News Article: The Athletic: How we’d run the Senators: Patience, prospects and piling up draft picks

[JD1]

The only thing I'd say to that is Hasek was a free agent signing, and those few months he spent in net were absolutely dominant. Getting him was the right move and I'll always defend that.

Also while I agree that going for the big splash deal has consistently backfired, we should be adding depth when needed. Bottom 6 guys were crucial to the 2017 run.

Yes those bottom 6 guys were critical to that run. It's not often recognized

 

[JD1]

This is what we did, and it worked, in the early 00’s when teams colluded to keep RFA salaries low.

That doesn’t happen anymore, and good young players get paid at 21-22-23.

You won’t have a playoff team with sub-23 year olds. You can have a playoff team with 22-26 year olds. But they’re not cheap anymore (see: Thomas Chabot).

I'm not sure colluded is necessarily the right term, but definitely the model was more money allocated to the UFA years.

The league is clearly moving away from that towards faster younger play. I think we'll see less and less money and term available to the ufa crowd, particularly the plus 30 crowd.

 

[Micklebot]

Maybe they have better writers for other sports but hockey would be what I'd be interested in for the most part. Their hiring of Jason Botchford and Chris Stevenson made so much more sense once I actually saw the quality of the site.

They have some good stuff for other sports for sure, imo though, the stuff specific to the sens is just so-so..

As someone primarily interested in the hockey stuff, I'd never pay full price myself, but they do have a couple really good articles every now and then.

 

[Micklebot]

Yes those bottom 6 guys were critical to that run. It's not often recognized

They were only critical because of how terrible out bottom 6 was prior to them. Kelly, Neil, and Lazar as the mainstays with bringing up AHL jouneymen in Varone, Blunden, and and McCormick types... Yuck... We had abysmal depth and brought it up to somewhat respectable.

Anyways, the overal lesson is don't ignore the guys in the trenches, i think looking forward we should have some decent options and not be stuck with guys that are well past their prime or never made it past being AHL level players.

 

[JD1]

They were only critical because of how terrible out bottom 6 was prior to them. Kelly, Neil, and Lazar as the mainstays with bringing up AHL jouneymen in Varone, Blunden, and and McCormick types... Yuck... We had abysmal depth and brought it up to somewhat respectable.

Anyways, the overal lesson is don't ignore the guys in the trenches, i think looking forward we should have some decent options and not be stuck with guys that are well past their prime or never made it past being AHL level players.

Our bottom 6 was terrible. They were critical in that it was unlikely we go on that run without the near full turnover of that bottom 6

 

[Micklebot]

Our bottom 6 was terrible. They were critical in that it was unlikely we go on that run without the near full turnover of that bottom 6

Isn't that what i said? I think were are in full agreement here.