Friday, June 25, 2010

Here's the Deal on that Shocking Deal


I will start by saying one thing.

As much as we bleed red, black and gold and love our team, none of us has been in the NHL in SOME capacity for the better part of 3 decades.

Bryan Murray has.

The fact is, in a league with such short attention spans, and such changeover in management and coaching personnel, that is quite a feat. This leads me to believe he knows more about running an NHL team than I, or any person who frequents blogs and/or writes blogs does.

So let's look at this.

From his comments, The Bryan probably wanted Jaden Schwartz. The young talented USHL'er went much higher in the draft than many thought that he would go, but is the young forward that the Sens could very well have been targeting. Ironically the Blues picked him at the 14th spot, so Murray was Shit-Outta-Luck.

Now, with the prospects Murray has picked (trading up to get Karlsson when he was relatively unknown, getting Lehner and Weircoch second round, getting Hoffman 5th round) I tend to trust him and his scouting staff.

It is possible he saw Emmerson Etem and Austin Watson as nothing more than future third line NHL'ers, and while I love the Senators from the bottom of my heart, the Senators have more "bottom six" players than any team in the league, so picking another does not make sense.

It is also true that he was wary of taking Russians after the Sens have been royally screwed by Russian prospects in our recent history (Zubov, Kaigorodov, Nikulin etc, etc)

So he gets a call from the Blues. They have Pietrangelo, and a need for forwards. They already have a good, safe pick in Schwartz, but they are feeling risky and want to use another first round choice on Tarasenko (easily the best player still available, but one Murray is afraid of). So what does Murray do? He gets another FANTASTIC Swedish defenceman (and you know how much we liked the first one) who is one year farther in his development, has size and would have gone before the likes of Dylan McILRATH and Derek Forbert.

So what is everyone up in arms about?

I believe in Bryan Murray, and I believe that in a few years I will be looking at a top four D of:

Cowen (6'6) - Karlsson (5'11)
Weircoch (6'5) - Runblad (6'2)

That has great mobility, great offence from the back end and good size. I also believe that this means
Bryan thinks that Butler, Wick, Hoffman and Petersson are good offensive prospects or that
he has his eye on somebody later in the draft that nobody else has seen.

Either way, we look strong on D and in nets (Lehner) for the foreseeable future. With Jason Spezza,
Milan Michalek and Mike Fisher leading the next group of Sens forwards, I for one, am excited.

Aren't you?

3 comments:

GelatinousMutantCoconut said...

Weird. Those are the same pairings I used to try to convince other bloggers of why this trade was awesome.

I have to say...I've been very critical of bryan Murray's handling of the Spezza situation. But he redeemed himself a bit tonight. I love the way he's building this team through the draft. Just for God's sake keep him away from trades/ free agency.

Young said...

Haha well GMC, I promise I didn't see your pairings anywhere trying to rip you off, i just like that great minds think alike!

GelatinousMutantCoconut said...

Sorry Young! I didn't mean to insinuate you stole them at all!

I too was thinking 'great minds think a like'.

I have to admit, I find myself salivating at the thought of those pairings!