Agreed, no-one celebrates going 2-1 in the playoffs because the team was intelligently built. Winning a Lombardi is the goal. But. By that metric, 97% of teams are not succeeding/failures. In any normal human endeavour, a 3% success rate would result in finding something else to do.
Single-elimination playoffs are not designed to identify the best team, they are designed to maximize revenue and entertainment. Hell, the 2023 Bruins are easily the best NHL team of the cap era. Even in a best of 7, they lost in the first round.
All of which to say, every GM can control the decisions they make, and their near and longer term strategies. But GMs can't control results--especially in a system that isn't designed to identify the best team. Given that, it's best to evaluate GMs solely based upon their choices/processes, and keep a GM that gives the best chance of obtaining the desired result.
Shows us all we need to know about the organization from top to bottom. Pushing all the right buttons for quite a few years. Just like Purple Insider 💜. Purple Insider has come a long way since the Hubbard Broadcasting days. Only thing I miss is Mathew and Courtney Cronin talking football in the same room a couple times a week 😢
@Matthew Coller. I’m happy to finally have the KAM extension and believe in the plan he started back in 2022. The one thing I wonder is how that plan might have worked out a little differently had Kirk not gotten injured in 2023. That team was likely headed to a 10-11 win season and another 20 something draft pick. It certainly wasn’t part of the plan for Kirk to get injured, but that injury played a significant part in being able to get JJ at 10 without giving up a load of draft capital. I’m not saying the plan would have been different, but the “fortune” of Kirk’s injury might have saved the team some future draft picks and made the plan somewhat easier to execute. What do you think?
> In evaluating the GM’s ability, we should always focus on the process but they only hang banners for results.
Brilliance
Agreed, no-one celebrates going 2-1 in the playoffs because the team was intelligently built. Winning a Lombardi is the goal. But. By that metric, 97% of teams are not succeeding/failures. In any normal human endeavour, a 3% success rate would result in finding something else to do.
Single-elimination playoffs are not designed to identify the best team, they are designed to maximize revenue and entertainment. Hell, the 2023 Bruins are easily the best NHL team of the cap era. Even in a best of 7, they lost in the first round.
All of which to say, every GM can control the decisions they make, and their near and longer term strategies. But GMs can't control results--especially in a system that isn't designed to identify the best team. Given that, it's best to evaluate GMs solely based upon their choices/processes, and keep a GM that gives the best chance of obtaining the desired result.
Shows us all we need to know about the organization from top to bottom. Pushing all the right buttons for quite a few years. Just like Purple Insider 💜. Purple Insider has come a long way since the Hubbard Broadcasting days. Only thing I miss is Mathew and Courtney Cronin talking football in the same room a couple times a week 😢
@Matthew Coller. I’m happy to finally have the KAM extension and believe in the plan he started back in 2022. The one thing I wonder is how that plan might have worked out a little differently had Kirk not gotten injured in 2023. That team was likely headed to a 10-11 win season and another 20 something draft pick. It certainly wasn’t part of the plan for Kirk to get injured, but that injury played a significant part in being able to get JJ at 10 without giving up a load of draft capital. I’m not saying the plan would have been different, but the “fortune” of Kirk’s injury might have saved the team some future draft picks and made the plan somewhat easier to execute. What do you think?