No offense, but I'm certainly glad you're not our GM. There's more moves than all in or folding.
No offence taken.
But since you brought it up:
I was never a fan of standing pat at the last trade deadline. I was a proponent of selling our graduating assets. This years OA group, should have brought us more in trade at the last trade deadline than they would have in the off-season or up to this trade deadline. I understand that MM may have tried to sell off one or more of the OA’s. There were rumours out there that team(s) were interested and negotiations took place but that a player or two said they wouldn’t report to certain teams. Of course, MM said none of that was true. Whether it was or not, that is what we expect him to say anyway being the professional GM that he is. In any event, we traded McHugh for an ok return.
Then we go into this season with some high-end OA players in Meireles, Yantsis, and Garreffa. Based on our thin group of quality 00’s and 01’s, I expected MM to not contend this year but instead, try to sell off the three OA’s and Damiani as the season played out. Then use those assets along with what we already had (six 2nds, nine 3rds at the time) to go all in on the next two+ seasons.
Garreffa yanked the rug out from under MM’s feet by saying he wasn’t interested in playing his overage season. That’s on him, not MM. before that, we traded for Ingham in the off-season. As a veteran goaltender who is NHL drafted, he’s not guaranteed back for an overage season. I accept the fact that this team drastically needed decent goaltending. Since it was a 19-year-old goaltender we were bringing in, for me it was a signal that MM was expecting to contend this year. Otherwise, it would’ve made more sense to go after a goaltender a year younger. Before we brought in Ingham, I suggested one of the Owen Sound goaltenders. McLean or Guzda. Both are 01’s and would be here this year and next. Either would’ve been an upgrade over what we already had in Richardson and Pfiel.
I never believed that we could go all in this year mainly because our 00 and 01 groups are thin of high-end players. Teams that go all in had better have decent OA’s, and an above average group of 18 and 19-year-olds.
Going into this year, we had high end OA’s, but only one high end 00 in Damiani and one high end 01 in Vukojovic. That isn’t enough to go all in. But if you have a wealth of high draft picks, you can go all in as you can trade your way into being a contender.
We are already pretty good this year but don’t have the high draft picks needed to bring in the help we need to put us over the top in this conference. Especially when you consider what the other contenders have in their draft cupboards. But if we sold off this year, we would have the assets to go all in next year despite the lack of high end 01’s. And we wouldn’t have moved any of our young players.
The reason that I am saying that MM will have to sell off a young player or two along with our remaining high picks to turn this team into a good bet to be the conference champion is because I believe through his actions, he is already all in. He’s already on that road.
My biggest fear is that he stands pat. He didn’t sell our graduating assets going into this year. In fact he traded for a couple more graduating assets. That tells me he has no intention of selling. We don’t really have a wealth of assets with which to go all in to the point where we will be the favourite among the rest of the contenders in the conference unless we sell off a young player or two.
In my opinion, if I were a betting man today, I would bet that we don’t do much more to improve this team this year. I also don’t believe we sell. Therefore, I see us being a pretty good team this year. Then we’ll be a pretty good team next year. And be a pretty good team the year after. If he does stand pat and not improve on this team drastically this year, or the unexpected happened and sell off as many graduating assets as he can, I won’t have any other choice than to be of the believe that he just wants to be a pretty good team year in and year out without ever doing a major selloff one year in order to build up a wealth of assets to be able to buy large in a contending year.
Is there still a chance he sells this year? Maybe. But if he decides he has to, he’ll have to make a deal or two to get us to where we were in the off season regarding the number of graduating players we’d have that should be moved. Owen Sound did a late sell off last year and didn’t really get true value for their assets. Do we want to put ourselves in that position?