Speculation: Is a possible rebuild/retool coming?

[Puck Luck Run Amok]

Hopefully the next GMs scouts draft better than Bob MacKenzie's list

 

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Until this team gets game breaking talent up front, they will stay mediocre at best.

Hope for a miracle and end up with Bedard otherwise, I won't see another cup for the rest of lifetime.

Sad that Ottawa will be way ahead of us within 2 years and we are still stuck in limbo.

 

[WeThreeKings]

Here's the truth -

The Tatar-Danault-Gallagher line is done. Both Tatar and Danault could be gone, minimum one.

Weber is only going to be worse next season.
Price is likely never going to be healthy for a full season again.
We are losing a player to expansion.
We will still be near the salary cap.
Edmundson won't have a season this steady again (see: Chiarots first season)
Toffoli won't score at the same pace.
We are returning to our regular division/conference.

Unless there's a huge break-through on Suzuki, Romanov, Kotkaniemi and Caufield.. and major change in philosophy on a coaching perspective.

This team is in for a couple lean years at the bottom of the standings.

 

[tinyzombies]

Physics is applied mathematics. A certainty. If we are going to follow your suggestion? About a person with a physics degree being our GM? I'd hire best high school physics teacher in Quebec. Seriously! He or she can "conceptualize" like no other.

Let's do it!

 

[tinyzombies]

Until this team gets game breaking talent up front, they will stay mediocre at best.

Hope for a miracle and end up with Bedard otherwise, I won't see another cup for the rest of lifetime.

Sad that Ottawa will be way ahead of us within 2 years and we are still stuck in limbo.

Ottawa will be ahead of us next year, depending on what UFA's we sign.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Bergy certainly seems like a guy who has been managing for his job. To his credit, he made some decent moves in Anderson and Toffoli but at the end of the day, the same problems plague this team from the day he took over. It's time for a top to bottom org-wide house cleaning is long overdue. Bergy, Timmins, the entire coaching staff... time for a new start.

It's becoming clear that it's time to do this. If I was Molson, I'd change my title to CEO and hire a President who can bridge the Hockey operations and business side of things and have him review the management structure. Molson needs to separate himself from this decision IMO.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Ottawa will be ahead of us next year, depending on what UFA's we sign.

I personally don't care if the Sens are behind or ahead of us. The main focus is our direction and how we are going to reinforce our youth core.

 

[Doc McKenna]

Twenty years from now, this will be known as the Molson era, where the team was shit but the owner was happy. Leafs have the Ballard years, we will have the Molson era.

Ballard era had randomly benched players, hmmm

Molson eras has randomly benched...

 

[Doc McKenna]

They are blowing this team up this summer.

100% sure.

MB is out, DD is out.

Price gone, Weber gone, Tatar gone, Danault gone, Drouin gone, Armia gone.

I wouldnt be surprised if KK is out as well.

I have no idea who is going to take the office job, but this person needs a new vision, and have the balls to go with it.

Molson is a pencil pusher, doesnt know shit about the sport. All he cares about is corporate $ and corporate (edit) fans.

Going to be a big summer!

If they do that they missed the boat on a lot of UFA we could have got something for instead of moving lower picks for absolutely useless players. MB thinks he can pull of petry and danault like trade all the time, it doesn't happen. Funny those 2 are exact polar opposites of each other as well. Petrys D game isn't very good for a dman, and danault O games isn't very good for a forward.

 

[cphabs]

I personally don't care if the Sens are behind or ahead of us. The main focus is our direction and how we are going to reinforce our youth core.

like Ottawa is doing right now?

 

[1909]

Just speculating... next season line up with no actual UFA players re-signed or new ones signed, and no instant impact trades (Drouin)

Toffoli-Suzuki-CC
Anderson-KK-Gally
Lehkonen-Evans-Byron
Vejdem0-Poehling-Belzile or Ylonen

Edmundson-Petry
Chiarot-Weber
Romanov-Kulak-Fleury or Brook

Price-Allen

 

[Legend123]

Here's the truth -

The Tatar-Danault-Gallagher line is done. Both Tatar and Danault could be gone, minimum one.

