Tallon is bad. FLA has been rebuilding ever since he got there.
- Feds91Stammer

You literally just said it yourself that they’re a budget team. They were garbage when he got there in 2010. What’s the first thing he does leading up to that draft? Trades Horton for Widemen, a 1st, and a 3rd and then trades that 1st down for lower picks which turn into Bjugstad and Zucker. He traded the pick that took Zucker for 2 picks, one of which ended up being Donskoi. He also sent the overrated Ballard to Vancouver for Bernier, Grabner, and a 1st. Not bad for your first few weeks on the job. That 1st rounder he traded away mind you was Derek forbert. As I noted, his history of good trades far outweighs the bad. Getting Brian Campbell for Rusty Olesz was also insane value.

As I mentioned, his draftees include Hyman and Donskoi but also outside the 1st round it includes Trocheck and Malgin. This obviously doesn’t compare to his drafting in Chicago, but it’s also better than the Oilers depth drafting.

So his team remained a bottom feeder for 2 seasons, no surprise there and then they won the Atlantic and lost to the Devils in 7 games. The Devils went onto the cup finals. They were decimated by injuries in the shortened season which btw landed them Barkov. By this time all the Fleischman, Weiss, and Horton crew were long gone so they were bad in 2014 until they brought Lu back. They took ekblad 1st overall. In 2015 they missed the playoffs by 7 points which was when they brought Jagr in and Roberto had a 921 sv%. Then they won the division again but ran into a tough islanders squad which brings them to last year where everyone projected them back in the playoffs but they played with like half a roster and then this season has been somewhat similar with injury trouble. This year they’ve had awful goaltending and Trocheck has missed over half the season to date. So he took a team from the basement to win a division title in 2 years then re-tooled and won another title 4 years later and then got the injury bug. I’d say that’s a pretty good run for a cap team

And then obviously Tallon is making room for some big free agents this offseason. Maybe he hits on one FA and then tenders an offer sheet. Who knows

Its worth noting that we're still in contention to win the Met with Schultz being out and our 3C being a no show for pretty much the entire season. This trade hopefully gave us a functional 3C and Schultz will be back soon. I think we're in an ok place.
- Victoro311

I think so too. I mean if one of Bjugstad and McCann step up we are in better shape and of course getting Schultz back is key as you said. Brass and Sheahan we're both kinda just around.

GMJR slowly turning this into a younger (and slightly bigger) team. Pearson, Mccann, Bjug, Pettersson all high round draft picks. Neither guy we got today is real gritty, but it would be hard to be softer than Brassard or Sheahan.

GMJR said Bjug will be the 3C. I think he'll be a better version of Brian Boyle as we spoke about last blog.

We obviously need to evaluate these new forward lines but I could still see room for a guy like Ferland. We need another sparkplug/Hornqvist-lite/PITA type of player.

We all know how Rutherford has had to trade his way out of his signings. His first deal was Horny and Spaling for Neal and many criticized why we didn’t get a 3rd rounder instead of Spaling.

The 1st rounder sent for Perron ended up being Barzal, right? Well we turned Perron into Hagelin and won 2 cups - who knows, maybe we would’ve won anyways?

He stole Ian Cole. He got Phil for less than what we all thought he would. The Bonino trade was an absolute fleecing as was the Daley trade. Schultz for a 3rd was a risk worth taking. The Hainsey trade was bad. He then had to liquidate Fehr. The Reaves trade was a disaster. I really liked the Sheahan trade, but it took way too long to happen. Oleksiak was a good trade while it lasted. The big problem I had with the Brassard trade was that Sheahan was playing well and we never replaced Cole, which I felt was a huge mistake. He unloaded Sheary to get rid of the Hunwick mistake. The Pearson trade was a worthy risk. The Sprong trade has worked out. And then today I liked this new trade, but it had to happen because of the Brass trade. We also haven’t kept any of our 1st rounders since Rutherford came on, right? It’s too early to see if any of the depth picks pan out

I think most of us felt like JJ, Oleksiak, and Hunwick were all overpaid. The Niemi experiment was a failure. Bringing back Cullen has looked like a mistake (imo) . The Dumo extension was solid. I think GMJR has been hit and miss, like many GMs including Tallon but I think with both of them the good has far outweighed the bad