Because our GM is so popular and I think everyone is getting a little bit carried away with the praise, the talk about being a shoe in for GM of the year and the calls to extend him from nearly everyone, I thought to bring some levity and sanity to the topic, regardless of how unpopular I may be for awhile by giving an opinion regarding Hextall that isn't overwhelmingly on the glowing side.
The Hextall fanboys like Robbie Brown can still put him on a pedestal AND see that even a GM who many in the state of Pennsylvania consider to be as close to perfection as a GM CAN get makes the occasional mistake.
In this case, the expansion draft....again.
As much, if not moreso the fault of Mike Sullivan for his ideal hockey player being one whom scoring is far down the list as a priority when evaluating talent Or as one for whom goals will always come when you take care of the bigger things... except if you don't have an ounce of offensive talent it would appear (coincidentally, the exact kind of player that Sully was when he played in the NHL...and couldn't stick due to lack of offense...I wonder if part of the irrational dislike of random players and irrational love of random guys with hands of stone is a subconscious or even conscious grudge...not that he seems like a guy who would hold a grudge at all...amirite?).
.
For example, the unnecessary trade of McCann because we'd lose him for nothing.
Well, no. Not if you have an unbiased and clear way of thinking. Sullivan, always thinking he's always right and is right always at all of the time couldn't consider how most of the league executives evaluate talent, and/or thought his evaluation of his players to be so accurate that he was dead right about certain players and never really considered the alternative... maybe he let his stooges in the Pittsburgh media and illusions of their grandeur regarding him go to his head even more than his own opinion of himself already had and he saw himself as some innovator or trend setter or maybe a bunch of other crap.... point being, we didn't have to trade McCann because we would have to lose him in the expansion draft if he could actually evaluate talent as it applies to success in the NHL and not what he stubbornly and narrow mindedly considers "The Right Way".
Then Hextall and his relationship with Carter came into play with Carter and a slot was reserved for him.
Now, there might be an excuse, at least a partial one in the Carter case.
One, didn't he have a NMC in his contract and as such we had to add him to the list?
If so, case closed but even if not there's a slight understanding or valid reasoning behind Carter being on the list. And that was Carter himself. He had just finished his season on the Penguins after the trade and spent roughly 2 months as well as the playoffs with the team and while many didn't know what to expect due to his decent sized and noticable, but not alarming decline during his last little bit with the Kings. And Carter far and away exceeded those declining numbers In the short sample size while looking like having about the same scoring averages that he did 5 years prior when he was considered to be a legitimate offensive threat.
In his 14 games on his new team, Carter has 9 goals. Incidentally, his linemates we're Jared McCann and Freddy Gaudreau. McCann I believe had 11 points in 13 games with Carter and we had some pretty amazing forward depth going into the off-season for once
We knew we'd take a hit due to the expansion draft and free agency but with the depth that the Penguins boasted, we would still have formidable depth if someone who can properly evaluate talent, evaluate potential and properly gauge player worth and the asset value league wide. Of course since our GM can't or couldn't do so, and our coach using his own evaluation and what assets are valuable to him as a parallel equal to the rest of the league then it was Impossible to create leverage if trying to maximize value on a player who they're wanting to trade. So of course it didn't happen and Hextall not only traded a player whom he had no business trading, he did so by diminishing the value
And his reasoning being that they made the deal because we were going to lose someone anyways at the expansion draft....(NO SHIT RON? REALLY? THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS AT THOSE THINGS? ALL THIS TIME AND I THOUGHT IT WAS A SPECIAL INVITE AVAILABLE TO ONLY NHL PLAYERS TO COME AND PARTAKE IN NEW AND POTENTIAL PRODUCT FROM COORS, BUDWEISER AND MILLER BEERS ALONG WITH A PRESS MEET AND GREET).
Well, yeah we know what happened, we lost a huge depth player in the trade.
Oh, and then we had the expansion draft and we lose a 2nd key depth player.
Dumb Butt Ron then loses Gaudreau, the other 3rd line winger with McCann and Carter and that's how you go from the best depth we've had in YEARS (that 3rd line was a legit scoring threat and created matchup nightmares for many teams who didn't have the defensive players to use against it when already having to employ and consider a defensive game plan against a Crosby line and then a Malkin line...not that Sullivan would have taken advantage of it...or had the mental capacity of maximizing such a big advantage.).
