Because we lost McD for nothing. They at least got a return... And while I didn't like the trade for Toronto I can at least sort of see why Burke did it. He got a 21 year old player who had some talent. He was at least looking towards the future.
I still have no idea why we went after Gomez nor why we paid a premium for him.... didn't make any sense at all.
Gomez may have helped get us Galchenyuk but getting him and his buddies prevented us from rebuilding far sooner.
I thought he'd be a 40 goal man too. Man was I ever wrong on that guy...
It's easy to pretend that Gomez was "nothing", but that's not at all true. His last two seasons were crap, but he (allegedly) helped with the Gio (and please don't go into a Gionta bash, save that for the other nearsighted thread) situation. True, we have nothing to show for it now, except room to make moves (which to me is something, just like the Cole-Ryder deal), but that trade didn't make them a contender and it added some pretty frigging important parts to Boston. Seguin was money for them in the playoffs at key times. They just had Kessel score in what were meaningless miserable seasons for them -- not sure it felt better than our team WITH Gomez.
But anyway, everyone remembers the end of Gomez and not that first year and a bit of the second. Just want to point out that I think we are doing great in the rebuild, that we haven't been set back by Gomez apart from the obvious loss of McDO, but the "earlier" argument has to be set against what happened when Gomez got here:
We went to the ECF. Gomez was not useless there, believe it or not. I, for one, will always remember that run and I've been around for 2 Cups. So let's say he did help us get Galchenyuk (which as I said, is kind of a half-kidding argument that I was making), we are in an awesome position for the future. Oh and, what? We're first in the East THIS season so far! I'm liking how things have played out.
Again, trades have to be looked at from a broad point of view and I reiterate that Tor made a worse trade than we did. As things stand today, I bet they'd like to take it back (though they'll deny it), while we are ok with how things are now and going forward. How does burke not know how not to trade to a divisional rival? It's one thing if it's a vet or a player for player but crisse, Kessel does not equal Seguin and Hamilton. Ewww, I feel gross complimenting Bruins. Shower time!
Edit (post shower, a very cold one): Just realized that you can argue that (since we're talking returns along the domino effect) that the ECF run got us Eller.