I really feel like this horrific downward spiral is 100% torts' fault. The guy has no actual game plan or strategy. He's claimed himself hes not an X's and O's coach and he just wants his players to "play like bastards."

Well clearly the amount of bastard playing these guys have done in 2013 has just been all they can handle. They're completely out of gas and have no structure to speak of. I have NO IDEA what our identity as a team is? We barely even forecheck anymore.

As horrible as Gillis has been, Torts has been even worse and is the true paraiah here.

i'm going to be completely honest here.

i don't care what anyone says - Gillis has been one of the BEST, yes best. GMs this season. Sure he's the one that created this mess, yes he's the one who gave us little to no wiggle room to improve with our horrendous season. But starting from the off-season he has done well.

Schneider. Idc what anyone says. It ended poorly but in the way that we're headed, I'll take Horvat over Schneider. Schneider would not be helping this team win right now. I'd rather have Lack/Markstrom than Schneider since we're heading into a rebuild.

Santorelli, Dalpe, Richardson, Stanton, Weber, etc, etc, etc. They were all exceptional signings that everyone called him crazy for. They were all crucial pieces of our early season success. Yes they tapered off, but they're our depth player(s), not our top players, remember? These were winning signings.

Diaz was an experiment that wasn't failed. Weise was doing shit all, didn't like Tortorella. Traded for Diaz who didn't disappoint us at all, it just wasn't worth keeping him with playoffs slipping away. Traded him for a 5th so essentially GMMG, the man that he is just got rid of a borderline 4th line grinder/tough guy in Weise for a 5th round pick. Awesome.

Trading Luongo despite the antics and shitty time was absolutely the right move. We get a 26 year old PROVEN NHL player who is an exceptional 3C in Matthias and a severely underrated prospect in Markstrom. Yes, I'm saying severely despite him being arguably the #1 prospect in the world at a point. Florida tried to play him in the NHL when he clearly wasn't ready and he lost all confidence and took steps backwards. (We can rebuild him... we have the technology) Our organization has developed Lack and Schneider. Both of them are exceptional and can only improve.

Trade deadline, disappointing yes, but rumours around the league say that Gillis had 2 trades in line. For Kesler to go to XXX and Edler to go to XXX. He was not given permission to make these trades despite having them setup.

Rather than trying to stay a bubble-playoff team in a shitty attempt to save his job. Gillis looked down the road and at the future of this franchise. He's made all the right choices in the most difficult season we've ever had since Luongo has been here.

I think it is time for change and Gillis should go, don't get me wrong. To me though, this season has shown me that he really isn't the shittiest GM that we seem to think he is... If you see anyone saying anything bad about Gillis trading Luongo due to him being an elite goalie, they're clueless as to what should happen to this team.
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Now, Torts. I like all fans were SUPER excited to see this guy come coach our team. I've been everything but excited to see this team player under his reign. They're boring, can't do shit all offensively and his line combinations are horrendous. How the fuck do you expect to win when the Sedins are playing with 4 liners and your ACTUAL best players at the time aren't being rewarded? Kassian could play lights out and wouldn't even crack the 2nd line. Hansen has a bad game and will seemingly get promoted to the 1st line. Kesler has been better than Henrik night in and night out so why not move Kesler to 1C to try and spark Hank?

There's just so many things that should have been done differently with this team and nothing was ever done. Our PK (yes I know it WAS 1st in the league) was never broken to me. Why not keep the Sedins off it. I don't care that they want to do it. That's not their playstyle they're offensive zone players. When they're shitdog tired cuz they were just killing a 5on3 or some shit and can't do anything offensively, how can you blame them?

I could go on forever but that's my 2 cents.

Keep on keepin' on if you get a chance at the draft table, Gillis. I've liked everything you've done this season.

/e Gillis isn't the villain this season. There comes a point where you put the blame on the players/coach, because these aren't just average players on our team. They're above average players posting 4th line numbers since the turn of the Calendar year.

This post was edited by Farine on Mar 8 2014 04:28am

thoughts on Snow?

Good intentions, doesn't have a clue what the fuck he's doing and severely lacks hockey knowledge.

I get where you're coming from on Gillis, he's made some decent moves this year. In a vacuum, the return on the Luongo trade isn't great, but based on the circumstances, it's pretty good. Florida knew Luongo wanted out ASAP and he only wanted to go to Florida, so MG had next to zero leverage.

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Santorelli, Richardson, Stanton and Weber turned out to be good pickups, but I'm not sure how much credit he should get for them:
- Santorelli was brought in to be the 13th or 14th forward, it was amazing luck that he basically became our MVP. I highly doubt MG had that in mind when he signed him.
- Richardson started out well but hasn't been great for the past 3+ months, which is more than half the season. Nothing more than a decent 4th line C, I don't know how much credit you can give a GM for signing a 4th line C when ours left to another team, it's a simple move.
- Full credit for Stanton and Weber, but these are still depth moves when we needed major help or changes.

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The main problems:
1) He created the whole goaltending mess by himself, and the terrible overall return for Schneider and Luongo is all on him
2) You can blame the players or coaching but management was stubborn after the Boston series. They totally ignored the weaknesses of the team because we were "1 win away". Even if you win the cup, you still need to improve...

It's not his fault that the Sedins are blowing and Kesler isn't a center that makes the players around him better. But it is his fault that he didn't see the Sedins obviously declining from year to year, it is his fault we don't have three top-9 centers, it is his fault that we only have two top-6 wingers and it is his fault that we have no youth coming in to help in the immediate future.



MG has made some great moves over his tenure: the Ehrhoff trade, signing Tanev and acquiring Higgins and Lapierre for cheap.

But if you spend that many years as a GM, you are bound to make at least some good moves. IMO he's made more bad than good.

Remember that the team that almost won the Stanley Cup was created mostly by Burke and Nonis, not Gillis.

This post was edited by LuLer on Mar 8 2014 09:01am

Reportet for well of taxt

Oh yeah, there's no doubt that e's the reason we are what we are right now but he's done stellar trying to dig himself out of the coffin that he put himself in. I was only basing him off of this season. I don't think any mg would give us a winning season this year. Everyone is just simply past their time.

To me it just looks like he's said fuck it. Put his job aside and is finally doing what's best for the team

lower bowl tix going under $100 for tomorrow's game vs Islanders

good sign as any that Tank Nation is here

My friend asked me how much he should sell his lower bowl tickets vs. the Isles for.

I said no more than $100 'cause we blow now, nobody wants to go watch, people are having trouble selling their tickets lol.

man there's a $35 single available for the Avs game in April, srs. Might finally attend my first game of the year.