Thorner

Whether his offseason was a success or not can only be determined based on the results of the season. That’s not a cop out, that’s the actual answer

Ie one person could feel paying a 1st for Hellebuyck in a scenario where the WAR of that trade is say, like, 6 standings points, isn’t a good value turn around on a first round pick, and I understand that. But another could say I’m happier with the 6 points and making the playoffs, than I would be with the first round pick, and missing. Even though one would say a first SHOULD get you more value than that. There’s no guarantee either way of course, but in the hypothetical scenario, paying that first is looking for an ends justify the means type outcome in my estimation we have such a significant asset pool that I’d be moving on to prioritizing results over meeting my desired value in every deal

I don’t see how it’s a straw man at all regardless, I think we may be saying the same thing. I’m not saying he wants to win deals just to win deals, I’m saying he may believe in a philosophy where the net result of a trade isn’t the aim so much as exactly what you said, the deal meeting the individual value evaluation of the assets in question

Look at this schedule. 12 of their first 21 games were against teams who averaged 102 points over an 82 game frame.

Don’t really agree. Eichel played all of 21 games, hurt while doing so. When you remember this is 14 point Tage Thompson, and 20 year old Rasmus Dahlin (AND that it’s a rookie, 41 game Cozens) it’s really not a roster to write home about Skinner - Mittelstadt - Reinhart Hall - Lazar - Cozens Olofsson - Tage - Staal Sheahan - Girgensons - Rieder Dahlin - Montour McCabe- Miller Joki - Risto Ullmark ...this was the roster for the majority of that season. It’s not good

I have a hard time discerning anything from that Covid year from hell. There was just so much that was unusual about it. Remember, they couldn’t even practice? Weird divisions and scheduling? Sabres in a strong division? At then the Jack injury right at the start. I don’t think it represents a sample size worthy of much of anything. Coincidentally, that’s also why i feel it doesn’t represent an honest to goodness college try at “going for it” from KA Additionally, with a non “arrived” Tage that’s a putrid bottom 6, and once you factor in Eichel’s injury, the F unit is kinda just poor

I don’t really think the message of Hill winning a Cup is “don’t pay to acquire a more sure-thing cause these guys can come out of nowhere” as much as it’s “don’t pay big $ to your Adin Hills because that sort of performance brilliance rarely remains for the long term when it arrives so randomly”

One difference would be: it worked for Vegas and didn’t for Buffalo Vegas rostered the guy who did what Hill did. If you can’t identify the guy who becomes Hill, you need to go with a more proven option to make a wider landing ground for your attempt Just because our 3 goalie unit from the perspective of the beginning of last season arguably looked similar to theirs doesn’t hold near as much weight as what *actually happened* and the performance they got. So they can try to replicate an anomaly (Hill) again by doubling down on your first guess in Comrie and assuming it was the rest of the team, upgrade with 1 D and call it a day with a rookie added for support in net, or you can appreciate the fact that counting on a Hill to emerge from a random collection of 3 is chasing a very unlikely result when you can’t afford to miss there isn’t really a scenario I see where there isn’t value in at least improving to an average goalie to 1B for us instead of Comrie / UPL, I don’t buy the idea that your options are pay for a vezina guy or put together a team of crapshoots. Just because Vegas succeeded in that way doesn’t mean that’s the standard going forward. The running back comparison doesn’t jive for me, it’s flawed.

Huh?

The bang for buck thing is exactly it. That’s exactly his calculation. Value. “Am I winning this trade”. There’s this way of thinking, there’s also thinking about the ends justifying the means. At some point *it does not matter* what the Buck is, it doesn’t even matter if the Bang is only one more win, if that win is the difference in getting you to the playoffs. That’s the point. Even real GMs are subject to video game mode, if not This is what I mean about winning being prioritized. Are we trying to win, get that one more win that gets us in, or are we interested in “bang for your buck”. “Economic, efficient, bang for your buck”

The Hill to Comrie comp really highlights it for me, honestly. We were counting on Comrie, Hill for Vegas was a fallback. A fallback who had played 74 nhl games in the 5 seasons leading up to this one. Comrie had only played 27! Even *THE* most random, favourable comparable we could pull, Hill, had 3x the amount of experience Comrie had coming in. And Hill was an anomaly. Even Hill had a more bankable track record. I do NOT agree there was no difference in the likelihood of success between them I can keep going with this, because Adams makes this one really easy. Comrie was bad. Not below average, you’d literally have to put in a concerted effort to roster someone worse, and I PREDICTED he’d struggle, lots did. It’s not even a hindsight thing (which doesn’t apply to GMs anyways). Adams scraped the absolute bottom of the barrel. Other words: F*cked around, found out

Who here would trade Etienne Morin for a season of Hellebuyck?

