GDT: Free Agent Frenzy - July 13th

[Hollywood Cannon]

I was willing to give Fletch a shot at the beginning. I believe my main complaint was that his teams tended to be quite vanilla, and he is quite vanilla, so I thought the Flyers would just blend in with the tapestry.

Man, I never thought it would get worse than vanilla. I've been a fan since the 80s, and Fletcher is absolutely 100% the worst GM I have ever witnessed for this franchise. Just no plan, no coherency, no self-reflection, no course correction... just a long string of mediocre to awful moves, and he has united an entire fanbase in hopelessness.

Fletcher doesn't deserve to have the Flyers fall ass-backwards into Bedard.

If they’re in a position to get Bedard, Fletcher will not have a job. He likely doesn’t have a job in December.

I’m not sure the giving a promotion to him is possibly in the cards anymore. If they did it after this last season the fanbase could have at least half tolerated it (ie Authentics). Now he has lost their support. He’s going to be fed to the wolves soon enough.

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

Who else remembers when Fletcher traded Leddy for famous bust Cam Barker? That dastardly Dave Scott must have ordered it.

Don't forget he also threw in a veteran top 4 defender in deal (Kim Johnsson) along with Leddy for Barker who had fallen down depth chart to point he lost the #6 slot to Jordan Hendry at that point of season and was Hawks #7 defender

 

[DancingPanther]

I knew this would be the worst bit of management I'd ever see. I hoped it would be the worst bit of management I'd ever see. And boy did it not disappoint. Absolutely unreal.

Even "strip the C" guy at work came in today and called for Fletcher's head today at work. I just laughed at him. Guys, the authentics are the final piece of the puzzle, and it's finally falling into place. The Twitter ratios are delicious

 

[Curufinwe]

From what he said yesterday teams wanted a 1st plus more to take JVR. Of course he put himself in that position with the stupid Risto extension and then jumping to get TDA before free agency started.

 

[flyersnorth]

If they’re in a position to get Bedard, Fletcher will not have a job. He likely doesn’t have a job in December.

I’m not sure the giving a promotion to him is possibly in the cards anymore. If they did it after this last season the fanbase could have at least half tolerated it (ie Authentics). Now he has lost their support. He’s going to be fed to the wolves soon enough.

If he's fired soon, then that is yet again another complete failure.

This is like Laviolette, Hitchcock, Hakstol all over again.

Too little too late. He's already done the damage.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

It is simple. The Flyers should have never decided to "aggressive retool" by wasting assets and cap on Ristolainen, moving Ghost, and acquiring DeAngelo. But since that is the path that has been chosen, it would make sense to at least fully embrace that path by making a splash for Gaudreau, a bonafide superstar who wanted to come here, and going all-in on the aggressive retool.

Instead, Chuck is half-assing the aggressive retool. The assets wasted on Risto/Ghost/TDA were essentially thrown away now for virtually no improvement.

If you don’t sign Risto & DeAngelo, you don’t sign Gaudreau, either, because you’re completely throwing in the towel in competing in the near future. So obviously you don’t lock up $10M for 7 years on a 29-year/old in that scenario.

 

[GKJ]

From LeBrun's column in the Athletic...

However, there were reports Wednesday morning that perhaps Dallas had nudged ahead in the Burns trade talks. The Carolina GM had reason to worry as Burns has an offseason home in the Dallas area and, of course, would have enjoyed getting reunited with forward Joe Pavelski, coach Peter DeBoer and popular PR man Tom Holy, all formerly from the Sharks.​

​

Carolina put together the better package though, with goalie prospect Eetu Makiniemi being the key attraction for San Jose. In return, the ‘Canes got their replacement for Tony DeAngelo who was traded to Philadelphia last week.​

​

(As an aside, kudos to rookie Sharks GM Mike Grier, on the job for eight days and manages to move one of the cumbersome contracts right off the bat.)​

​

Grier has had 8 days to figure out how to move a bad contract to a 37 year old defenseman with THREE years remaining.

And he did it.

Chuck? Not so much.

Burns also had a very restrictive no-trade list which Carolina was apparently on. So he also had to convince him to do it.

