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Originally Posted by Captain Bob
I've made the trip down US 23 to Columbus a few times and I had high hopes for the BJs. Great arena. Nice jersey. Good arena district. You could stay in a hotel a stone's throw from the arena, go swimming at the hotel in the daytime, go to the market, check out a matinee at the theater and go to the game at night.
But my goodness... the ineptitude of this franchise is epic.
Name for me another industry that will allow a business to start and suck rotten eggs for 10 years and still be alive?
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The NFL, NBA, and MLB.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Killion
Ya, it truly is astounding. Granted they got burdened with just a horrible lease combined with an avaricious & malicious competitive venue, that wasnt supposed to be competing, but the hockey operations.... my God. Just beyond pathetic. Takes a real special breed of complete & utter gross incompetence to mess up the NHL brand in a state like Ohio. Inexcusable. Appalling. And now that theyve turned the corner, hired Davidson, new lease on the building & on life in general, all set to host the ASG, then BAM!, Lockout. Its like the old song, if it wasnt for bad luck, I wouldnt have no luck at all.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KingsFan7824
The alignment they got from day 1 hasn't done them any favors either. You can say they basically replaced Toronto in the Norris division. The problem was that Columbus, obviously, doesn't have the history of Toronto, or of Detroit, to sustain them through anything. But the Jackets get stuck in the West.
The Jackets don't have A history, let alone a winning history, terrible travel, many late start times, and we see what they have to do just to get free agents to sign there.
Saying that, the drafting and development part of their franchise, a total train wreck.
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7 years of Doug MacLean, with almost no NHL talent to show for it during that entire time, is what stunted everything.
It's become popular to unload on current GM Scott Howson. But to be perfectly honest, look at the roster and farm system he inherited. If you look at the roster in June of 2007, it looked like an expansion draft roster that had Rick Nash on it. No other under-30 NHL talent except Nikolai Zherdev. No one in the farm system to speak of. The drafting/development has been night and day since the MacLean days, but it's not an overnight process to pull out of that.