Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy
a bunch of contracts ended, the team imploded, problems in the dressing room. You don't need to look far as to why the team unloaded everything.
DAChampion is right, the team was stacked.
Andrei Plekanec Kovalev
Higgins Koivu Tanguay
Latendresse Lang Sergei
Lapierre Metropolit Begin/Laraque/Kostopoulos
Markov Komisarek
Hamrlik Gorges
Boullion Dandenault/ O'byrne/ Brisebois
The team just completely imploded for whatever reason. The Price off-ice issues. Lang, Latendresse getting injured in the same game. Boullion, Markov, Tanguay and Schnieder all injured by playoff time. The Hamlrik + Kostitsyn brothers **** show. Firing of Carbo. Plekanec looking just plain awful. Komisarek getting injured and embaressed by Lucic. Then Koivu, Kovalev, Kostopoulos, Lang, Tanguay, Boullion, Dandenault, Schneider were all UFAs. Tanguay refusing to play slightly injured because he didn't want to hurt his chances at signing a contract (and didn't get a contract until late summer).
There was never a team so stacked as that one in recent times and it failed spectacularly. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
The team came off a first place finish and was criticized for being a PP team and one which lacked a big centre. Lang and Tanguay were both good players at ES and Lang played great here until he went down. The problem of the year before was identified, but for some reason the team just didn't gel at all.
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But with all due respect, this argument makes no sense. DaChampion explains Gainey's philosophy change because we went from bad team in need of great picks, to a contender able to win it all. Why the heck would it only count for that 1 year? Why the need to blow it up immediately in the summer of that "contending" year? How's a bunch of contracts ending a reason? Why weren't we able to re-sign them? And a team isn't stacked to win it all if everything imploded and there were problems in the dressing room. To be winning team, you need to be great on and off the ice. If there are cliques everywhere, the team was stacked on paper....not on reality. Yeah, we had the points we had, yet, didn't show anything in the playoffs. I love how people keeps dissing everybody in the league because they don't show up when it count the most but we don't do it for our own team?
The team was stacked but then the team was awful. If Gainey decided to let go everybody, it had to be because it was not so great to begin with....unless he's dumb. I vote for a little bit of both....