ashenhigh
Registered User
I have to disagree. Hossa was nothing more than a luxury for this team. Lidstrom had been the focal point of it for a long, long time. Nothing was done to prepare for his departure and our only option was to swing and miss on Suter. Oh, aside from trading the 19th overall pick in that summer's draft for Kyle Quincey.
2009 offseason is three seasons removed from Lidstrom's last...
Im looking at a specific point in Holland's tenure where he **** the bed.
At the end of the 2009 season, we had scored 295 goals, and won our division again, 51 wins.
At the end of the 2010 season, we had scored 229 goals, and barely beat out Nashville for second in the central, had a 12 point dip as well, 44 wins.
Clearly, we lacked serious offensive production. We actually had less goals scored against us in 2010 as well.
What is the cause? We lost Hossa's 40 goals (a luxury as you say LOL), and another 42 between Hudler and Sameulsson. Thats 82 goals worth of player production that Holland failed to bring back into the fold during the offseason. We lost an entire line of point production players. Holland eventually picked up Betuzzi (18 goals) and Williams (utter ****) to compensate.
Yes, I agree with you that Holland needed to bring in some defenders due to Lidstrom and Rafalski aging, and Stuart wanting to go back home, however the failure was truly with the offensive core, at least at that time.
2011,2012,2013 Holland should have focused on picking up D, which he did (Quincy, Dekesyer, failed bid for Suter), just not well enough.