2Pair
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Confirmed with Link: Paul Fenton to be named GM of Minnesota Wild
- Thread starter Minnesnota
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Well camp starts around the first week of September. The draft is over, buyout window closed, and FA is done. All that's left to do is: sign the RFA's and draft picks, hire new scouts, dev camps, and sign a couple of PTOs. The last few years there hasn't been much for trades after July 4th and the start of training camp around the league.
Maybe GMPF will make some amazing trade, but everything he's done so far has left me completely underwhelmed. So my confidence level in him is low.
People forget the bolded part - yes, they bowed out in the 1st round again, but this team never really got it up to full steam last year, yet all that still happened. Better luck with injuries would be a huge plus. 2018-19 is perhaps the last best chance for this group as a whole.
Which is why I agree with the desperation trade comment as well.
Saga of the Elk
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The Toronto Maple Leafs had 84 points at the end of 13-14 and tons of mediocrity prior to that, 68 points in 14-15, 69 in 15-16, 95 in 16-17 and are now Cup frontrunners in 18-19.
They have advantages some other teams don't 1) cash 2) brainpower 3) dedicated fan and corporate support but that's a successful quick rebuild.
The Wild by my estimation are still in the Randy Carlyle part of this process but plenty of season ahead for another kick at the can.
2Pair
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Toronto has been rebuilding since the late 90's.
2Pair
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The Leafs should be a marquee franchise in the NHL. They've gone over 50 years without a Cup. None of the Wild's expansion brethren have won it all, and every time they add a new franchise the odds go down, especially when the new teams are set up to succeed like Vegas was.
100 points and playoffs are pretty good. And Vegas showed you don't need superstars to make it to the finals.
Wait, what? It's been...let me count..uhh...less than three months since he came to the Wild?
I could understand after two years or three years you saying this, but c'mon.
I don't really classify Tor as a rebuild (even their lone Playoff berth in the span of a decade came in a short season). It's more of a straight build that had been going through zoning/environmental delays for a decade.
AJ Thelen
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Boston - they ended up out of the playoffs for two years in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, and people thought they were done. Yes, they still had 90 points, but it went from 117 points to 96 to 93. Their core was getting older, and they started shedding players. Eriksson, Lucic, Hamilton, all gone. Most people thought they were going to go through a rebuild, and they kind of did. But they bounced back this year.
also Winnipeg went through a mini-rebuild as well.
2Pair
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That's nowhere near a rebuild in Boston. Trading 2 guys sounds an awful lot like a "tweak" to me. Winnipeg has been rebuilding since they were in Atlanta.
All i'm saying is that at some point a rebuild is the only option. Pittsburgh got where they are with Crosby and Malkin, both draft picks..Chicago, Towes and Kane, both draft picks..Lighting - Stamkos..Edmonton - I'd rather have Mcdavid to build around than what we have now. Washington - Ovechkin was a draft pick.
Our team is in a perpetual win now mode and it's hurting us now and long term. Do any of you really think we have the team to make it to the cup and win it with the team we have now? After the past 5 years with the same core?
Fletcher really hindered us with the win now mentality. You can blame that on Fletcher or Leipold but either way it happened. He gave away 1st rounders like they were candy and got veteran rentals which amounted into nothing.
All I want is us to accept our fate and stop trying to be a team better than what we actually are. Year after year we fail to meet our so called expectations. Start building around the draft and restock our draft pool.
Our team is in a perpetual win now mode and it's hurting us now and long term. Do any of you really think we have the team to make it to the cup and win it with the team we have now? After the past 5 years with the same core?
Fletcher really hindered us with the win now mentality. You can blame that on Fletcher or Leipold but either way it happened. He gave away 1st rounders like they were candy and got veteran rentals which amounted into nothing.
All I want is us to accept our fate and stop trying to be a team better than what we actually are. Year after year we fail to meet our so called expectations. Start building around the draft and restock our draft pool.
tomgilbertfan
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He traded 2 of our first round draft picks away, and only one of those was for a rental.
