHL
- none of his first round draft picks have become game changers to date: Fleury, Hanifin, Bean, Gauthier, Necas (of curse the jury is still out on some of these guys)
- Lack and Darling
- Rask Deal

I see what you did there.
 

tarheelhockey

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Isn't that more of an indictment of Rutherford than it is Francis? The core of the team 4 years ago was rotten, I agree, but it was Rutherford that built the E. Staal/J. Staal/Skinner/Semin/Lindholm/Faulk group that Francis started out with. There's only so much you can do when you're trying to walk the tightrope of competing in the present and building for the future simultaneously. Perhaps Francis should have recognized that it wasn't going to work out with those players sooner and bottomed-out like a Toronto, but that's a tough call to make with half of that core being so young. Would any of us not attempted to salvage it, if in that position?

E. Staal and his mid-career malaise deserves blame here too. He was that franchise player to build a team around and his play just deteriorated there at the end. That missing franchise center has hurt significantly in recent years.

It’s an indictment of JR and Staal for sure.

But the bottom line is that Francis had a 5 year plan, and by year 4 it was already evident that the plan was an abject failure. There’s no other way to put it. The idea was to be a Cup contender right now and we’re still not even quite sure we’re a playoff spot contender.
 

Roboturner913

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I just have a hard time dinging the guy when he started off at such a disadvantage. And yet even his "failure" highlights what a joke the org as a whole had been before he took over. We actually have a respectable AHL team with some scouting infrastructure in place now. That stuff doesn't happen overnight. Whatever the failures to reach the playoffs, there was some sort of foundation laid down for future success that didn't just appear out of nowhere when Dundon bought the team.
 

SaskCanesFan

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Saying a rebuild should only take 2-3 years is hilariously ignorant of the position the Canes were in. Of course some teams dip for a year or two then recover. That's not a rebuild, that's an advantage of being good to begin with. The Canes weren't good to begin with ,there was nothing to bounce back to.

I can think of 4 true rebuilds that have evolved the last couple years. Toronto, Buffalo, Winnipeg, Edmonton. Which teams would people rather be.

I'd start with Toronto. Who went true scorched earth, bottomed out and won a lottery. Somewhat like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Tampa, and Washington before them. Problems with this approach are
A) dependant on luck. First to win a lottery, second that the talent you need is available that year.
B) not available to every market. Toronto can suck for years and sell out the building anyways. The Canes couldn't. With an aging owner wanting to sell and attendance woes, there were legitimate concerns of a relocation. Going full scorched earth may never have been an option.

Next I'd rank Winnipeg. Who almost ran their GM out of town at times for being too patient. Without the benefit of multiple lottery picks, instead built slowly and methodically and are reaping the benefits. A great young core who made the Western Finals last year, has many signed long term already, and more young guns on the way.

Buffalo and Edmonton both made significant trades and free agent signings to shortcut things and be competitive quicker. Remind me again how that went. Let's see. Hall for Larsson, Uhh, not the trade we'd be looking for. Giving the Islanders their entire second line, no not here either. Long term UFA contract to Lucic, don't think so. Trading futures away for "win now" Ryan Oreilly, or trading him away a few years later when that didn't work. Still no. So despite pretty much a decade worth of lottery picks between the 2 teams, still no better off.

And that's the path we want to deride Francis for not taking? It doesn't f***ing work.
 

Anton Dubinchuk

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I just have this weird feeling like building successful hockey teams isn't a matter of random luck.

Maybe not luck, per se, but certainly bottoming out. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Washington, Los Angeles are all driven by superstars after having hit on one or more top 5 picks. Nashville turned their 4th OA pick into a 1st line center.

Yes, you have to hit on the picks, but you also have to get them. Francis had one (5th OA), and he got Hanifin. He did make up for it at 35 OA that same year, but he didn’t quite cash in as he should’ve. Now, the question is, do we blame him for not bottoming out? It’s a legit question. It’s very, very clearly how you build a winner.

If Waddell stays the GM for the next 3-4 years, he will almost definitely experience more success than Francis. But a big part of that is the fact that he got gifted with the 2 OA pick instead of the 12 OA he should’ve had.

It’s really tough to build a consistent winner any other way. Not many teams are making Cup runs using high-end players that they just somehow acquired without high-end draft picks (Vegas aside, but that’s a pretty unique situation). Those pieces often take teams over the top, but rarely get them to the dance.