Weber is only going to be worse next season.
Price is likely never going to be healthy for a full season again.
We are losing a player to expansion.
We will still be near the salary cap.
Edmundson won't have a season this steady again (see: Chiarots first season)
Toffoli won't score at the same pace.
We are returning to our regular division/conference.

Unless there's a huge break-through on Suzuki, Romanov, Kotkaniemi and Caufield.. and major change in philosophy on a coaching perspective.

This team is in for a couple lean years at the bottom of the standings.

nope, u mean middle like always, too good to tank too bad to do anything. Stuck in the middle

 

[cphabs]

I don't love the idea of continuing a rebuild/retool but I don't think we're going to have much of a choice either way considering the teams in our division.

1. We are in a capped profit sharing socialist league that rewards failure with successful franchise's money/resources.
2. Our league is rapidly expanding, which makes the talent pool, players, coaches, GMs limited or scarce. Probably the most important rationalism for success in the NHL.
3. Self-limiting the availability, of any available resources related to a NHL franchise, is f***ing lunacy and completely disingenuous.
4. Here we are...

 

[BeliveauFan4ever]

We need a GM that understands where the game is headed and builds a team accordingly. Having Ken Daneyko clones on D in 2021 is comical

Clones, yes, and not quite as solid as the original.

 

[BeliveauFan4ever]

We need a GM that understands where the game is headed and builds a team accordingly. Having Ken Daneyko clones on D in 2021 is comical

We need a GM that also realizes where our fav team is headed, which is the dead zone.

Any GM looking to merely grab a wrench and tinker would be a brand-new same ol’ disaster.

 

[AlexGretzchenvid]

You could argue we would do better with the kids in the line-up so even if we re-tool, we could still make the playoffs

For exemple, the 3 vets Bergevin has acquired at the deadline (Staal, Gustafsson, Merrill) are not better than players like Romanov, Mete, Juulsen, Caufield, Kotkaniemi, Evans

Brook/Fleury would be interesting to watch in the NHL and I'm certainly down to try them. They can't do any worse than Chiarot/Kulak/Merrill/Gustafsson. Ottawa did fairly well in the 2nd half with only Chabot on D and a bunch of kids who can skate and are smart like Zub, Brannstrom, Mete. Why not us?

Up front I think Ylonen should be left in Laval for now

Overall we could mix in some solid vets with 8-9 young players

Anderson-Suzuki-Caufield
Toffoli-Kotkaniemi-Gallagher
Lehkonen-Danault-Armia or FA signing
Poehling-Evans-Byron
Vejdemo/Belzile

Romanov-Weber
Edmundson-Petry
Kulak-Fleury
Brook

Price-Allen or sign backup

Suzuki isn’t strong enough to feed both Anderson and Caufield, yet. Poehling fits in better on that line as he’s a pass first, look for the open man type of guy. Anderson is your high end 3rd line checking forward who has speed and would excel with Evans and lehkonen.

kotka needs wingers more like Anderson, someone he can send on a break out pass, throw toffoli on the other side and you’ve got some good chemistry.

our back end looks like a nightmare given the style our forwards play. We need a defensive overhaul and would love to see those younger guys in.

 

[BeliveauFan4ever]

We’ll have to accept Molson will remain president. I heard it somewhere, forgot where, but the president of hockey ops as a sole position isn’t prominent in the NHL (there are combined roles with GMs though) so it’d be a waste of time and energy to think Molson would have somebody else oversee the team.

GM though, sure, start there. In fact, I wonder if this would be a role Bouchard would want? He lacks NHL experience though.

Ah, F*** it... I don’t know how to fix this team without recycling the same trash at all management positions at this point. Just so tired and fed up with the team management.

As crazy as this sounds, I am going to blame Roy and to a lesser extent, Theodore. Because we have had great goaltending since the late 80’s, this stupid team is so married to the idea of building from the net out.

Yeah, I know you need a good to great goaltender, but this whole play not to lose, contain and counter is so frustrating for the past couple decades.

A case can be made to just trade for or sign a seasoned goaler.

