jasonpiques.com

Mike,

You’ll always have a place in the heart of Bruins fans - maybe not for your play on the ice, but in the stands. You’re also currently the last Bruins coach to lead the team to the Stanley Cup finals - a definite bonus. I mean you’re even a local guy too so you even get some more extra points there.

And hey, you know what, maybe I am being a little too sensitive when you say disparaging things towards one of my favorite Bruins, Mr. Axelsson. But I just need to know, exactly what did P.J. do to earn such scorn? Yes he was being misused on the power play, but that was simply due to a lack of left-handed shooters on this team - A problem since solved by acquiring Mark Recchi. In fact I’m sure if you asked P.J. about it, he’d probably tell you himself that he shouldn’t ever be on the power play. He is however, one of the premier defensive forwards in the league, and if the Selke trophy actually was awarded for the best defensive forward, Axy probably would have at least been nominated at one point in his career. He’s consistently rated in The Hockey News as being one of the leagues most underrated players and is perhaps the perfect 3rd or 4th line left-winger.

Yet you still deride the lone Swede for his lack of a scoring touch. Of course being someone like yourself, who has spent so much time in the league I am sure you would have a natural eye for what true talent looks like. I mean lets take a look at your savy trades as GM of the New York Islanders:

Trading Wade Redden (with Dominic Rhodes) for Martin Straka, Bryan Berard, and Don Beaupre.
This one looks like a win - except Straka got claimed after you waived him before ever playing a game for the Islanders, Berard was dealt for 33 games of Felix Potvin (later traded for Kevin Weekes and Dave Scatchard).

Trading Beaupre with Kirk Muller for Ken Belanger.
Loss.

Traded Wendel Clark and Mathieu Schneider for a pile of garbage and Toronto’s 1st round pick (Roberto Luongo)
Well that one is a nice move Mike!

Traded Zigmund Palffy, Brian Smolinski and a bag of pucks for Olli Jokinen, two also-rans and a first round pick.
Considering ownership was forcing your hand in this one, I still say its a score considering you were able to pick up a talent like Jokinen and a 1st rounder. Granted the 1st rounder (#8 overall) was Taylor Pratt, but that was a weak draft - so we’ll cut you some slack.

Traded Luongo and Jokinen for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish.
Wow - well. Two positive trades lead to a franchise crushing negative. But lets keep going.

Traded Zdeno Chara and others including the #2 overall pick (Jason Spezza) for Alexei Yashin.
Another amazingly terrible trade - though not quite as bad as dealing Luongo and Jokinen.

Selected Rick DiPietro #1 in the 2000 entry draft, instead of Dany Heatley or Marian Gaborik.
I wish I could cut you some slack here. Maybe you saw a kid from your home state and thought he could be special. He very well could be above average some day. Meanwhile Heatley and Gaborik are already All-stars.

Mike, for a guy with such a willingness to deal, you may end up going down in history as having the worst eye for talent a NHL General Manager ever has had. You could assemble an all-star team with the talent you managed to trade away from New York and in doing so have buried the Islanders with so many bad trades that they remain at least a few seasons away from any kind of relevance.

So please leave the talent evaluation to the guys who know what they’re doing. Axelsson doesn’t score many goals - but he’s not out there to do that. That doesn’t mean he is without value.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.