Why did the Caps Move on from McPhee?

[pezpunk]

It's not an insult, it's an accurate description of his traits. Few owners are as deferential as Tedtalk Leonsis. If you perceive it as an insult because it hits close to home you probably have some issues you need to work out on your own time.

haha funny attempt to insult me for pointing out how lame your insults was. passive aggressive fail.

 

[Revelation]

haha funny attempt to insult me for pointing out how lame your insults was. passive aggressive fail.

lmao you're flustered as f***

 

[JianYang]

People forget the Huet trade. That's probably his high point as a Caps GM.

Other than that he was lucky to land his core players and couldn't build around them. Lucked into a Cup Finals team early in 1998.

Early career drafting was bad and things didn't improve until he relied on his staff more. Even then they neglected the defense for years and frequently had to dumpster dive for cast-off talent of a quality far below what he was handed in Vegas.

Ultimately, the Vegas expansion draft was McPhee's dream come true. Prior to the 2004 lockout he and Ted Leonsis talked endlessly about the new "cost certainty" of a salary cap that would force teams to jettison good players that could be had on the cheap. This was their rationale for selling off Caps talent and spending well below the Cap in Ovie's early years. They didn't account for two main factors, which were the changes to the CBA that would be inevitable when the owners again couldn't keep spending down, and the fact that other teams would be bidding for the same players no matter what. Now here we are 14 years later and McPhee FINALLY gets to vulture the entire league for cap casualties.

But the short answer is the Erat desperation trade and missing the playoffs.

Wasn't that Poile's team in 1998? Or had he just left?

 

[Portable Mink]

Because he is not a good GM.

 

[CapsJunkie]

he left far too many holes, with a shoty defense. BMac filled roster holes right away. made them an unbeatable team on paper. Pittsburg winning the last two years in a row, made fans question Trotz

 

[g00n]

Wasn't that Poile's team in 1998? Or had he just left?

Yes

 

[DCRedhawk21]

The dude was here for 16 years and his final two years saw a disastrous coaching hire, a panic trade, and missing the playoffs for the first time in 6 years (with no wins beyond the first round to show for those six years). The team at that time also seemed to be floundering and there wasn't any sense of organizational direction as to where they were going (I think people forget how much of a disaster that Adam oates coaching experiment was). He was a fine GM for large parts of his tenure, but his time had come.

 

[Lindemann]

This is why GMGM was ran out of town here

He traded a 1st round pick, a 2nd round pick, and a 3rd round pick for Tomas Tatar, who’s not even in the starting line up tonight

While GMBM traded Troy Brouwer, Phoniex Copley, and a 3rd Rounder for TJ Oshie

We got Copley back and Brouwer is a no name currently in this league. So we essentially dumped salary and got TJ for a 3rd round pick

This is why he’s a terrible GM. He will trade assists for subpar to average players but never for bigger players, even in free agency

 

[bottomofthefoodchain]

"beta" is such an insanely stupid insult. it only makes the poster look like a fool.

Bro! You gotta be more alpha bro!
Did I say bro, bro?

 

[Penguin Suited Up]

This narrative has gotten old frankly, mainly because its BS. In the past teams basically only had to expose scraps to expansion teams, this go around some teams had to make some difficult choices. Nashville didnt want to get rid of James Neal, heck Poile even tried to work out a deal to keep him.

Now there are some teams that threw some guys away, but not every team was in that position. Vegas players may use that narrative as motivation, but this wasnt the expansions of the 90's where teams were dropping scraps and guys barely able to stay in the league.

Show me the post where you call Vegas a Cup contender before October and I won’t call this revisionist history. Teams got to protect their top 11 players, so with the exception of a few teams, Vegas should have been picking the 12th best player on each team. Discrediting McPhee’s effort in putting together a cup contending team in its first season is disengenuous at best, especially when there are 10+ teams in this league who have still not won the Cup.