70 years old... But the writer is an independent who does a poll with 200 persons.
My statistic teacher would have flunk him.
What methodology, where did he get the people?
I find this quite easy to answer because certain paragraph are skipping the facts:
Hawks tanked for at least 5 consecutive years to have four or 5 top-5 picks.
Devils also tanked for many years under the tutelage of Lamoriello.
As for the Quebec/Avalanche, it was the result of tanking many years also.
Over five years (1988-1992), they had a 3rd OA, a 5th OA, 3 X 1st OA and a 4th OA (6 top-4 OA in 5 years). Need to add 2 1st round picks in 1987 (Fogarty and Sakic), 2 X 1st round in 1993 (Thibeault and Deadmarsh) and two more in 1994. The only team that can compare to Quebec as far as tanking goes is Edmonton.
So when they move at the end of 1994, they were all getting in their prime.
This team was built in Quebec by tanking almost 10 years and Lacroix basically added Roy (bad trade for MTL but they had decided they were going to rush it).
Wings did pretty good but they also had unlimited budget and were able to pick Datsyuk, Franzen, Lidstrom, Zetterberg, Kronwall before other teams learned to dig in Europ: this gave them the cups in the 2000's. Rockstrom gave them two or three of their cup. They also had 8 top-11 and a 17th between 1983 and 1991(9 years): Major tanking: this gave them the cups in the 1990's. At least the cups in the 2000s were based on good management (+ of course picks from the 1990's still on the team).
Yes but
are fans ready to see us out of the PO for four or five years?
Just seeing the reaction on this board, the answer is NO.
About Gainey, I never saw so many complains as there are against MB.
Still:
2005-6: 15th
2006-7: 19th
2007-8: 3rd
2008-9: 14th
2009-10: 19th (ECF)
2010-11: 14th
2011-12: 28th
Are we that much worse than during the Gainey era?
We have 4th, 10th, 2nd and 22nd + 1 ECF in four years.
Going back to 2010:
First and foremost. Maybe Halak was the cause of our two rounds but we did beat Washington who was the best team in the league and Pens who had won the cup the previous year.
Because of that we had two rounds with 7 games each. Flyers had much easier path.
Markov was injured during our first game in Pittsburgh.
He was our best player. Remove Pronger from the Flyers and add Markov to our team and the story might have been different.
Leighton played on his head during the ECF: 1.0, 1.0, .868, 1.0, .926
Halak collapsed: .714, .870, .962, .917, .880.
Leighton was not so good in previous rounds and did not do so good in following rounds.
Against us, he was a killer. That was his
career year and he played only
one PO game after that season.
At least Halak has been able to get good number since (never like 2010 but still).
Another problem was that our team was built on speed (and Halak).
So when Halak could no longer play on his head, the opposing goalie playing on his head and our defense decimated (leaving Hamrlik, Spacek, Rookie PK, MAB, Gorges, Gill).
But Halak also did receive as much help from other players blocking the shots.
We still did pretty good: Briere scored 30 points in 23 PO games (12 against Chicago in SCF
) that year but only 3 against us.
Point here: loosing Markov, our best offensive d-men in his prime may be the reason why we did not make it to ECF.
Him and PK were a very good duo and MAB/Hamrlik/Spacek was a big downgrade in offense.
In 2014, we lost Carey Price when Kreider rammed into him and we lost him in the first game of the ECF. Budaj replaced him and we called back Tokarski to replace Price for the next 5 game. So we lost in 6 without Price who was injured in the first period of the ECF. With Price we could have probably gone to SCF.
Point here: loosing Price, our best player may be the reason why we did not make it to ECF.. This is an strong argument to get a player like Weber BTW. Sergacheyov, Weber, Beaulieu and Petry will be able to clean the crease.
Again, we do have problems but the worst one is probably that
we do not tank enough to pick up a load of top players.
Part of the problem was also related to ownership: before 2001, the old ownership did not want to loose money by competing to get the cup.
There was an internal revenue cap from the end of the 1990 till the last year before Gillett sold the team.
When Gillett took over in 2001, he had a very good deal (I think he paid 10M cash and borrowed the rest from the banks and Molson).
He kept the team under an internal SCap while other teams like the Rangers and the Wings were spending a lot until the lock-out.
With Boivin bringing more revenue, he was able to repay an important part of the debt.
For example, in 2007-8, MTL was 17th in SCap at 47.7M (well below PHI at 56.5M).
As part of the deal with NHLPA, the SCap was starting to be published.
It would have been impossible to keep having the most expensive tickets in NHL while having one of the lowest salary cap.
Time to pocket the money and go.
He wanted to sell the team so he opened his pocket
for a year and Gainey was able to get Lang, Tanguay, Laraque and give a pay raise to AK.
So Habs jumped to 5th in 2008-9 and were sold in 2009.
Having recovered between 50M and 100M (maybe more) and paid the team 275M, he ran away with more than 300M in his pocket. Not so bad for a 10M investment.
The salary cap was allowing teams like the Habs to make significant profits.
When you pay 550M, you can easily get 50% in loan.
Habs must have a ROI of 15% to 20% at least.
So from 2001 till 2010, you have basically the result of Gillett "I will bring a 25th Cup to Montreal" the savior pocketing money instead of investing to make this team competitive.
Basically, from 1993 till 2009, ownership had an internal SCap.
This also applied to the organization.
When MB came in, he was allowed to build a management team and was given the means.
With Molson, we have an owner who wants to bring the Cup and he will not change his GM every year. Going through all the troubles needed.
But he still a businessman, if MB would tell him: we need to tank for five years, not sure he would like it.
If we had so many years without a Cup run, it has to start with Ownership.
Let's see what will happen in year 5 of MB. Team collapsed but he did significant changes. There was no point changing a team who had an ECF finals in 2013-14 and was 2nd in the league the following year.
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Man the crap that's posted here at times just so people can keep arguing.
