shrader

That last part is what really gets me. We still don't have the slightest clue when any of that will be. A couple bad bounces and the whole restart gets delayed or canceled. At one point I would have shot down this thought as ridiculous, but at this stage I think it's fairly reasonable.

I doubt there was anything even remotely sinister like that during the whole process. At most, they asked at some point and he said no, end of story.

They are not allowed to put that kind of clause in the ELC contracts. It had to be one of those handshake agreements and they honored it. The only way he was ever going to be sent down was if he agreed to it. I've been saying this for a long time now. It's the only possible explanation for him being kept around so long.

And only one business is able to pay for itself. Of course, that could change too if for some reason they aren't able to start their games on schedule.

People always talked about wanting that president of hockey ops guy. Maybe that's where he was minus the title. He's just as experienced at this point as the Joe Sakic's of the world who were thrown into that position not too long after retirement. Titles are mostly BS anyway.

That's the one of the most obvious things in all of this and a big reason why we need to wait for the dust to settle a bit. Right off the bat, clearly they need to hire a coaching staff for Rochester. When they start refilling these roles, we'll get a better idea of the kind of people they're looking at.

I’d have fired him the very second he signed Eichel to a bridge deal.

Well he’s batting .500 on that one

I’m not so sure popular is the right word. The most vocal? Definitely. If you want popularity, my vote forever lies with @Wilbur

This assumes that there was time remaining on those other contracts. Do we know about any of them other than Botterill? Also, are these other positions even contract based or have any guarantee whatsoever? I’ve never heard a single word about the employment status of any scouts.

People really need to move past this crap. At this point, they’ve been married for 27 years and have three kids. That doesn’t exactly mesh well with the “current girlfriend” implication you’re throwing out there. You guys don’t like him, fine, but there’s no reason to get all personal like this. Stick to the hockey.

The whole process seems pretty standard to me. Get the press conference out of the way before you announce the rest. They give Adams his moment and they don't have to answer all the questions right away. Dodging the questions? Sure, but I'd do exactly the same.

The lottery can change that quite a bit though. A few bad bounces there and they fall back a bit. Until something different happens, for me they fall firmly into the "they'll find a way to screw it up" camp. Buffalo's there as well, but they already have their stud player and he's locked up long term. No one's there yet in Ottawa. edit: And on another note, I really wasn't paying one bit of attention to the standings for a while. I didn't realize just how far San Jose fell.

They could just as easily re-hire Taylor pretty quickly. If he wants to be here, he will be.

They can pick apart Buffalo but no one else in the league. I wouldn't call that the gold standard. I really don't expect anything positive to happen there as long as Melnyk is the owner. I fully expect him to complete that forensic analysis of Matt Cooke's skate before he gets his head out of his ass. That said, if they do free themselves from him, then all bets are off.

What do they have that even enters a discussion of matching the Eichel/Dahlin combo?

That and we also don't factor in the staff who winds up developing these players. I've really started to lean much more in that direction in recent years. Yes, player talent/ability obviously plays a role, but I think the developmental staff is a more important role.

I'm not so sure we have a unique vibe here. I can only thing of two reporters showing up here and we chased both of them off. I've seen that exact thing play out in the college hockey community as well. To me it looked pretty much exactly like what we've had here and TSW. I think most people are welcoming, but the few voices who do cause the trouble, it is almost completely due to the high volume of their attacks.

I feel like there's a Carter Hutton joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it.

All the people who like to claim they can draft better than this team has, what exactly are those people using? Quite honestly, I think it's a model that can work in this day and age. You don't clear out the department completely, but you can certainly get by with less bodies out there than you could 20 or so years ago.

I can't picture how any of these "press conferences" can ever work in the zoom format. They're almost always a trainwreck.

Do we really need to go there?

w

There's also people out there who expect the reporter to tell us everything, sources and what not. That's a quick path to career suicide.

Journalist/reporter and messageboard poster. I'm not convinced that someone can actually pull off both roles at the same time unless anonymity is involved in the latter.