Rumor: Rumors and Proposals Thread: "Wrong Side of Heaven, Righteous Side of (Salary Cap) Hell"
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AddyTheWrath
Registered User
We desperately need a “complain about the state and future of the team” thread.
The same topics get constantly rehashed here by the same posters when they have nothing to do with rumors or proposals.
The same topics get constantly rehashed here by the same posters when they have nothing to do with rumors or proposals.
My points have been:
1) Holland failed to do enough to improve the team in the last two years to make it a viable contender going forward by making too many bad bets
2) That same guy who made those bad bets is now supposed to fix the various holes and I don't share others' confidence that he can be trusted to do so.
Time will tell, obviously, but I'll believe it when I see it.
The one thing I will say is that I believe the forward depth issue is completely overblown. Our defense needs a significant add this off-season. Because the team's inability to roll two reliable pairings for much of the past two seasons has been a significant hurdle to the team at even strength. In the playoffs it's even more important.
Losing Klefbom hurt a lot.
Yes he made a ton of relatively low cost bets when the team had zero cap.
He has cap now and can actually swing for known players.
It's the exact same thing
Our forward depth issue is relatively overblown but it still has a massive gaping hole at 3c. We are running 2 NHL 4th lines. We absolutely need a solid 3c so that McDrai don't have to spend the start of their shifts getting out of the zone all the time. We don't need massive improvements at forward sure, but we need a bottom 6 that can at least spend far less time in their own zone than they already do. Which imo requires a legit 3c and a middle 6 winger that can either play 2nd line to push a guy like Yamamoto down or to play on that third line.
Imho we need 4 forwards. 3 middle 6 wingers and a 3c. If Nuge walks we need to replace him too.
A forward makeup of
Blank - McDavid - Puljujarvi
Nuge - Draisaitl - Blank
Blank - Blank - Yamamoto
Is fine, ideally one of those left wingers is a bit older/not signed long so if a prospect excels we don't have a large contract to move quick.
At defense we need a legit #3 left d.
russ99
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- Jun 9, 2011
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How do you know management's track record assessing talent?
Holland signed NHL players with low end contracts, most of which at least showed enough value to be worth their contract.
The only signing you can judge assessing talent of a medium to high level is the Barrie signing. Which for a year at a low amount and a player who was at the top of the D points leaderboard seems like good talent assessment.
Holland isn't going to build a Corsi superteam and I suspect that's the rub with the many of the noisiest complainers, but his track record is bringing in better quality players in past situations that were similar to this summer.
Pulujarvi, Smith, Barrie, Archibald, Sheahan, Yamamoto call up, McLeod call up, etc are all bets over the past two years that have made the team better in varying degrees, does he get any credit for those?
That the model you seem to view as a successful playoff team is probably farther from reality than you're aware of.
GrinningBuddha
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- Nov 22, 2010
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You
If I posted more than once a month I might believe you. Lol
ManofSteel55
Registered User
But you are arguing dishonestly. He didn't light $8M on fire. You can't just add up the contracts you don't like and say he lit that money on fire. Especially when part of it is a buyout that would have caused more issues if it hadn't been done.
ManofSteel55
Registered User
lol why not? Are you saying that the money they spent on Chiasson, Kassian and Turris is money well-spent or that they couldn't have found better players for the same price?
And know you're just lying, unreal. That's atleast two posts in this thread alone this month.
I see why @Del Preston had you on ignore.
Completely agree.
When it comes to wingers, I like the mentions of guys like DeBrusk and Strome. I'm even coming around on a guy like Meier if the price was right. I hate the idea of going big ticket there, because those are the kinds guys you can pick up at the deadline every year. Getting locked into a long-term contract with a role player like Zach Hyman who likely regresses for half of his deal would be worst-case Ontario.
Add a reliable 3C like Bonino, who I saw mentioned before and look for a good vet like Granlund, maybe Tatar. Don't sign a bunch of duds this year. Give the Condors a shot to make the roster.
The left D is where Holland really needs to dig his feet in. The options in free agency are garbage. And when you're talking about trying to find forever homes for unwanted assets like Neal, Kassian, Koskinen and LTIR Klefbom, the OEL availability seems like an avenue worth exploring.