The formula seems to be to suck bad enough for long enough to gather the talent you need to make your move. Francis sucked at that. It’s like being in 6th place in Mario Kart; too far back to make any real noise, too high up to get any good items. Pittsburgh did it with Fleury, Crosby, Malkin, Staal. Ovechkin, Backstrom. Toews, Kane. Matthews, Marner. Stamkos, Hedman (even missing on Drouin).

We got Svechnikov. The question is, is that enough talent to be confident in trying to climb up the standings? I sure hope so. Otherwise we end up as the Rangers, Wild, or Blues, consistently good for a long time, but not enough top-end talent to ever be a serious contender.
 

tarheelhockey

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Maybe not luck, per se, but certainly bottoming out. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Washington, Los Angeles are all driven by superstars after having hit on one or more top 5 picks. Nashville turned their 4th OA pick into a 1st line center.

Yes, you have to hit on the picks, but you also have to get them. Francis had one (5th OA), and he got Hanifin. He did make up for it at 35 OA that same year, but he didn’t quite cash in as he should’ve. Now, the question is, do we blame him for not bottoming out? It’s a legit question. It’s very, very clearly how you build a winner.

If Waddell stays the GM for the next 3-4 years, he will almost definitely experience more success than Francis. But a big part of that is the fact that he got gifted with the 2 OA pick instead of the 12 OA he should’ve had.

It’s really tough to build a consistent winner any other way. Not many teams are making Cup runs using high-end players that they just somehow acquired without high-end draft picks (Vegas aside, but that’s a pretty unique situation). Those pieces often take teams over the top, but rarely get them to the dance.

The formula seems to be to suck bad enough for long enough to gather the talent you need to make your move. Francis sucked at that. It’s like being in 6th place in Mario Kart; too far back to make any real noise, too high up to get any good items. Pittsburgh did it with Fleury, Crosby, Malkin, Staal. Ovechkin, Backstrom. Toews, Kane. Matthews, Marner. Stamkos, Hedman (even missing on Drouin).

We got Svechnikov. The question is, is that enough talent to be confident in trying to climb up the standings? I sure hope so. Otherwise we end up as the Rangers, Wild, or Blues, consistently good for a long time, but not enough top-end talent to ever be a serious contender.

Montreal may be a joke lately, but they built a consistent division winner without needing a bunch of lottery picks (their highest was Carey Price at #5, which was regarded as a massive gamble).

San Jose has been a consistently strong team for decades. The last time they drafted in the top-3 was Mark Stuart, in 1998.

Anaheim, almost always a good team and often a contender. Not only have they rarely had a top-10 pick, they've had a bunch of whiffs and disappointments in that range.

Emphasizing that it takes a top-3 pick to cap off the building of a dynasty misses three points:

1) It's a necessary but not sufficient condition for building a winner, as demonstrated annually by the Oilers and Coyotes
2) There are actually a bunch of counter-examples around the league of teams who built contenders without picks any better than ours
3) It's not that Francis failed to make us a contender... he couldn't even get us to the playoffs after rebuilding the team.

The last one is the strongest point of emphasis. Not being able to even get to the playoffs after a rebuild is insane. There's no way to make that sound OK.
 

Boom Boom Apathy

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MTL and SJS weren’t cap floor teams though. Its not very common for a team to be a cap floor team and be good without a top 1-2 pick to help them become good. Are there many examples in the past 10 years?

I’m not excusing Francis because he had some misses as well, but not being able to spend doesn’t help.
 

tarheelhockey

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MTL and SJS weren’t cap floor teams though. Its not very common for a team to be a cap floor team and be good without a top 1-2 pick to help them become good. Are there many examples in the past 10 years?

I’m not excusing Francis because he had some misses as well, but not being able to spend doesn’t help.

TBH I wouldn’t know which teams were actually cap floor teams in a given year so I can’t really make that call.
 

Boom Boom Apathy

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TBH I wouldn’t know which teams were actually cap floor teams in a given year so I can’t really make that call.