Something that should have been so obvious in having that legitimate 3rd line and how big an advantage that was for a game plan was obviously not much for game plans. And not much for seeing the bigger picture, because somehow....and this is just as bad as anything Hextall has done...our coach so criminally overrated a 4th line center (you don't KEEP A 4TH LINE CENTER ....EVER ..in a scenario like that) that he threw away that major tactical advantage to keep an average, stagnant and with little, wait. No upside. Blueger was a finished product by then. His 4th line wasn't some great shit down line either.
What made this blunder so pathetic is both how he treated a talent like McCann who had his breakout year and did so IN SPITE of Sullivan putting him in position after position to fail....but also in Sullivan, who controls ice time, gave Blueger a spot KNOWING THAT HE'D PLAY AROUND THE 10 MINUTES PER NIGHT THAT WAS HIS USUAL!!!
So he traded McCann and lost Tanev for a guy that Seattle wasn't going to pick, and who the rest of the league I'm guessing didn't see him as an elite 4th liner, who was just a regular 4th line center with no upside remaining...but who, SULLIVAN KEPT AND USED THAT VALUABLE SLOT COSTING HIM 2 MORE ASSETS ALL WHILE KNOWING BLUEGER WAS ONLY GOING TO PLAY THE SAME LIMITED MINUTES THAT HE ALWAYS HAD!!!!
Oh, and we also lost Sprong earlier that season because Sullivan refused to play or coach him.... though GMJR...yes, JR not DBR (Dumb Butt Ron) got good value for him
But depth is my point ...
And we got rid of
McCann... I'm sorry, 30 goal scorer Jared McCann who now has 31 goals and has a decent chance to get 40.
Tanev who has 13 goals and even though that's not where his value truly lies, to bring the game he does and add 13 goals is value.
Sprong who wasn't a part of the expansion because Sullivan played his bullshit, hypocritical games by tanking Spring around, saying he had to earn time as all players do while never even giving him a shot to do so. If only Sprong has earned his shot on the top lines by catching fire with his mad scoring line Dom Simon did...for 3 years in a row ..things might be different. Another contrast was how Sullivan got defensive about Sprong and all of his "Sprong has to earn it talk" while knowing that Sprong could do nothing to do so with how Sullivan deployed (rather, how Sullivan DIDN'T deploy) him. Then Sullivan calls actual press conferences for the only purpose to tell people that Simon is a good player because we are stupid and only Sullivan knows what defines good and not good (part of why we're in this mess). He then calls another one when Simon's play on the top line became so ridiculously unbearable that several stories came out that week about basically, WTF is Sullivan thinking, or, Get that Jagoff in the press box where he belongs. In this 2nd press conference, Sullivan again states how good Simon is, how we are unable to see his true value because we don't play the game and see it from a fan's point of view...yup. that's us poor, mentally handicapped, thought we were watching soccer until Sullivan righted us, slugs just can't understand the games intricacies. He then throws Sid under the bus and tells reporters that. Crosby wants Simon as his winger...which brings up a different Sullivan problem if true in allowing a player, even Sid, to make such a choice so poor that it actively hurts your team and that you as the coach don't have the final say?
I seen to recall the 3 previous coaches saying the exact opposite regarding who makes the lines....
Anyhow, Sprong who still gets limited usage and his fair share of healthy scratches is maximizing his time line Sullivan wanted (10 bucks Sully still would find an excuse to not ay him). And he maximizes the time given to him. Much like McCann was amongst the top 5 players in the entire league during his last season in Pittsburgh at Goals Scored Per 60, now Sprong is doing the same with 16 goals in limited minutes ...
Either way, along with Gaudreau, our depth went bye bye because our tandem GM/coach team is prideful, ignorant, lazy, and makes team decisions based on personal issues like a 5 year old.
In just Tanev and McCann, that would be a grand total of losing 44 goals this year because of how poorly they missed on Blueger and his single goal.
Actually he may have scored 2 before he was traded
A -42 goals from our bottom 6 because of an inept coach and a Dumb Butt Ron as our DBGM.
And when considering the asset management? Since we just traded Blueger. A year and a half after losing all we did to keep Blueger, we then trade him for Peter Diliberatore and a 3rd. All of that talent we just let go, especially an emerging star who was only 26 and we only have "Petey D and the pick from round 3"
It's the name of the Hextall Sullivan Air Supply cover band. It's what all those cool kats in the street listen to nowadays
one of my fav, posters.
