Yeah. While I think Seabrook had a bad season prior to the one where he signed his contract, I think most people expected Toews/Kane/Keith to hold up longer than they did. Although I guess once you adjust for all the playoff games they have played, every player is 3-4 years older than their listed birthdate!
Regarding the Sharks, this seems like it was just the worst offseason they could have had. They went all in signing Tavares...and weren't able to do it. So, now they have this halfway-there roster with no path to finishing it. Might have been the season for another refresh/reset.
By the way...has anyone mentioned how ridiculous it is that DW hired his son (and now promoted him)? That's nepotism at its finest. Bad culture for an organization!
Regarding this off-season, I remember a little while back, Juxtaposer mentioned that she felt like she couldn’t be mad at DW, because he is doing what he can, but I don’t agree with that. Had he inherited the team on the day of the draft, I would entirely understand not being mad about what he did between July 1st and now. I actually agree that his moves in that time frame have been fine and agree with Maladroit that the worst possible off-season would have been one where we signed players JVR and Bozak after missing out on Tavares.
However, I am absolutely furious at him, because of the contracts he signed Kane, Vlasic, Jones, Couture, and Burns to. He backed himself into a wall where he is trying to still contend with a team that clearly is not what it once was. These moves were awful because they pretty much ensure that the team will not be able to undergo a “re-build/re-fresh/re-set” or whatever you want to call it any time soon. He basically built a (questionable) core around a star #1C that he planned on potentially acquiring, and signed that core long term to contracts where the only reasonable expectation is that they will be good now, and bad later; similar to the Paul Martin and Joel Ward contracts. Except these contracts carry much larger, more serious implications if these players only perform and age as reasonably expected. And, on top of that, these contracts are only worth it in the very short term if the team has a #1C that they can reasonably rely on to perform at that level; they absolutely don’t and so these contracts just look more and more awful.
In closing, I am absolutely furious with DW. He spent over $35M over the next 6 years on Kane, Vlasic, Couture, Jones, and Burns. 5 players who are all going to be in their 30s for the majority of those contracts, which have NTCs that make them seriously difficult to move. On top of that, none of those guys outside of Burns, who was 32 at the start of his 8 year contract, are anywhere near franchise level superstars, and Kane is the only one who hadn’t notably declined from his best season this year. (Couture is debatable as well).
Right now, with the Sharks being unable to acquire Tavares, right now would
absolutely be the time for a “re-set/re-fresh”. We have some solid young pieces that we can use as building blocks to surround some elite franchise talent, but we are totally missing that elite franchise talent for now and the future. Our best course of action would have been to sign Vlasic, Burns, and Jones to much shorter term contracts with higher AAV, trade them (and Couture) with salary retained, not re-sign Kane, and re-fresh. This team absolutely isn’t a contender right now and outside of the unlikely scenario in which they acquire an Erik Karlsson, John Tavares, Tyler Seguin level player, they won’t be that contender in the future. They’ll be a fringe playoff team built around Kane, Couture, Vlasic, Burns, and Jones.
DW spent all of that money and all of those assets to build a team that would possibly be a contender if and only if Tavares signed with us in UFA. He should have only done that if he was certain that it was very likely Tavares would sign here. Given the fact that we offered Tavares $2M per year more than any other team, and we still didn’t even come down to his final 2 teams, DW quite obviously planned poorly for this situation.
We talked about DWJr. in a few other threads. I can entirely understand the complaints with nepotism and the bad culture it creates, but after watching that “shaping the Sharks” video, I believe he could be a strong head scout. He was the driving force behind the Merkley pick and so I am definitely a fan of his outlook and philosophy. But I can also understand why one would be unhappy about the nepotism.
