So lets say we are sitting 0-8-1-1 after 10 and Taylor Hall (eg) asks for a trade. What are the implications from a management standpoint. Of course the team becomes even more of a joke on the ice as I doubt we'd get fair value back.
But what would some of the larger implications be?
1. How would this impact Eakins as the coach? What would it say about him?
2. MacT and management building a team around a star like Hall.
3. Development of the club over the last 5 years?
4. How would the league look at the organization?
5. Is this something we should paradoxically be wanting to get wholesale change at the top?
1: If Hopkins or Hall demanded a trade, you'd think that Mac-T would have a conversation with the players demanding a trade and convince them to stay if there was a new coach. If the players agreed to stay in town in the event that Mac-T agreed to fire Eakins if they stayed, they might go along with it.... but there's a chance that they'd still say no... because they want to win and they might say they're flat out sick and tired of the same old routine of changing coaches, adapting to new systems and continue to look like losers.
2: Nothing wrong with building around your stars. We knew what we had in Hall when we drafted Hall. He wants to win. It just makes Lowe look like an idiot for allowing the team to tank for so long. I really don't think we tanked on purpose over the past two seasons. The problem was that we gained such a bad reputation for tanking for so long that it made players avoid our city and it took us longer to get the attention of prime free agents. If nothing goes wrong PR-wise, I wouldn't be surprised if quality free agents started knocking on our door if we became a competitive team.
3: Of the club? Including the prospect pool? Nobody is going to knock that. Well at least nobody should. Even if we had to trade Hall and Hopkins, the quality of prospects in our top 20 is a billion times better than it ever was before Hall came here. Remember when JFJ, Dubnyk and Schremp were the top prospects in our system? Where would they fit into our top 20 now? Dubby would be in the top 10 and the other two would be outside of the top 10. With or without Hall and Hopkins we've still got a lot of prospects that should turn into serviceable NHL players and that's something we never had before all this craziness happened.
4: Ron Hextall and Brian Burke would co-host a weekly show where they poke fun at and laugh till they fall out of their chairs at our organization.
5: If the results aren't any better than they were before, something has to give. If the management is unwilling to trade away Hall or Eberle for pieces that make us harder to play against, then it has to be the coaching or management.