GDT: Nashville vs CBJ | March 19 7pm ET | Meme Madness!

[Dr. Fire]

I'm not going to get into a discussion of the firing, or claim that he was a great GM, but when you say he doesn't deserve any credit, yeah I'll quibble with that.

Howson took a poor team and added value through years of successful drafting and trading. Do a full analysis of his draft choices compared to the surrounding picks and you'll conclude that he is at least average in that department, if not better. I like most of his trades as well.

Of course, if you are going to do a full retrospective, you have to look at the fact that the team was bad for a few years. But to answer you most simply, he deserves credit for the way he composed this year's team: the Nash trade, the second Carter trade, the Bobrovsky trade, the Foligno trade, etc.. I really like this team, and he is the one who built it.

Yea, the Nash trade prompted by Nash because he lost faith in Howson, and the second Carter trade that happened because of a bad first trade for Carter. That entire Carter situation was a fiasco, but I will give Howson credit for bailing himself out of an embarrassing situation.

I like this team as well because of the way they play with heart, and tenacity. But, sorry, this team as built won't come close to being a true Cup contender. I realize that because of our lowered expectations for this season this hot streak has been a blast. I want to see it continue the rest of the way. But, will it? That is the question.

In the spirit of compromise, I will grant you that Howson, on purpose, or because he was making the best of a bad situation, built this team. Where it ends up is anyone's guess. But I will also say that I had no faith that Howson would have continued to properly build this team for the better in the future. He did not accomplish that in six years, and I saw no reason to keep him around for another stab at it.

 

[db2011]

Yea, the Nash trade prompted by Nash because he lost faith in Howson, and the second Carter trade that happened because of a bad first trade for Carter. That entire Carter situation was a fiasco, but I will give Howson credit for bailing himself out of an embarrassing situation.

I like this team as well because of the way they play with heart, and tenacity. But, sorry, this team as built won't come close to being a true Cup contender. I realize that because of our lowered expectations for this season this hot streak has been a blast. I want to see it continue the rest of the way. But, will it? That is the question.

In the spirit of compromise, I will grant you that Howson, on purpose, or because he was making the best of a bad situation, built this team. Where it ends up is anyone's guess. But I will also say that I had no faith that Howson would have continued to properly build this team for the better in the future. He did not accomplish that in six years, and I saw no reason to keep him around for another stab at it.

From a front office standpoint, no one deserves more credit than Howson for the position this team and organization finds itself in right now.

Nash's hands are as dirty as anybody's, and as the season progresses I feel more and more like I'd make that trade 10 times out of 10. We'll see how Nash does on another team, or rather how another team will do with Nash on it, since we know he'll put up impressive numbers. But Howson got three NHL players and a first round pick and the Jackets are hovering near the Rangers in the standings.

The only thing to say this team can't be a playoff contender is a poor start to the year exacerbated by a lockout. Give them a full training camp and a full season, and this team right here would challenge for the playoffs IMO.

You can be tired of talking about it (and I'm getting there myself), but when your disdain for XGMSH prompts you to claim he would have continued to assemble a poor team, in the face of the team that he built that is playing this well right now, I gotta speak up. It's just not looking at the facts.

 

[Samkow]

I understand that, and I understand that the so called experts can be woefully wrong, but still, most of us on this board never saw this hot streak coming either.

Honestly, Howson had six years, count em, six to build a winner, and I really want someone (Mayor) to convince me what a great job he did. If he had been so great, would you not think that after six years we would be icing a play-off caliber team?

I mean look at Toronto. Burke got canned, and that team is a legitimate play-off contender. So was that not worse than Howson being canned?

Anyway, there is still a ways to go. I want this team to make a run at this, and I will withhold final judgement on this team till April 27th. I thought Howson needed to go for a lot of reasons, and I still think that he needed to go.

I have always said that Howson did some things right, but sadly he did not do enough right.

I'm not objecting to whether or not he should have been fired (My thoughts: He should have been, though I liked him far more than most here and wouldn't have been upset if he had been kept on). He's gone. The team could win the next 18 games, win 16 consecutive playoff games, bring home the cup, and he'll still be gone.

I just don't understand how he doesn't deserve any credit. This is still very much his team. And unless Matthew Ford and Spencer Michacek gave some sort of secret inspiring Skype pep talk to the current team that we don't know about, he deserves 90-95% of the credit. Just as he deserves blame for sticking with Steve Mason for far too long/hiring Scott Arniel/drafting Nikita Filatov, he deserves credit for sticking with Todd Richards/getting Bobrovsky/assembling a hard working team.

 

[ClevelandJacketFan]

And he should deserve some credit for hitting on a lot of low round guys. Despite his failures at the top of the draft, his late round picks, especially a guy like Prout, have been fantastic for us.

 

[pete goegan]

It makes so much sense that I won't even respond to it because I can't. I'll just have to wait until the next thread.

Well played, Your Honor!

 

[Robert]

If you want to trace lineage, EVERYTHING this franchise does for the next 20 years can be traced back to XGMDM. Sorry. MacLean doesn't get credit for Anisimov.

Meh....