Quote:
Originally Posted by davedave
Dude, this makes no sense. If Lapierre was sent down to save Gillett a few extra bucks, then I'd totally agree with you. But Lapierre was sent down to maintain cap space for later on in the season so the team could add a big rental. If anything, that "think big" possibility of landing Forsberg sends a big picture winning message much stronger than keeping a 4th line rookie around.
It's just a number of things. The flu, which forced the team to face adversity for the first time this season. Higgins' maladjustment when he returned, which broke up what had developed into a pretty good line of Koivu, Ryder and Latendresse. Samsonov's perpetual struggles. Huet and Aebischer fighting for the back-up position. Players perhaps starting to become defeatists with regard to the officiating, looking at it as an excuse. The list goes on and on, but I just can't see how Lapierre's demotion broke this team's back.
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Sure it makes sense, DUDE.
The decision to invoke business reasons to break up a winning formula was the START of the downhill slide, which is the title of this thread.
I don't dispute many of the things you mention that happened AFTERWARD. Panic and confusion over how to re-form good lines, defeatism, finger-pointing and so forth all came AFTER the decision to demote the sparkplug of that moment.
As for saving cap space for a big rental, if this was the objective then obviously the biggest effect would have come from WAIVING and then DEMOTING Samsonov, who was NOT critical to the chemistry of the team.
As I said, we had three and one third lines going, with Plekanec a promising young gun as well, doing fine on the PK and in his own zone, though his scoring only kicked in later. Samsonov was expendable from a cap point of view.