 

[deadhead]

If you don’t sign Risto & DeAngelo, you don’t sign Gaudreau, either, because you’re completely throwing in the towel in competing in the near future. So obviously you don’t lock up $10M for 7 years on a 29-year/old in that scenario.

And that would be bad?

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

If he's fired soon, then that is yet again another complete failure.

This is like Laviolette, Hitchcock, Hakstol all over again.

Too little too late. He's already done the damage.

Without a doubt. It's what we all expect with this franchise but they're not going to allow him to fall ass backwards into Bedard. Someone else will be in here at that point.

 

[mja]

If you don’t sign Risto & DeAngelo, you don’t sign Gaudreau, either, because you’re completely throwing in the towel in competing in the near future. So obviously you don’t lock up $10M for 7 years on a 29-year/old in that scenario.

Excuse me, what? Not signing Risto & DeAngelo is completely throwing in the towel? Do you even read the nonsense you type?

 

[Curufinwe]

Burns also had a very restrictive no-trade list which Carolina was apparently on. So he also had to convince him to do it.

Burns should be happy to go to a contender at this point.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

If you don’t sign Risto & DeAngelo, you don’t sign Gaudreau, either, because you’re completely throwing in the towel in competing in the near future. So obviously you don’t lock up $10M for 7 years on a 29-year/old in that scenario.

I have news for you, the Flyers aren't competing with Risto and DeAngelo anyway...they're actually going to play a big reason in why they're not competing.

 

[GKJ]

He’s almost there. Still only almost.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

I'm way more for Tortorella than I was for Vigneault, but I cannot imagine telling my past self the best thing they do all offseason in your mind will be hiring Torts and it won't be close.

 

[GKJ]

Burns should be happy to go to a contender at this point.

I’d imagine that’s what convinced him. Plus his personality fits the organization. He has a residence in Texas, he supposedly wanted to end up in Dallas.

 

[Lord Defect]

Most people will be happy if you have a chance to succeed. That's what fandom is. If you give people anything to buy into that looks coherent, they'll give it a shot. I don't think it's possible to grasp just how far they've fallen in the last 4 years until you sit down and sift through it. They're worse off than they were on every axis. Every single one. And they seem to be doubling down on the major reasons for it.

I don’t need a winning team, I need an entertaining team. Winning is nice but I can’t watch a boring team. With this pile of dog shit they assembled, and the future mortgaged to assemble it, we will not be entertaining for a very long time.
If I could see the light at the end of the tunnel I could stick through the dark times, but there isn’t even a glimmer of light to be seen.

 

[deadhead]

I'm a former Village resident.

NYC is worth it as long as you feel it's this unique. If it loses that in your mind, you cannot wait to get anywhere else, even if you still love visiting. Or at least that was my experience.

As I get older, I see cities as places to go for a weekend, nice hotel room, do the things you want to do, and get out.

For the young, who are rarely in their shitty apartments, cities are wonderful, but once the novelty of city life has worn off, the disamenities wear you down.
Unless of course, you have oddles of money, in which case you can live in areas where they don't allow disamenities.

I'm looking for my final destination city, can't be too small (nothing to do, nowhere to eat), or too big (congestion, pollution, noise, lack of green space). Right now, Albuquerque is on the top of my list (climate, major university, national labs, beautiful scenery, Sante Fe an hour away, etc). Anyone know bad things about the place? Can't stand the deep south (climate, yahoos) or the north (climate, obnoxious manners).

 

[GKJ]

If you don’t sign Risto & DeAngelo, you don’t sign Gaudreau, either, because you’re completely throwing in the towel in competing in the near future. So obviously you don’t lock up $10M for 7 years on a 29-year/old in that scenario.

They weren’t mutually exclusive. It just meant that you have to wait a year or two to make moves to push forward, while some of the young players you’re stating need opportunities get them and the cap is going up anyways. You’re gonna be forced to do it regardless, might as well do it with a high-end scorer that is more palatable to sell to your fan base instead of defensemen who don’t know how to not run into their goalie. You’re basically resetting from 2 years ago instead of 1.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Alright, we're over 1,000 here and the Frenzy is over so let's pack it up and move convo back to the roster thread for the Flyers and misc. thread for the rest of the NHL.