As we head towards finding out who John Tavares gives his rose to (hopefully anybody but NYI) we can spend the time by revisiting an all-time great day for hockey transactions
My, how time flies. Two years, eh. https://t.co/27OVjlru7t
— Bob McKenzie (@TSNBobMcKenzie) June 29, 2018
Confirming the PK Subban blockbuster: traded to Nashville for Shea Weber.
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) June 29, 2016
What a day. These trades were wonderfully and spectacularly terrible (or awesome) depending on your perception. Hot takes on hot days. Not much changes other than the calendar year.
Let’s start with the hilarity of Taylor Hall winning the MVP this year and Edmonton currently having issues with their scoring depth on the wing. Let’s talk about how the Oilers are already trying to get out from the Milan Lucic contract. Did you know the Taylor Hall trade was actually for Adam Larsson AND Milan Lucic? How does that trade look right now, convoluted sports journalist?
Peter Chiarelli is a Stanley Cup winning general manager in the NHL. How could he possibly be wrong? I mean, that’s the standard on whether you can levy criticism on a GM isn’t it? Or do you have to win multiple Cups? This stuff is hard to keep track of. Anyways, here’s how Chiarelli became a Stanley Cup winning GM.
Courtesy of r/hockey, TIL that Jeff Gorton was the interim GM in Boston for 113 days in 2006.
— MICHAEL STANFORD (@HalfAgain) June 28, 2018
He drafted: Kessel, Lucic, Marchand
He signed: Savard and Chara
He traded: Raycroft for Rask
Chiarelli was hired over him and fired him, and his head scout, in 2007.
Peter Chiarelli took those gifts and eventually traded away Tyler Seguin, Dougie Hamilton, and Blake Wheeler in Boston. He took his expertise to Edmonton and has since traded away the aforementioned Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle. He had to have Griffin Reinhart and lost out on Matt Barzal. Reinhart was taken in the expansion draft.
Peter Chiarelli won the Connor McDavid lottery for god’s sake and look at where they are!
Chiarelli was given the developer’s version of Oregon Trail instead of the one all of us received. In that version there was no need to play as the banker (easy mode). He was given a new secret option as an oil magnate. As a banker you get $1,600 which is more than enough to win the game. In the developer’s addition Chiarelli was given $250,000. He still died of dysentery before getting to Fort Laramie, crapping all over the Oilers. When judging general managers you need to remember if they were playing the game as a farmer, as a banker, or using a Chiarelli cheat code.
I didn’t forget about Montreal. The Canadiens obviously couldn’t put up with PK Subban having a personality so they had to move him to bring in character and grit guy Shea Weber. PK Subban immediately played for a Stanley Cup and is part of an impressive Nashville Predators group. Weber will be 33 when next season starts and was injured last year. He only has eight years left on his deal.
So if the Canadiens just had to get rid of PK Subban for character reasons they would never considering signing somebody like Slava Voynov. That just wouldn’t make any sense. Yet, here we are.
Folks like David Staples in Edmonton and Jack Todd in Montreal had to have offseason shoulder surgery because no human should have to carry buckets of water that large. To their credit they pushed surgery off and carried through the pain like a good hockey man does.
So how does all of this tie into the Penguins? With Jack Johnson of course. The guy who traded away PK Subban for Shea Weber might be Pittsburgh’s only hope to avoid voluntarily making their team worse. Hopefully Bergevin will use that cap space he can’t give to John Tavares on upping a potential offer to Johnson. If Bergevin really wants to help his friend Mario he’ll step in and save the Penguins.
Much like a Jack Johnson signing the Hall and Subban deals were dead on arrival. There was clear non-hindsight information that the move(s) would suck before they happened. There is a similar amount of evidence pointing to Jack Johnson being a terrible addition for any team offering those years and money.
Because it needs to be said:
SIGNING JACK JOHNSON IS NOT CLOSE TO BEING ON THAT SCALE. NOT CLOSE
For Rutherford to step up to the ranks of Chiarelli and Bergevin he would have had to deal Kris Letang or Phil Kessel for Jack Johnson’s rights in a hypothetical world.
The similarity between the current Penguins situation and the other awful deals is with people ignoring all, 788 Jack Johnson games, the film and data to carry the water of a general manager. It’s amazing to watch year after year. People bend over backwards to defend every move these general managers make. It’s transparently pathetic. These guys make mistakes. The people writing about hockey make mistakes as well. The ones that try to use every resource available tend to make less of them whether you run an NHL team or write about it. Nobody bats 1.000 and the idea you have to pretend they do is stupid. To put on a cape and the crest of your favorite general manager and go fight blindly to the death is a weird thing. It’s OK to acknowledge great trades and it’s OK to point out horrendous signings. The goal should objectivity. Most times the goal is to appease sources so you keep getting information. What you get is the equivalent of state run media. You get an ultimate appeal to authority environment. That doesn’t seem very interesting.
There’s a lot of water in Pittsburgh’s three rivers which means UPMC is going to see a rise in shoulder surgeries. The water is also good for hot takes on hot days.