I know one was for Pomminvile but I thought the other was for Hanzal? Either way his rental trades have turned into no help playoff time or for long term help
tomgilbertfan
#WhyBother
Don't get me wrong I'm not a huge GMCF defender, but he did only trade 1 first round pick for a rental (Hanzal). That's not what I would consider "giving them away like candy".
I'll admit it's a nitpick-y thing to comment on, but still.
My point is we would be better off with holding onto those picks rather than trading for players that don't advance us into the playoffs or long term help. Again, I can't say if that was Fletchers fault or Leipolds win now mentality but it's not a good strategy for a team that has a long term future.
We can't even win the right way if we rebuilt i'm sure we would somehow get the 11th pick for like four years in a row (i.e six years of no western conference finals)
Yes everybody would like a McDavid. EDM's top-10 picks between Playoff berths:
07: Granger, 6 oa
09: Paajarvi, 10 oa
10: Hall, 1 oa
11: RNH, 1 oa
12: Yakupov, 1 oa
13: Nurse, 7 oa
14: Draisaitl, 3 oa
15: McDavid: 1 oa
16: Puljujarvi: 4 oa
A ten year span of 9 top-10 pick, 6 of them top-5, 4 of them 1st overall. Even if EDM had kept all of them, without McDavid it's a good but not great team. So far all this "rebuild" has gotten them is 1 Playoff berth, cap hell, and then another top-10 pick this last draft. They have also been awful at drafting outside of the gimme picks.
AZ and Buffalo have been right there with EDM, as a bottom feeder, and neither of them are contending for the Cup this year either. NYI have had like 4 or 5 5 oa picks and nothing to show for that either.
It's not just "okay we'll tank for a couple of years, grab some high picks and be a contender within 5 years". We'd have to tank in the "right" years when there is a McDavid sitting at the top of the draft. '10-'12 were not the years to tank, McDavid/Eichel and Matthew/Laine were the years to be tanking.
SupremeNachos
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Don't forget that the years the Leafs tanked the players available were top notch. Just like with Crosby and Kane they made it no secret why they were doing it that year.
Saga of the Elk
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There's obviously a lot more to success than one or two lottery players.
The Oilers thought they solved their problems with Taylor Hall - that was 2010 and already three years out of the playoffs. There was no institutional plan to fail, just a whole lot of problems that they didn't manage to fix.
When you get into a losing streak, losing mentality, it's hard to snap out of it. Not every team has the resources the Leafs have, and a lot of their positioning had to do with that cash.
The instability of bad teams like Ottawa, Buffalo (new owner in 2011), Edmonton (new owner in 2008), Arizona (new owner in 2017), Carolina (2018) doesn't help either.
And yet stability hasn't done much for the Blues, Stars, or Wild.
The Oilers thought they solved their problems with Taylor Hall - that was 2010 and already three years out of the playoffs. There was no institutional plan to fail, just a whole lot of problems that they didn't manage to fix.
When you get into a losing streak, losing mentality, it's hard to snap out of it. Not every team has the resources the Leafs have, and a lot of their positioning had to do with that cash.
The instability of bad teams like Ottawa, Buffalo (new owner in 2011), Edmonton (new owner in 2008), Arizona (new owner in 2017), Carolina (2018) doesn't help either.
And yet stability hasn't done much for the Blues, Stars, or Wild.
Yeah, keeping it between the lines isn't really sufficient, but I do think it's important. There's probably no avoiding the need for luck, whether it's via the lottery or a favorable trade or a sleeper prospect that takes off or just everything clicking at the right time. The point of keeping things stable, in my mind, is to make sure you can leverage those lucky opportunities when they arise.
To a degree I think that's what Fletcher tried to do with his bigger deadline moves, but the bets never paid out the way we needed. Free-agency and the trade deadline seem like poor places to "make your own luck" because the prices are so high. There are exceptions (like Staal), but the winning moves usually don't look like anything special when they happen.
I think Fenton shifting focus to drafting, development and trades is what this team needs for the next few years.
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