Between those 3 players there might be a total of $2M of wasted space ($500k each for Turris and Chaisson, $1M for Kassian).
One of those players is now a free agent and not a concern, one can be buried with a one time $500k penalty, and yes, one deal is bad. These are insanely far from the cataclysmic decisions you are painting them as.
Even the overpay for Chaisson is debatable, he contributed while here even if immaterially overpaid.
ManofSteel55
Registered User
You honestly think that a trade with retention was an option? You think you can see this and Holland just decided not to try to find a taker? There were tons of rumours about shopping Sekera at the time. You should remember this. It wasn't that long ago. He looked like he couldn't even skate out there. I remember people honestly thinking we might be able to buy him out because he looked like he was hardly putting weight on that leg when he came back. Turns out he wasn't done completely, but he rebounded into a bottom pairing d-man for Dallas - for a bargain bin contract. No GM could have traded a broken 5,5M defenseman with injury concerns and multiple years on his deal. Not with a 50% retention cap. It's not like he was the one who actually overpaid Sekera to be a top pair defenseman to begin with. This doesn't count as "lighting money on fire" to use your term. It counts as fixing a problem that someone else gave you.
The correct amount to have spent on those players in 2020-21 is zero dollars.
Never said they were cataclysmic, but they are all bad bets that represent a missed opportunity, unless you think those were the best players possible to acquire for that amount of money.
I don't think Chiasson was that bad. A little overpaid but it was a short deal that's now over.
I think he's absolutely a good bottom six guy. The problem is that people seem to think the entire bottom six needs to be replaced and I disagree with that. I think there's a few keepers there but because as a whole they don't seem to work well the solution seems to be replace them all. Which I think is silly.
The only actual bad contract there is Kass, imo. Turris is pretty whatever for me, though it was definitely a bet that didn't pay off.
ManofSteel55
Registered User
I'm saying that at worst, you have to take the part that those guys were overpaid by, not the entire contract. Turris, I would count the whole thing because he was a major bust, but the other two are NHL players. But let's look at it in context, and not just the numbers. Kassian was overpaid a bit to keep him from testing free agency. Then he regressed. It sucks. Should Holland have let Kassian go? Maybe, he's certainly not worth his full contract the way he has played recently. But given what he produced the year prior, and in the playoffs, and the fact that he checks a lot of other boxes - fast, hard hitting, enforcer. I mean, he was a 15 goal, 30 point player with size, speed and a mean streak. For the last year he has had injury issues and possibly motivation issues that affected that. I would suggest though, that despite your assertion that it is lighting "3.2M on fire", it is lighting 1 - 1.2M on fire in terms of an overpayment. Chaisson was a 20 goal, 38 point guy the year he got his extension. Is 2M too much for him? Yes. Yes it is. Was I mad that he was re-signed? Yes, but only because it meant that the other free agents either chose to play elsewhere or wanted too much to play here. I would say he was a 1M overpay, so sure, that's possibly lighting some cash on fire. But, you need to remember that Chaisson was only signed because there was nobody else there to fill that role. 2M is also a fairly inexpensive player to begin with, and he contributed about as much as a $2M player should. It isn't the $2M guys that hurt this team. It's the lack of quality $4M guys in the middle six. I would say the much larger issue this past year was the fact that Holland was tied up with zero inflation dollars to work with. We let decent players go for nothing due to no inflation. We did find a good bargain in Barrie, but we were so restricted by that lack of cap space that Holland had to go digging in the leftovers bin again. This isn't because he signed Chaisson and Kassian. This is because the economic plans for these teams was thrown into a blender and basically destroyed. It just sucks for us that it meant no decent depth signings last offseason. You keep ignoring the biggest factor here.
The issue with the bottom six is there are too many similar types of players, low-event plodders who in the best case scenario, don't generate anything but don't give anything up (though they were shockingly poor at the latter). Hopefully adding some of the young guys like Mcleod and Benson can inject a little skill into the mix. Maybe Holloway can step in and be our Caufield did and bump someone else down. But until they can run out three quality lines who can come out ahead, they're not going anywhere.
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