what moves would you make if you were GM? I think he has done a good job building this franchise...he is not getting the results this year, but overall i think he has done a damn good job.
Firstly, I would acknowledge that they are not winning anything this season unless major changes
are made, and by major I mean everybody except for probably Bergeron, Rask & Hamilton would be
available in trade.
I would like to keep as many of the good Defensemen as possible (Krug, Seidenberg, McQuaid, Morrow)
while getting rid of the bad ones who for some strange reason have a fan in the Chiapet (Fartkowski,
Miller & Rotman).
The elephant in the room then becomes Chara. He is clearly not anywhere close to what he was in 2011,
and he carries a huge cap hit. Whether his decline is mostly or only partly attributable to his recent knee
surgery remains to be seen, but he might still have enough cache to bring a return that could provide
future assets. He is by no means untouchable.
At Forward, I would trade Chris Kelly for whatever I could get for him. He's a 4th-line talent being paid
like a 2nd/3rd-line producer. I then would entertain any & all offers for Lucic & Marchand. I am sick
of their immature on-ice behavior accompanied by their grossly over-paid salaries and, especially in the
case of Lucic, their underwhelming production.
Next to go would be Krejci, one of the most over-rated 1st/2nd-line Centers in the NHL. He isn't close
to being worth his ridiculous contract (notice a pattern here?), but like Chara, Lucic & Marchand, he
still might be worth enough to another team to fetch a combination of picks/prospects/young NHLers.
As for the rest of them, Reilly Smith is a 3rd-line talent (as evidenced by his post-clanging into a wide-
open net) who is mis-cast as a top-6 Forward; Eriksson is useless, but at least he can help Soderberg
stay comfortable in America; Griffith is a 3rd/4th-line talent, and Cunnyham isn't an NHL talent at all.
Griffith & Cunnyham obviously wouldn't fetch anything in return, and Smith is at least young & cheap
enough to keep.
But the most important thing about all this is, that the Chiapet cannot be allowed to oversee this reconstruction. He must be fired, before the trade deadline at the latest, along with everyone in the
amateur scouting department who have provided the team with absolutely nobody NHL-worthy.
It is shocking how poor their drafts have been after 2006, and because of those putrid drafts they
have had to overpay, both in terms of re-signing their own players and in trading high picks for
mediocre-at-best talent like Kelly, Mezaros et al.
The organization is in the worst possible mess: over-paid, unproductive NHLers with hard-to-move
contracts, and zero viable replacements in the system. IOW, the Oakland Raiders.
