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Love, love, love Hextall, but this move was necessary. He did very good, not great with the draft, rebuilt the Phantoms and created depth in the organization through drafting etc. But he let too many opportunities for players on the trade market to pass by. Can't survive managing an NHL team through drafting alone. Have to acquire a piece here & there when the young players don't reach their potential. Plus they needed more veteran stability than what is currently on the roster - which BTW, WAS a team effort / failure. Homer is as much to blame as Hextall. Voracek, MacDonald and Ghost are not strong enough players on their own to anchor the roster. Getting back to Hextall, his biggest mistake was resigning Neuvirth, who is a great guy no doubt, but his body had long quit on him. This had a ripple effect of overplaying Elliott, who has suffered two injuries as a result of overuse. But before those injuries, Hakstol made things worse by continuing to play Elliott even when Neuvirth returned from the IR. This is another case, just like Berube, where the #1 got overused. Back to the goalies, when their performance dropped off, could not back stop the rookie d men's mistakes. And this has effected their confidence, notably Provorov. A good goalie would erase most of those mistakes, and save their confidence. But this has spread from Provorov to Ghost, and now to the rest of the d men (except for Sanheim & Gudas). Hextall also protected 3 players in the expansion draft that are no longer on the club. The most interesting of the three are Filpula and Manning, both of which got released the following season for no compensation. Those two were valuable for 2017-18, but I argue that Bellemawr was MORE valuable - the best penalty killer on the team. The PK has been broken since he left - and has not been addressed by the draft, trade or free agent markets. I like to play armchair GM at home. My idea was to protect 8 skaters, rather than 7-3-1, leaving Manning & Filpula exposed. Filpula had just been bought out by Yzerman at 5 mill. That would not have been attractive to Vegas, and would have likely not been picked. Losing Manning was a reasonable risk, with Morin playing so well - who did not make the team? Still wondering how that happened.
These moves/non moves backed Hexy into a corner, ultimately sealing his fate.
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