Its a good post that summarizes well the situation.
for me, personally, I always liked the magic around our team and how we did things differently. There was always a bond between the fans and the players that felt more important than management, to a point. When Gainey took a walk with Kovalev, when Saku came back from his cancer, when sheldon sourray became public enemy #1 on the powerplay. I'm talking about our worst years and I still have fond memories. Yes , we felt short, but I saw defiance in our team.
I saw that defiance this year, too. seldom moments, but the romantic relationship I had with the org is over. when you lose radulov and markov in one offseason, you just basically send me a message that you don't care about my eye candy. I believe, unlike you, that we are heading in the right direction, but I wished I had enjoyed the ride more the last couple of years. I enjoyed our season, and I hope we will build on it.
as far as owners are concerned... when I'll see Geoff Molson as emotional about the habs as george gillette, when I will see him create a family, I'll start to respect him. His ''improved'' experience speech ... it did it for me man, I realized how stupid and money-driven he was.
Thanks, the gyst of my comments was only meant to point out how Geoff's continued role as MB's direct overseer is an issue that needs to be dealt with.
I don't know that I've said anything about which direction we're taking or that it's the right or wrong one. Geoff's cluelessness is abhorrent however, thanks to it, MB was allowed an opportunity to redeem himself in the summer of 2018.
How could I not like what happened last summer? An pronounced accent on youth and speed, depth at center finally arriving, quality prospects (even if short on elite types) in the pipeline, Bouchard in charge of development ... these are positives.
The "right" direction for me is what they did this past season. Not trade away the team's best prospects and draft picks for rentals, amass draft picks, make a smart trade by using the team's cap room.
The nuance is that we're left to ourselves to guess what the real direction might be. We're seeing several elements that involve building from within while we're hearing the GM say that the goal is to make the playoffs in the same year that he claimed the goal was a reset. To me these goals are incompatible within the same, short timespan.
Seems to me that when you rebuild, you hold on to futures, develop and set yourself up for future years. Meantime, if you're going for the playoffs, then you're going to be inclined to sacrifice some long-term assets for short-term gains. The latter did not happen, so were they really vying for the playoffs? It's not clear as the team was knocking at the door til the bitter end of the regular season.
The "right" direction, whether they arrived at it by default or by design (and we will never know since the GM's approach is not to be open about divulging what the club's plan is since he believes that "other GMs might be listening"), is to keep doing what they did last summer and see to it that as many of their best assets are given an opportunity to develop such that the org. has for the first time in a long time, the type of quality organizational depth that is available in such an excess that it is disposable in the right deal to fill a glaring need.
The "right" direction also involves, IMHO, that the GM takes back his silly comment about not "believing in windows" when his highest paid players are on the wrong side of 30, esp. Weber at age 34. There is definitely a window and it needs to be attended to.
Didn't mean to enter into this type of discussion here as it's a thread about Geoff, but since an argument was raised in your post about direction, thought it deserved a response.
