1. Every Sens fan should be able to recognize that management went above and beyond to insulate our young players with these moves. That is almost indisputable. We started 2-12-1 anyway. Can you imagine if we HADN'T grabbed Murray, Dadonov, Gudbranson, and Stepan? People like yourself would have eviscerated Dorion if we started that way. For good reason! Dorion had no choice but to make some moves to provide depth.
2. Outside of Murray (which may also potentially work out, as it is a bit of an incomplete judgement because he only played 27 games ) have any of these moves potentially altered the Franchise in a negative way?
3. Since honesty forces us to admit he had to do something, is there any move out there we know was available to Dorion that was better? We're already judging the results in hindsight which is completely unfair. The only way we can criticize his moves with any level of fairness is to compare them to moves we knew were available. I have yet to hear any alternatives we know were available.
4. You're being completely unfair/disingenuous to Dorion in the way you listed those moves. You left out acquiring Zub, the best move of the offseason. Why? You also listed all the picks that he sent out, but not the ones he acquired at the deadline and the one he got for Dadonov, why? You added losing Balcers but not adding Mete, why? You listed Stepan's and Gudbanson's AAVs but not their salary, why?
As far as addressing weaknesses on the roster? Dorion gets a 10/10 for me. He added experience, depth, character, and he added players in positions where we were weakest to start the season. He didn't overpay like crazy. That's what a GM is supposed to do.
Honestly, in retrospect, the only consequential things that happened was adding Murray, losing two seconds, getting Zub, acquiring a 2nd and a 3rd, and adding some veteran depth/experience while the team developed. If the worst thing that happened is swinging and missing on Murray while hitting a home run on Zub. I'm fine with it.
ok took me a bit of time to answer this as I got busy but think this will be fun
1- Do you really think we didn't understand what they were trying to do? The problem is they missed out on pratically every move. If the moves would have been more often "positive" like the Austin Watson one, complaining would have been minimal. I also still like the Murray acquisition as I believe in his ability. I defended him ad nauseam in GDTs last year, and took some heat for that.
We didn't start 2-12-1 "anyway", we had such a poor start because the roster was terrible (and other reasons) and
there was not enough quality veterans CAPABLE of insulating the young inexperienced players. You can bring all the Stepans and Gudbransons you want, it's not going to help your team but sink it. The NHL is a business of results, even if the Senators were not expected to win the Cup, they had to be competitive like they have been after that first month (after the mistakes progressively got fixed). A GM's job is to have insight. You can't have most of your moves "not working out". That's exactly how you end up failing.
2- What question is that? Nobody said all of this is "altering" (most think/understand "we were rebuilding anyway") and frankly, not a lot of moves are, it's more the combination of moves for a period of time that can alter a franchise. We're discussing here and the discussion is about these moves that didn't work out. The only thing it might have done is that we could have made the playoffs if we acquired more quality vets to insulate the young players (the intended plan) and had more of a "NHL level" start to the season.
3- Yes a GM's job is to make good moves to improve his team's roster, making them more competitive. And welcome to the real world if you think "
judging the results in hindsight is completely unfair". I was actually an AGM in my late 20's working for the Claridge group and let me tell you that we were absolutely judged based on results.
We have no idea about the plethora of other moves that could have been made so no NHL GM is ever going to be evaluated by fans based on that. All we know is that us, the fans, want a GM that will make moves (signings/trades/etc) to help our favorite team get better, at least like other GMs around the league do (yes, it doesn't always work out). I think Sens fans know the Ottawa's GM job is harder based on the ownership, the budget, etc. But look at the money spent here : 28.85 AAV for 9 players and the best contributors were? 4th liner Watson? Or "worst PPG than White" Dadonov?
Note : it's true that Melnyk saved some money with Stepan/Gudbranson salaries being lower than their AAVs. Very happy for him.
4- lol there's nothing disingenuous here, 100% factual. Artem Zub was signed on May 1st, and since covid had already paused the season, we could include him if you want but in a normal year, it's a signing at the end of a season. Same reason I didn't include the Pageau trade and other moves that happened 2 months earlier at the 2020 deadline
The picks acquired at the 2021 deadline were also not the "off-season", same with Mete being picked on waivers, like you know, in the THREAD TITLE? lol comon pay a litle bit more attention next time
To be 100% consistent, I removed the notes about Abramov, Logan brown and even Jaros/Chlapik as it happened after the season started IIRC (not that it changes much in the analysis here)
By the way, I was basically the only poster praising the Zub signing before the season, saying that he could even end up in our top-4. And yes, there is posts for evidence.
As far as addressing weaknesses on the roster? Dorion gets a 10/10 for me. He added experience, depth, character, and he added players in positions where we were weakest to start the season. He didn't overpay like crazy. That's what a GM is supposed to do.
What? This can't be a serious post
28.85 AAV (ok remove 7.1 M$ in salary for Melnyk's pockets!) for 9 players, only Watson wasn't a detriment. I would like to say Murray too but his numbers were pretty bad and 99% of the fanbase detroyed him since.
Basically no weaknesses were addressed. Roster holes were filled by "tangible weaknesses", until Dorion started fixing his own mistakes.
The fact that we PAID ASSETS to add these players makes it a failure. We even let go more quality players than we acquired (Balcers and Duclair). You can add Zub from May 1st if you want if that makes you feel better about last off-season.
The question is what package do you think is more valuable to have?
Matt Murray 4 years x $6,250,000 AAV
Austin Watson 3 years x $1,500,000 AAV
Joshua Brown 2 years x $1,200,000 AAV
Derek Stepan 1 year x $6,500,000 AAV
Erik Gudbranson 1 year x $4,000,000 AAV
Braydon Coburn 1 year x $1,700,000 AAV
Cédric Paquette 1 year x $1,650,000 AAV
Evgeni Dadonov 3 years x $5,000,000 AAV
Alex Galchenyuk 1 year x $1,050,000 AAV
2022 2nd round pick (TBL)
Artem Zub 1 year x $1,775,000 AAV (if you want)
OR
28.85 AAV (21.75 in salary) (that you could use better/differently)
Anthony Duclair
Rudolfs Balcers
Jonathan Gruden
2021 2nd round pick (CBJ - #37)
2020 2nd round pick (CBJ - #52)
2020 4th round pick (OTT - #95)
2021 4th round pick (COL - #124)
2021 5th round pick (EDM - #148)
With all these assets and all that money, nothing better could have been done?