Bergevin spends hours staring at our net when the idea is to put the puck in the one at the other end.

Islanders and Hawks didn’t win their Cups with spectacular goaltending and journeymen leading the way everywhere else. WTF is wrong with that guy?

 

[yianik]

I think Suzuki is a top 6C and he will establish that in the next 2 years. No idea if he can be a 1C.

I still have hopes for KK to be a top 6C , and we will find out over the next 2-3 years. Je needs to be allowed to play next year with consistent and good wingers, and he needs to take advantage of that.

Too bad we don't have more good C prospects like LA. We should add more.

MB has stunk building the D. The lack of a couple more PMDs killed us this year. Hard to play against ? How many hits did Kulak, Merrill and Edmundson have last game ? Weber with 2, a joke.

Unless we pick off Dougie Hamilton ,the D will be awful again next year. Romanov in the stands , a joke.

We are not contenders in the next couple if years. Post season peek a boos stink. Are you happy we got by the Pens last year or that we just made the post season this year?

Price stepped up big in the post season. If there is any time to try to move him it is right now. All I'm saying is to try. You have to find a team or two that will trade for him, and then you go to Price. And yes , the Kraken jump out as a team to call.

If not Price, maybe the Kraken would like a veteran on the back end, like Weber. Maybe another team, perhaps Nashville.

I don't see us having trade assets that will bring us what we need , being top 6C prospects and top 3 PMDs. I think we have to go through the draft. ?

 

[iamtalbot]

Just speculating... next season line up with no actual UFA players re-signed or new ones signed, and no instant impact trades (Drouin)

Toffoli-Suzuki-CC
Anderson-KK-Gally
Lehkonen-Evans-Byron
Vejdem0-Poehling-Belzile or Ylonen

Edmundson-Petry
Chiarot-Weber
Romanov-Kulak-Fleury or Brook

Price-Allen

Likely the kraken will take allen.

Right there you have a top 10 draft pick team.

 

[yianik]

Try to trade Price now. He is having a Price post season and some teams might be interested, like the Kraken.

 

[BergevinBurner]

I don't see us having trade assets that will bring us what we need , being top 6C prospects and top 3 PMDs. I think we have to go through the draft. ?

I'd be fine running Suzuki, KK, Poehling, Evans down the middle in a rebuild year.
I'd target a top 6 LW along with a PMD since we're likely gonna be missing our 2 top LW's from the start of this season.

As far as assets we could move, I'd use a half retained Weber, Petry, Drouin and 1 of Anderson/Gallagher since there's no way Caulfield should be in the bottom 6 if we are rebuilding.

 

[Maitz]

We have a lot of prospects but we don’t have a lot of quality prospects

 

[canucklover123]

We have a lot of prospects but we don’t have a lot of quality prospects

Yep, even our graduates are not high end. Were gunna have to either draft one in a lottery and wait a couple years to be competitive or we have to trade for one a la Eichel

 

[yianik]

I'd be fine running Suzuki, KK, Poehling, Evans down the middle in a rebuild year.
I'd target a top 6 LW along with a PMD since we're likely gonna be missing our 2 top LW's from the start of this season.

As far as assets we could move, I'd use a half retained Weber, Petry, Drouin and 1 of Anderson/Gallagher since there's no way Caulfield should be in the bottom 6 if we are rebuilding.

I am leery about gutting the team. Sure it helps you drop, , but you don't want to end up like Buffalo. So maybe you keep Petry, who will help the young guys, for example.

But I like most of what you are saying.

 

[Grate n Colorful Oz]

1. We are in a capped profit sharing socialist league that rewards failure with successful franchise's money/resources.
2. Our league is rapidly expanding, which makes the talent pool, players, coaches, GMs limited or scarce. Probably the most important rationalism for success in the NHL.
3. Self-limiting the availability, of any available resources related to a NHL franchise, is f***ing lunacy and completely disingenuous.
4. Here we are...

We've had an expansion of two teams over thirty, after more than 15 years being static.

Rapidly expanding in my book is more like going from 6 to 30 in the span of thirty years.