Doug MacLean is apparently angry at all the talk of Ken Hitchcock bringing respectability to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Puck-Rakers quotes him at length, and he takes a plethora of shots at pretty much everyone in the Columbus organization, from Mike Priest to Scott Howson, but he saves most of his venom for Hitchcock. Finally, he felt compelled to defend his own record:
“I keep hearing that Hitch brough credibility to the organization when they didn’t have any — and structure. I would like to say I’ve looked at all their acquisitions and I think the team has, with their fan base right now, less credibility than they’ve ever had in the history of the franchise. It is a disaster there right now. And Scott Howson has made — I look at the contracts he’s stuck with next year — they’ve got to dig themselves out of a hole.”
I could recite the laundry list of brutal mistakes made by MacLean, but I won’t bother. Instead, I’ll limit myself to one comment: Maybe the Blue Jackets have less credibility now. On the other hand, they’ve also played a playoff game, which they never did under MacLean, and never showed any signs of doing under his woefully inept watch.
Moving away from Doug MacLean, Tyler Dellow has some more in-depth analysis on the Ilya Kovalchuk trade, and like most of us he isn’t thrilled with Don Waddell. Unlike most of us, it isn’t the return bothering him. The whole article is incredibly good, and I’ll just quote the conclusion here:
Given where the Thrashers are on the playoff bubble, this may well have been a white flag trade – the loss of a couple of points is huge to them. I can understand making a trade that has marginal financial upside to you when you’re clearly out of the race; making that same trade at a time when you’re in the thick of it is just an awful thing to do to the few people who’ve been coming out to the rink for ten years. The return is probably reasonable, given the limited value of 27 games of Ilya Kovalchuk but effectively abandoning the playoff hunt is a pretty awful thing to do to the fanbase.
I imagine the theme is obvious at this point.
Doug MacLean also seems to think he should get another job in the NHL. To put it politely, I believe Doug MacLean may have a higher opinion of himself than is really warranted.
However, I will point out that Doug MacLean’s draft record as Columbus GM goes something like this: Pascal Leclaire, not Ales Hemsky or Dan Hamhuis; Nik Zherdev, not Thomas Vanek, Dion Phaneuf, Jeff Carter, Zach Parise, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, or Mike Richards (though to be fair, a lot of teams passed on those latter four; what a first round that was), Alexandre Picard, not Ladislav Smid, Mike Green (again, though…), or Drew Stafford; Brule, not Anze Kopitar, Marc Staal, or Devin Setoguchi; and Derrick Brassard, not (and this is a little early, but I think these are going to be better players) Kyle Okposo, Michael Frolik, or Bryan Little.
I’ll take dangerously inept GMs for 1000, Alex.
Misfit: I really should have worked a Milbury reference in.
When he was GM of the BJs, I used to think MacLean was a muttonhead.
Now that I’m regularly exposed to his “expertise” on Sportsnet, I Know he’s a muttonhead.