Laugh at other people if you want while #ECWHSWI claims that I am taking shots at people in the past week when I have not.
It's easy to ridicule each other since we are all fans of a team that has not won a Cup or been to a final since 1993. We can all, each and every one of us, claim that the other guy's approach does not work, since all approaches have been tried in the past 25 years.
We've been around long enough that we can poke fun at our posts without it being personal mate. We've had plenty of respectful discussions over the years even if we were at complete opposite ends. It's all good my friend.
We drafted 3rd twice and 9th once in the past 7 drafts. We've traded assets for former first rounders a few times too, getting extra young assets in effect - talking about Danault, Armia, Suzuki. We managed to land one good player as a 27 year old UFA (Petry)
After all that, you judge that we have barely 1 elite player to show for that suckiness.
It doesn't matter man. Alzer was a top draft pick..doesn't make him elite. Hamrlik was an excellent Dman for us in his role, and he was a #1 overall pick, that doesn't mean he was elite.
You can argue Weber-Price are part of the elite. That's two guys. Drouin..sorry, not what I consider part of the elite. Neither is Gallagher or Domi. Kotka? Maybe he will, he ain't there yet. Same for Suzuki.
So no, I don't consider we have anything close to 5 elite players right now.
What I have been saying is that while it is nice to have Alex Ovechkin fall in your lap, even that good fortune does not guarantee that your team won't fail to reach the final in 12 straight years.
I don't think anybody ever claimed that either buddy.
The first great equalizer in all of this GM playing is the salary cap. The more talent you assemble, the more it costs, and everyone is subject to a 100% rigid cap. The other wild card is the lottery draft system. The more good moves you make, the harder it is to get a fortuitous draft result.
It is misleading for any of us to assume that one approach always works and that all the professional GM has to do is follow that one prescription and hope no one else does.
Look at what the salary Cap does to teams. From 2006 to 2017, Chicago won three Cups with Toews and Kane, and Pittsburgh three Cups plus a SCF with Crosby and Malkin, while the Caps won no Cups and had no SCF appearances with Ovechkin and Backstrom and the Habs got no Cups and no SCFs with Price and Subban.
There isn't anybody that suggested any plan is ''full proof'', but the closest thing to a certainty is that if you want to win, 99% of the time you will need to have some incredibly high end guys on your team.
How you get those guys...the easiest way is via tank. It's just that simple.
No, it doesn't mean you 100% need to tank, or need a Crosby to win, but it's going to be way way way easier to become relevant if you have one of those guys.
It's not impossible to get to the cup without them but with more spread out talent/depth, but it's going to be a lot harder as we see it happen way less.
Chicago has increasingly sucked since their last Cup win while Kane was 26, yet Washington managed to win with Ovechkin at 32 after 12 years of futility.
Not sure what's that supposed to prove really...Both those clubs won with major superstars on them, guys they got from top picking.
Saying, with perfect hindsight, that the Caps win should be chalked up to being bad in 2001-2004 ignores everything that happened since and which has been literally a constellation of millions of decision-combinations on the part of all GMs interacting.
I never said that, actually, it's what pro-tankers keep explaining over and over again to every desperate poster that brings up the Oilers. You can have McDavid or Ovechkin all you want, if you don't properly build around, you won't win jack.
But if you don't have those high end guys, forget about even contending.
Had a better Habs GM been able to get the team to a final and possibly win it since 2012, while Backstrom pulled a Radulov for example and left Washington for the KHL at some point, would that suddenly mean that whatever strategy the Habs used to get elite Subban at 45th in the draft should be emulated by all?
Pointless to speculate any of this. They didn't.
The salary Cap and the Draft lottery system affects everything. Chicago had to shed good players one after another to comply with the cap. Meanwhile the Caps with Ovechkin and Backstrom also being expensive and also being late 20s and even older, suddenly put together a string of moves that worked.
Chicago screwed up and ran out of producing some very good kids like they did during their dynasty.
For another example, people say that it was a mistake to let Radulov go because he is a top talent, just below elite. But had we kept him, we surely would not have finished at the bottom and got Kotkaniemi. And we would have less cap space.
Can't play that game. Maybe this happens...Maybe that happens...who knows. We can only talk about what actually happened.
Every decision is a trade-off and no matter what move you make, the salary cap and the draft lottery system apply a countervailing pressure, which while real is also unpredictable in degree. Those pressures destroy some teams while others are barely affected at particular points in time.
The ONLY way to win a Cup is to make many and important good moves - there is no one magic bullet.
It's a sad reality when your GM is just not very sharp and lacks vision. Even if some moves work out, there is always the understandable fear that he will blow it somewhere and somehow else.
And yet we are all fans of teams in a league of soon to be 32 teams, where the chances of your team getting to a Cup final are very, very low.
You need high end talent to win a cup, and enough of it. There is no way around it.
We don't have enough, which is something you acknowledged.
Let's not take shots at each other, let's not oversell any one particular approach and appreciate that it takes a combination of smarts and luck to achieve success. Let's enjoy the ride and the debates with a bit more humility than most of us, including me, have displayed over the years.
It's all in good fun mate. Cheers!
