DOTS13
Werewolf of London
There's no reason to allow making these hires in every niche of hockey operations if Meruelo hasn't already committed to spending money on the outputs (actual players) later on. This just bodes so well that he'll open up the purse strings when we have good players that need to be resigned. It's the ideal way to build the team.
You just know that in previous ownership regimes that none of this would ever be invested in and our only chance of winning is was catching lightning in a bottle repeatedly and all at once. You can look at the numbers and say these types of positions don't require a huge commitment of money in the grand scheme of running a hockey team, but they do contribute quite meaningfully per dollar of investment. In the past there was absolutely no hope that those gains for smaller dollars would ever matter so ownership would never build up these departments, and instead just looked at these extra positions as money sinks.
It is promising that in a year in which we don't need these micro-gains in the team's performance on the ice, that they are still investing in it. To me that looks like they want everything up and ready to go for when the team is good and we can inch out these gains into wins, else why would they invest now when you could keep costs low in a down year because none of this matters right now.
Lastly, of course this all follows Meruelo's history of buying distressed assets and rebuilding them from the ground up through excellent hires and money management. It's clear he knows how to turn around a floundering business and he's provided the structure and willingness for those with hockey domain knowledge to implement the correct pieces.
Well said!
