ESQ wrote:mathonwy wrote:
1. Gillis signed a lame duck by the name of Marco Sturm for 2.25M in the off season. And then subsequently was forced to trade him (along with Sammy) for 4 more years of David Booth. This was a 4.25M garbage-for-garbage transaction in what was possibly the highest fanbase expectation season ever. (To be fair, David had an ok season that year).
I agree with your overall point, but the Booth trade was an excellent one - flipping old, injured players for a young former 30-goal scorer. One of the best
on paper trades in recent memory.
I don't deny that it ended up being a disaster, but had Booth even performed as a 15-20-goal scorer (instead of a
one-goal scorer in 2012-13) it would have been a good trade. Booth's decline was one of the most precipitous in NHL history, no one could have foreseen the depths to which he'd fall.
One other move (or non-move) that I raised following 2011 was the decision to keep Kesler following 2011. At that point, his value was at an all-time high following the Nashville series, he had numerous injuries to overcome that off-season, and his NTC didn't kick in until 2012-13.
Kesler's locker room dickishness is becoming more openly acknowledged, but I'm sure it was there back in 2011. Plus he contributed to the negative perception of the Canucks as divers and whiners.
However, with HW's insights I have more sympathy for Gillis' failure to make the moves we'd have liked. Kesler is one guy that even Sather would have come hat in hand for.
(Ah, I love armchair GM-ing!)
What you're overlooking is that both Sturm and Sammy became free agents at the end of 11/12 while Booth had 4 more years to go.
If you are basing the trade purely on talent potential / age, then yes. Trading old for young is of course the best strategy. However, in this case, alongside Sturm and Sammy, he also gave up four additional years of 4.25M dollars of cap flexibility for a player that was a very big question mark health-wise. Suffering two major concussions in the span of a year is no joking matter.
That's some major future mortgaging right dere.
And that very big question mark turned out to be a weird one-dimensional power forward that doesn't seem to be quite all there. Let's be honest. David Booth isn't exactly the sharpest dude.
ESQ wrote:
I don't deny that it ended up being a disaster, but had Booth even performed as a 15-20-goal scorer (instead of a one-goal scorer in 2012-13) it would have been a good trade. Booth's decline was one of the most precipitous in NHL history, no one could have foreseen the depths to which he'd fall.
Since we're playing the game of what if. What if Gillis HADN'T made that trade, what potentially could have happened?
Well, Sammy had a 14G/7A/31pt season. Sturm had a 3G/2A/5pt season
and David Booth had a 16G/14A/30pt season.
Sooooo... we'd be 1 up in the goal department and 5 down in the assist department which is pretty much a wash. With regards to Marco Sturm's 3 goals and 2 assists, that's pretty bad value for 2.25M. However, it's still more goals than the majority of our depth players so giving up Marco Sturm meant that we were also giving up depth. Hurray. The story keeps on getting better.
Ok, now we're at the end of the season and by not making that trade, Mike has an additional 4.25M of Aquaman's money to play around with. What could we get for 4.25M+ in the free agent market of the summer of 2012?
- PA Parenteau got a 4Y/16M contract from the Garth.
edit: Don't want to do any more research, got real work to do.
The list goes on and on and on with regards to the potential free agents we "could have signed"
http://hockeyblog-kev.blogspot.ca/2011/ ... nings.html
ANY of the above players would have been better than David Booth. If you look at Booth's playing style, it's actually quite a bad one to complement Ryan Kesler. Booth is not your play-making winger. He's a crash and bang strength-on-strength winger that excels at taking the puck to the net. A Kassian type of a winger would have been a much better fit.
Your point about Kesler is a valid one. Did Kesler force Gillis's hand? Did he give Gillis an ultimatum of sorts? Nobody knows.
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So Gillis really did a number on us by making two rather large and rather bad decisions in trading for Ballard and Booth. I guess karma for the Luo trade. Is he the devil incarnate? Well, depends on how much you like the Sedins I guess. One can never get those Hart trophy winning years back.