BS

There’s basically a decade where the “competent roster” variable is so thoroughly absent that no judgment can be adequately made on anyone (well, except the Heads) It’s kinda funny and kinda infuriating

It’s not an everyone is created equal who’s not a star situation, though. There’s a ton of ground between Hellebuyck and acquiring a couple Comries and hoping for the best. Goalies can be unpredictable, but they aren’t voodoo. There are certainly some more likely to be average or slightly above, or good, than others, and a goalie who has a proven track record is a better bet than someone who has never seized a starting role at all. It’s important to at least attempt to identify a medium guy rather than an awful guy if you can because of the reason the RB comp fall short: you don’t need good running back play to win. You DO need good goalie play to win, it’s just difficult to predict where you’ll get it. But it’s way way too important not to try, or to act like, if you can’t get a vezina guy, all the other options are equally likely to succeed or not so there’s no use trying The differentiating factor is “who doesn’t cost too much”. The more reliable guys are there. Whether they “cost too much” depends on how important it is for the position to be addressed Perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good, and the difficulty in finding perfect CERTAINLY shouldn’t convince you smaller amounts of improvement aren’t a worthy pursuit. Game of inches

Attach the thread of TRIUMPH!

Yup

He absolutely is ok with doing exactly what he says. I’m beginning to think he simply sets a hard line price/ask and negotiating is simply off the table, more less. Like buying a new car nowadays. He might just not be interested in ever supplementing the team through ends-justify the means type deals, as in maybe a perceived overpay here or there where we get the guy we need, like you see teams “going for it” often do. Ie you can afford to “lose” a trade because your team “wins” in the end by filling the roster hole to a certainty. I think his trade philosophy might be, here’s my price, if I don’t get it, I’ll keep what I have. Better to leave the issue unaddressed than come off worse by value in a trade.

Not to mention going into year 4 as GM. An amount of time sizeable enough to expect results, full stop. Again, it’s a do or don’t, but fully responsible for the results situation. Improve the goalies, or don’t. But whatever the result of the goaltending output, Adams is certainly answerable for it

(just as rough comparisons, not who’d you’d rather have on our team, just rough talent tier comps) Eichel = Dahlin ? Reinhart = Cozens ? Olofsson < Mittelstadt ? Borgen < Samuelsson ? Hagel > UPL ? Asplund > Bryson ? Hagel scored 30 and had 64 points last year. He’s above UPL for me. As is Asplund over Bryson. But the bottom 2 comps matter less, so I’d give the edge to Botterill based on Casey and Samuelsson being way ahead on their matchups. But, overall it’s really not that far apart, imo now maybe you think Botterill was a bad drafter too but I think he was decent as well - - - anyways kinda fun to compare. Don’t really have a strong stance on it - - - edit Cozens honestly a level above Reinhart

Dahlin, Mittelstadt, UPL, Samuelsson, Cozens, Bryson for reference, are Botterill’s 6

Good write up. I more less agree your rankings (C should be “average” but w/e) but with Murray, like I think we can knock his ranking down a peg like you did, for factors like some of his picks being consensus picks, but in ranking the class based on strength alone not as an analysis of the skill of the GM necessarily, Id argue it’s a least a B. Eichel, Reinhart, Borgen, Olofsson, Hagel, Asplund is IMO a pretty decent haul over 3 years. What happened after/ how they were managed isn’t part of it for me, we know that part went bad for the most part

Trades were bad didn’t say otherwise.

Anecdotally I think we sometimes see 4th lines get hot and “go on runs” in the playoffs similar to goalies/how people speak of goalies

Well what do you think? I’d obviously defer to you on this. To me, Murray’s drafts at least look somewhere around average, certainly much closer to normal than that abomination some make it out to be, imo. Hagel and Olofsson are true late round hits. Asplund is a pretty good pick. Can’t fault him for Eichel and Reinhart even if they are consensus or else he has no chance to make up that value, first round is where everyone gets most of their guys. Don’t even have to “credit” Murray for those but they are still full value when looking purely at the strength of our class. It’s not common to see teams hit on 3/4 guys with consistency so to me it looks kinda normal. The eye for talent kinda shows up with those later picks, but on the other hand some of the second rounders were pretty poor. But, there’s the Tuch thing. Anyways that’s just my spin how would you grade it?