I’m betting it’s very few teams that don’t spend and don’t get a 1-2 pick and become good. Just look at last years playoff teams:

TB: Stamkos, Hedman, Drouin in top 3
TOR: Matthews 1st, Marner 4th
Bos: had Seguin but traded him, but not a cap floor team at all
Wash: Ovi and Backstrom
Pit: Crosby, Malkin
Phi: Patrick (also had Jvr earlier) and not a cap floor team
CLB: Murray 2nd oa, Dubois 3rd oa, Johansen 4th oa and not a cap floor team.
NJD: Hischier 1st Oa, Larsson 4th Oa

All those teams had higher picks than the Canes and If I recall correctly, all of them spent at least $10m more last year.

Again, I’m not absolving Francis. He missed on most of his 1st round picks and didn’t make enough moves. I just don’t buy the narrative that a team can be a cap floor team, not pick in the top 2 and turn it around in a couple seasons.
 

tarheelhockey

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I’m betting it’s very few teams that don’t spend and don’t get a 1-2 pick and become good. Just look at last years playoff teams:

TB: Stamkos, Hedman, Drouin in top 3
TOR: Matthews 1st, Marner 4th
Bos: had Seguin but traded him, but not a cap floor team at all
Wash: Ovi and Backstrom
Pit: Crosby, Malkin
Phi: Patrick (also had Jvr earlier) and not a cap floor team
CLB: Murray 2nd oa, Dubois 3rd oa, Johansen 4th oa and not a cap floor team.
NJD: Hischier 1st Oa, Larsson 4th Oa

All those teams had higher picks than the Canes and If I recall correctly, all of them spent at least $10m more last year.

Again, I’m not absolving Francis. He missed on most of his 1st round picks and didn’t make enough moves. I just don’t buy the narrative that a team can be a cap floor team, not pick in the top 2 and turn it around in a couple seasons.

Columbus and Jersey stick out as comparables to Carolina with regard to draft impact. They aren’t particularly reliant on those high draft picks and they’ve done way better managing their assets than we have.

But setting that aside — given that our financial situation was a known factor, and that we weren’t tanking for a 1OA, what WAS the plan? It sure looks like Francis intended to just bank draft picks and take shots at Lack/Darling type goalies for 5 years. That’s not much of a plan and the results are evident at this point.
 

Boom Boom Apathy

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Columbus and Jersey stick out as comparables to Carolina with regard to draft impact. They aren’t particularly reliant on those high draft picks and they’ve done way better managing their assets than we have.

Hischier was definitely a key part of NJs success, they used a former 4th oa to get Hall and still spent much more than us. CLB also spent much more than us. That’s the point.

But setting that aside — given that our financial situation was a known factor, and that we weren’t tanking for a 1OA

Why would I set that aside? That’s all I’m talking about in my posts. Anyhow, he made plenty of mistakes, didn’t have success and is no longer here which is fine. He also did some good things which seem to be helping the team now.
 

geehaad

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I’m actually curious to how Peters would’ve reacted to this team as he was begging for better players and this team has a few.
It's a bit tough to evaluate this hypothetical, because a few things have changed that likely wouldn't have changed with Peters at the helm.
  1. Would Aho be playing C right now? Not that playing C is the absolute key to Aho's success this year, and that he couldn't be just as successful playing on the wing, but it is absolutely true that the team needed a 1st-line C, and it wasn't clear that Aho was going to get that chance with Peters.
  2. Would Lindholm still be with the team and if so, where would he be slotted? How would Peters slot him given RWs of TT, Williams, and Svechnikov...or if he would've have let Lindholm play C, would that preclude #1 above?
  3. If #2 were true, that precludes Ferland from being on the team, and he's making a difference so far.
  4. Would Hanifin still be here, and if so, would that preclude CDH from being signed? CDH is a difference-maker, and you probably don't make that signing with Hanifin and Slavin on the roster.
A lot of things happened probably happened specifically because Peters wasn't around anymore...I don't know that it's fair to hypothetically put Peters in the driver's seat of this roster.
 

Canes

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Even in 5 years, it's still going to be hard to evaluate Francis. People will be able to construct even more hypotheticals then than they are able to right now. I think everyone mostly has their mind made up on him now anyway. While I wasn't much of a Francis fan myself, I do have to acknowledge how previous ownership may have limited him, and even with that he did good things like finding Aho and acquiring TT. He missed on some draft picks and also free agent signings. Like most GMs, it was a mixed bag. He was below average based on results, or average based on mitigating factors. I'm basically indifferent on him now.
 

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