rboomercat90
Registered User
In realityIn fairness
1.) The Seattle ploy (which likely never was actually going to happen) worked. It was a kick in the ass to city council who started to expedite the process not soon after. He was smart to do it. If only our actual management was actually as smart and effective maybe we'd have a good hockey team.
2.) Yakupov was the consensus no.1 overall pick by a laaaaaaaaaarge margin. Many people were saying he was the next Ovechkin. Also the guy that "Oiler scouts" wanted (Ryan Murray) is also a mediocre player. It was a bad draft class, which is bad luck.
He deserves flak for not being able to hire a great GM. We don't need "caring". We need a good GM hire who is as ruthless and good as Katz is in arena negotiations.
1) The Seattle play was actually his third attempt at threatening to move the team if he didn’t get his way. The first time was when he used Hamilton (he made a business deal with Copps Coliseum and guaranteed they’d have an NHL team within three years) just days after the team drafted Taylor Hall. There was finally a little positivity after a horrendous season and he put a damper on that quickly. He had full public support for an arena deal at that time and he still felt the need to pull a page out of the Peter Pocklington book of negotiating. That’s when he lost my support and I’m guessing a lot of others too. Months later he had Lowe and Laforge tour Quebec City’s new arena and let the media know they were there. Those antics made things harder for himself. I agree the Seattle deal was never happening and that’s why he looked foolish for doing it.
2) it’s irrelevant that Ryan Murray turned out to be a bust or that it was a bad draft year. Nobody knew that at the time. The point was the team needed a defenseman over another skilled winger and both his GM and his scouting staff were prepared to take one. Yakupov may have been a consensus number one pick although he came with a lot of question marks. He wasn’t what the team needed and that pick should have been used in some form to address a team need, either by drafting a defenseman or trading it for one. Katz interfered because he wanted the flashy toy to sell more jerseys. What made that even worse is nobody else in the organization wanted him and they treated him that way right from the beginning. What a colossal waste of a first overall pick by an interfering owner.