Yes yes and yes to this lineup. I’m sick and tired of the blender, here.

I still try and give PV somewhat of a mulligan. He got dealt a **** hand with no time to put things together, and he’s doing all of this on the fly. Not to say a summer of prep and a month of training camp would mean we’d be a different team entirely, but the start of the season was obviously kneecap’d, and he’s been stuck playing it by ear and trying to stand up ever since. Not really getting time to choose his staff didn’t help either.

I give Jarmo so much credit for what he’s done, but it’s starting to feel like some big change needs to happen in the front office. Call it “vibes,” but I think just having a new face and voice in management could be a good refresh. The inconsistencies with player development have felt, well, consistent for a long time. And the concerning things coming from Jiricek aren’t making things feel better.

I have faith in JD, and I give some leash to PV. But to be a GM in this league for over a decade and have relatively little to show for it (even if he is, almost by default, the most successful GM this team has ever had), part of it feels like spinning wheels.

I don’t think the fan base is quite “light cars on fire and protest” level of angry like they were in 2012, but things feel on the decline.

To your point on giving PV slack, yes, he was thrust into the HC role on short notice, but it's not like he was picked up off the street. He had been here for two years prior and had all summer to prep with Babcock before taking over. I think he is mishandling the lineup and the minute allocation because he's afraid. I understand wanting to protect young players and take it slow out of concern for overwhelming them and ruining their confidence, but in this case, Fantilli, Jiricek and Johnson are supremely confident guys who have repeatedly bounced back from various struggles already. I also think making decisions out of fear is always going to wind up being wrong in the long run. The team has a good mix of veterans to support them through tough games (Boone, Johnny, Kuraly, Gudbranson, Werenski, Severson, Provorov). I think they need to play at least a little more than they are, and Fantilli shouldn't be moved to the wing just to accommodate playing Boone in the middle. He's great at faceoffs, but there seems to be too much priority given to that and not enough thought about the long-term plan. Like everything in life, you get better with reps.

With regards to Jarmo. I agree, the results he's achieved shouldn't be the standard, but at the same time, with all things considered I think he's still done a pretty good job. Columbus is probably one of the 3-4 hardest places in the NHL to build a winner. I still am not totally against replacing him. Sometimes a fresh perspective can work wonders and maybe his approach has just grown stale, but I do think fans are too hard on him and too easily dismiss or forget all the good decisions he has made over the last 10 years. A lot of fan takes just come across as ignorant and they act as if he's only been here for the last 3 years and the team has always sucked.

Just trade Jenner to the jets. They'll give you a really good deal

Lots to unpack here:

"Fans are emotional with short memories, but Jarmo has been a good GM. He was the first and only GM to build a winning and competitive team in Columbus, which I believe is always going to be an extremely hard thing to do in a city that doesn't have a great hockey culture and is not the most desirable place to play."

He's the first GM in team history to build a respectable team, I'd hardly call 1 playoff series win a winning team, and a career 409-360-97 with a 0.528 points percentage is...technically competitive? 7 winning seasons in 12 isn't stellar, but it's not bad. He's certainly been the best GM in team history, but that doesn't mean he's the right GM for the team now. He arguably bought hard when the team wasn't fully ready in 2019, and his moves since can be directly attributed to some of the team's biggest flaws (Provorov, Peeke, Elvis contract, Severson contract, Gudbranson, even back to the Wild Bill expansion draft loss, etc.).

"When he tore the team down to rebuild, he built up a top-3 prospect pool in the league within three years. I'm not sure what else you want from a GM. The losing has been tough, but he's done exactly what he should. It sucks that he and JD got fooled by Babcock, but going for a proven, experienced coach was still the right idea. Next year should be their last chance. If they aren't playing around .500 with a shot at the playoffs, then you fire Jarmo mid-season and bring in a new guy."

Any GM in the league can build a top-3 prospect pool in the league when you just make the picks that fall into your lap and have 5 top-15 picks and 3 top-6 picks in 3 years. I'll give him credit for scouting, drafting, and getting quality back in trades where he's the seller. He gets no credit from me on his poor management of young players, RFA contract negotiations, evaluation of NHL talent, UFA signings, trades where he's buying on NHL players, or critically hiring coaching staff.

Jarmo and JD are responsible for the only playoff-winning team in history, and are also directly responsible for being one of if not the worst run franchise in the sport right now. If this many significant players are having both performance issues and management complaints, it's on management.

