It truly is astounding. There is a contingent of posters here that take the position that it doesn't matter what the team does, they should have done something else. Whatever. We are about 1/5 into the season. For anyone watching we are not historically bad which is a phrase that's been around this year. We've got SJ in bad shape and a turnaround for them may not happen. One of the more respected sports writers that covers the team writes an article in which he's indicating the EK trade is working out for us and here we are.....mental gymnastics because that just cannot be.
Both of the extreme positions are ridiculous to me. On one side, you can't say that they have the doing whats best because let's look at the results. On the other side, it's really not realistic to expect opposite results considering the context with the owner, etc. It's a business and the players are the products. You need to invest in the product line (team), pay your best players and spend to surround them with quality support players, quality coaching staff, quality goaltending, quality training staff, management, marketing, etc.
At some point if the sales (tickets quantity, ticket prices, merchandise, etc) don't justify the investment required, what can you do? Being in Kanata certainly doesn't help, having an owner that has had personal financial problem also really doesn't help. And we're not even talking about him as a "character"
Dorion is no Murray, can't expect him to do miracles when he was very green to the job. Bryan was criticized a lot but he did really well in the franchise context, made the playoffs 5/9 (while being competitive in 2-3 of the years the team missed) and laid a solid foundation (Karlsson, Zibanejad, Stone, Turris, Hoffman, Dzingel, Pageau, Chabot, White and had some solid vets in Methot, Ryan, Anderson, etc) with great drafting that should have resulted in a consistent contender but after the 2016-17 peak, the team got dismantled instead of being fixed. Methot, MacArthur, Ryan, Anderson, Neil, Michalek, etc all declined due to age/injuries and nothing was done to offset that. Oduya and Burrows? Great careers but they were at the tail end of these careers.
Anyway, doesn't matter, we are where we are today. Need a great draft in 2020 and an ownership change as soon as possible as well as a new arena downtown.
In an ideal world (and with a different owner), Hoffman would have been traded differently, Zibanejad would have never been traded, Karlsson would have been signed at a more friendly cost, even if he ended up overpaid, Stone would have been there all his career, etc. And then surround them better, etc, all the things I talk in the 1st paragraph. But it is what it is, really not ideal but the owner (who decides everything in the end) decided to rebuild entirely (financially too)
