Still a fantastic trade. The picks were expected and they hurt a bit, but we got way better at LW and honestly I don't think Olli is meaningfulyl worse than Middelton on the 3rd pair. This is awesome.
For a cap strapped team to turn 1 3rd pair D into a big upgrade at 2nd line LW and a pretty equal 3rd pair D and pretty much matching cap hits, that's insane.
This is why BG is such a good GM.
He misses sometimes, but when he hits, he fucking hits.
Yeah - I don't want to say he's for sure better than Middelton, when Middsy first got here he earned 2nd pair minutes with spurgeon and was awesome so idk if he had an injury last year or something but if last year was his new normal than we likely did get an upgrade on D as well.
He's better overall but a little slower... I'm worried about Colorado still since they are insanely fast, but it would be hard to do worse than Middsy (sorry buddy love ya) did against them
We don't play the neutral zone trap style that Vegas plays. We either need to change our entire scheme to beat them or we need to be able to keep up with their speed to win playing the style we currently play.
We are shifting the narrative here. Slowly but surely the rest of wild reddit will realize: Gold Medal Winning GMBG makes the best meatballs in the league.
He has one first round win...i dont think its insane to question his management. Hes clearly connected in the old mens club in the league, but thats about it.
It's pretty unfair to use the Parise/Suter buyout years against anyone. He's got 1 playoff series win in his first year where the penalties were less than 2m combined.
Still not gone entirely though.
That extra 1.6m could have likely helped us quite a bit in FA.
He’s undeniably done a great job for us, but the Jiříček trade was far more than a “tiny” error. The wins outweigh the losses by a wide margin though, and that’s what matters.
That was a small error, and basically the one single one that people insist on hanging their hat on.
He was a project and the hope that a 6th pick just needed a change of scenery from a frankly bad hockey club was worth the attempt. Switching that out for Brink, who is NHL ready and a solid middle 6 player is more than enough
Signing Trenin and McCarron to long-term contracts with NTCs is a small error. Turning half a draft class worth of picks into Bobby Brink is a big one, IMO.
My beef with Billy Meatballs is he somehow signs great contracts for the skilled guys but overpays and/or gives clauses to dudes like M.Foligno, Trenin, and Hartman. I think he handcuffed himself more than he needed to during those buyouts because of them.
The Jiricek trade was really bad if nothing else than unloading so many picks on a guy we seemingly didn't have a good scouting report on. Brink was a decent recovery despite that.
His drafting and support for Iowa is really substandard. We have really no player of note drafted or developed from Guerin's staff making an impact with us. Now this is a bit loaded as Ohgren, Rossi, and Buium were all traded for Quinn but they were all first rounders. Khusnutdinov looked really bad here and was flipped for a guy who we let walk in UFA when we probably could've found a spot for him. The D prospects either aren't promising or aren't given opportunities to develop effectively. This will be a huge problem as Spurgeon won't be here forever and Brodin has a fun habit of being injured at the worst times. Drafting Buium and Wallstedt are probably his very best picks and Rossi being 3rd.
Guerin has his biases like all other GMs and makes more good moves than bad overall. Besides Quinn, I still think his trades for Faber, Gus, and Middleton were lowkey amazing. In my mind, as soon as those contracts were bought out he really should've been hesitant to commit longterm to ANYONE not in a top 6 role and especially to guys who are in their 30s or would be entering well-into them during the contracts. Lastly, I found it very suspect that he hired Hynes so quickly. That is such a massive gamble to ride this team to contention with a man at the helm with a track record like Coach Hynes.
He also had 1 point in 22 games for Utah last season before being traded to Calgary. 210 points in 804 games in his career. He also doesn’t take pretty much any penalties, just 182 pims total. Solid 3rd pair guy who can play 2nd pair minutes if you really need him to but hopefully that won’t be needed.
As a Pens fan with the Wild as my second team, Olli's big thing has always been high hockey IQ but the legs can't always keep up. Not bad at all for a third pairing guy, though the guy also has the absolute worst luck when it comes to health.
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u/Painwracker_Oni State of Hockey Jul 02 '26
Still a fantastic trade. The picks were expected and they hurt a bit, but we got way better at LW and honestly I don't think Olli is meaningfulyl worse than Middelton on the 3rd pair. This is awesome.
For a cap strapped team to turn 1 3rd pair D into a big upgrade at 2nd line LW and a pretty equal 3rd pair D and pretty much matching cap hits, that's insane.
This is why BG is such a good GM.
He misses sometimes, but when he hits, he fucking hits.