I'll have more to say after the Avs clean out their lockers and there's one final presser for everyone, but this one hurts. This should have been their year. They should have gone bigger at the deadline. They should have gotten more out of their best players. They should have gotten better goaltending. They should have gotten better coaching than they did. I hope everyone learned their lessons from this because, yes, they faced off against the one team that tied them atop the NHL standings, and came up short. But also, they squandered so many opportunities due to stupid mistakes, stretches of indifferent play, and bad personnel decisions.
Sakic should have been ALL IN this year. First rounder and/or a prime prospect should have been in play. Instead he played it safe, made some depth acquisitions, and all three of them (Dubnyk, Soderberg, and...Nemeth) were complete and total busts. Nemeth was literally responsible for a good number of goals against during the playoffs, and yet for some inexplicable reason, Bednar refused to take him out of the lineup despite the fact that he had two better options in MacDonald and Byram. That's on him, and frankly I've lost quite a bit of faith in him after this last run. He was clearly outcoached by DeBoer, both on and off the ice. A huge, huge failure on multiple levels. And some changes need to be made as a result, the cap is going to necessitate this anyway, but the team also had some big weaknesses that were exposed, that can't happen again.
I'm reading that, according to Friedman, Makar and the Avs both want to go for a long-term deal, which is gonna carry a big number with it. This is probably the best way to go, lock a guy up long-term in his prime years, right when the contention window is at its peak, and deal with the cap crunch. Sakic will be busy getting him, Landeskog, and possibly Grubauer locked up and then he'll have to turn his attention to clearing cap room. Also, the team probably needs to finally figure out what to do with Tyson Jost and J.T. Compher. Both as decent 4th line players, but that's about all they are, and it's time for both the players and the organization to move on.
Also reading that Erik Johnson is willing to waive his NMC, which is a must for the Avs. He was either going to have to waive it, or be bought out (the latter of which happened with Francois Beauchemin back before the Vegas draft). No way in hell Seattle takes him, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Personally I think they should buy him out anyway, unless he's headed to Robidas Island. He's pretty much done as an NHL player at this point.
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