Lot of good info here but from what I'm reading a lot of us are in the same boat. I'll go a through what happened at the time with the caveat of no hindsight
1. Hall trade for Larsson - Hall was rooming with McDavid and was a cancer. He was ignoring coaches (I knew this before an interview in his MVP season where he admitted this) and was refusing to play in the system. He was NOT a team player - to use Hitchcock's analogy, he was playing this his team, not 'for' his team. His last year here, when McDavid went down ( more on that later lol) he soared up to 4th in NHL scoring around Christmas time. However, by January we were pretty much out of it and wouldn't you know it, Hall went from fourth down to the mid twenties. I wanted a draft pick (2nd rounder to compensate for the 2nd round pick lost when hiring Chiarelli) in addition to Larsson but I was ok with the trade and that was the 'general' concensus here - addition by subraction. The subsequent signing of Lucic to protect McDavid (now many games has McDavid missed due to injury since we signed McDavid have we missed?) was also part of that deal. Now, in hindsight, yes - it was a terrible deal - both of them (Lucic and trade) but at the time, it wasn't
2. Griffin Reinhart trade - first off - that wasn't Chiarelli. And that my friends is what is still scaring the crap out of me. That was Bob Green and probably MacT and Howson chiming in, AFTER PC tried and failed to acquire Douggie Hamilton. To refresh your memories, the reported asking price from Boston was our 1st and 2nd round picks + Darnell Nurse for Hamilton. How would you all have felt if THAT trade was made? As well, for the picks in question, jumptheshark is 100% correct. I know for a fact that Barzal was not being considered and for those of you who state 'best player available' well no, not only are you wrong, you wouldn't have drafted him either. It's so easy to sit at your keyboard and type that. But bottom line is this - you had Draisaitl and RNH, and you just drafted a generational player in McDavid. Barzal would never, ever, have gotten the ice time to 'show case' his talent for potential 'trade bait' first of all. Secondly, with those three centers already in the fold a defenseman would have been top priority and was. Who it was, I'm not sure. If it wasn't a dman, we were taking Svechnikov who was taken by Detroit and still hasn't made it in the NHL (not talking about his younger brother playing in Carolina). For our second round pick, the guy they had wanted was the RHD Brandon DeCarlo. I know that too. So anyway Green and whoever else convinced PC that Reinhart was ready now and fit the bill of 'big and heavy' and was the captain of a Memorial Cup winning team so he listened to his advisors and made the deal. I personally hated the deal as I never liked Reinhart - none of them- but at the time I understood the reasoning why they made the trade. It turned out later no one had actually watched Reinhart play in over a year. So to me, the blame on PC is not the trade, it's the fact he didn't fire the clowns that told him to trade for him. THAT was PC's mistake. But tell me, was he allowed to? That's what scares me
3. Eberle for Strome trade - loved it - still do. Eberle was complete garbage in the playoffs. Utterly useless. We all hated him. And he's making 6M a year. AND we need room to replace Sekera. AND Strome is / could be someone that just needed a change of scenery and he was also a player who could play center and RW. So we not only got a more versatile player, but someone that saved us 3.5M and still had potential. That wasn't the issue. The issue was what happened after the trade. NOTHING - we just saved 3.5M in cap space - more than enough to bring in even a rental for 1 year to fill in for Sekera, and nothing. However we do not know what happened behind closed doors. To this day I give PC the benefit of the doubt that he was trying behind the scenes to make a move but either the asking price was too high or the contract was (remember Sek is coming back and so is his cap hit) so though in hindsight it was a bad trade I was ok with the move. Thought it was smart at the time.
So when did I sour on him, this off season. After three years, his 'plan' clearly wasn't working. But that's ok guys - we are in a constant change of flux. As people, we have to change too. Those that can adapt and change I have no issue with. I was hoping in his end of year address he'd come out and say "yep, looks like 'big' and 'heavy' on it's own can't get it done and we need to go in a different direction". But he didn't so that was when it turned for me. I won't rehash what happened after that as it's all here and I agree with all of it but will add one thing:
Clearly, PC was in desperation mode. The moves he made were literally that of a drowning man grabbing on to anything to save himself, not caring about the welfare of others (in this case the well being of the Edmonton Oilers and the players on that team). But I put to you all here - WHO allowed this to happen? WHO allowed the Koskinen signing - if what Bobby Nicks says is true PC didn't sign him on his own, it was a concensus signing. I also heard it was Keith Gretzky, not PC, that worked on the Petrovic and Manning trades. PC just signed off on it. Not saying that's true, as it was reported on Gregor's show I believe, but IMO it makes sense as why would you do both deals so close together? My guess was it was one or the other and both deals were done in separate transactions at the same time. But that Manning trade didn't sour me on PC, I already was, it soured me on the organisation as a whole. How do you bring in a guy who broke your star players collar bone even if he was playing well. NVM the fact he was a healthy scratch on a weak blueline for a team a lot worse (?) than yours!
So now we got a politician with zero foresight asking anyone and everyone "what's wrong with our team, what's wrong with our water, who should I hire as GM" running the show. And everyone is happy PC is gone lol??? Hey, I am too don't get me wrong, but dont' kid yourselves. This is way deeper than PC. Whenever something goes off the rails like this, it starts from the top. Unfortunately, the guy at the top is the one hiring the next GM - so I'm not very enthusiastic about our future. Let me put it another way, if Glenn Sather were in BN's spot, would he be calling Darryl Sutter at his farm looking for an opinion on HIS team? I don't know but if I was betting on it I'd say no way Slats would have his own plan and know the type of person he wanted to hire. That's how I see it anyway. Sorry for the long rant - thanks for reading if you made it this far