There were a half-dozen better coaching hires this offseason, and 3 years ago when they hired Larsen, and years earlier when they hired Torts. They're set on getting guys with a very specific coaching style that just has mediocre results at best and catastrophic results at worst. He and JD have created a culture of failure, mediocrity, and dysfunction, and we have to strip it down now before it continues to fester. If we'd seen any progress this year, maybe you argue they deserve a shot next year. But we haven't, it's the same arguments this year as last year, it's time for them to go.

Completely aside from all on-ice issues, it's time for a massive culture change. IMO, fire Jarmo, fire JD, trade Boone, and go from there. PV I don't mind keeping through next season as a "prove you weren't the issue" deal, but something is rotten to the core here.

The time to fire Jarmo was 2020, but they didn't because Priest and the McConnells only care about mitigating risk. An overhaul of the franchise during the height of the pandemic was never going to happen, but at least we got three more years of the Jarmo scouting aparatus to rebuild the pipeline out of the decision to retain their services. Their ability to identify prospects has never been in doubt, and that's why Jarmo will have a new job within weeks of us firing him. But he has run out of runway here. The rot in the org is overwhelming now.

It's also important to understand the context of the playoff losses and how difficult it actually is to advance in the postseason. Those were competitive teams and played some very good series' against the eventual Cup champs.

In 2019 he had to buy hard because he knew he was going to be losing his star player.

It's also pretty reductionist and unfair to say he "just made the picks that fell in his lap". He acquired picks with savvy moves and made smart decisions by all accounts with those selections. Go back and look at the Howson and Maclean drafts and tell me how just making the pick worked out. Just having a top pick is no guarantee. There is still time for things to play out, but it appears he has selected some very good players.

The coaching hire thing is debatable. Larsen was very obviously a sacrificial hire during the rebuild. With Babcock they got fooled, no way around it, but I absolutely agree with the track they were on to find an experienced and hard-nosed coach. I don't think Laviolette wanted the job. I would have loved Roy, but maybe he wasn't interested in Columbus either. I'm not sure there were that many, if any, better options than Babcock for this team, but it's really hard to judge with our 10,000 ft. view. JD and Jarmo have been in the game a long time and are extremely well-respected. That doesn't just happen by chance. I have to believe they did their due-diligence and just got fooled by Babcock. It sucks, they have to own that, but it's doesn't mean they're totally inept.

Look, I'm not trying to say they absolutely need to stay. I don't think a changeup would be a terrible idea at this point, but I think we need to take a step back and acknowledge that they've done well here and are going through a planned rebuild. I'm sure they thought they would be better this year, but a deeper look at a lot of stats shows that they might not really be that far off. Maybe it's time to cut bait, but they aren't idiots, and they don't suck at their job like so many CBJ fans like to spout. Also, who is brought in as replacement is a total unknown, and I trust Priest a hell of a lot less than JD or Jarmo.

It's always going to be difficult to advance in the postseason. With how teams like Carolina, NJ, Toronto, are positioned going forward, and to a lesser extend Detroit, Montreal, and Buffalo, do we really think it's going to get easier? I'm of the opinion that GMs should do their best to push only when they're a top-8-to-10 team in the league, otherwise there's just too much random flukiness and you're better off entering the playoffs with what you have and hoping for some luck. If you're the 8 seed...you sell the star player you know you're going to lose, rather than throwing it all out for one shot. That set the team back at least 3 years.



That's a fair point, I will give him credit for good drafting. Chinakhov recently looks especially good, PL was the right move, etc. But also, picks like Fantilli and Jiricek...those are guys the potato would have picked.



I think the coaching hire(s) are a clear misstep, I'm not giving them credit for that. For Larsen, he literally hired the wrong Brad; Shaw was on staff and the better choice (although not especially great). For example, he and Larsen flip flopped PP and PK duties for at least a year and every time they switched, everything Larsen touched crumbled and everything Shaw touched improved. Babcock had all sorts of red flags and few people would argue he deserved a second shot; that's the guy you don't even give an interview, it's poor hiring practice more than "getting fooled". The better choice would have been hiring PV from the outset, he was on the candidate list and would have been a better fit. [/quote]



I just don't know that we're going through a planned rebuild at this point. The past few seasons, yes, definitely. But Provorov, Severson, Gaudreau, and Gudbranson aren't deals you make long-term if you think you're going to keep rebuilding this year. I'm glad they didn't trade more futures for additional help yet, because it's not working. FWIW, I also trust Priest a hell of a lot less than JD or Jarmo, and he should go too. But I don't know that that's realistic, he's been here since 2007. Everything FO up to ownership needs to go, IMO. Get a total culture reset.