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Lou Lamoriello is a fraud and a fake


yave1964

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mYMrOuVeT-PB0qqKTGbUkWw.jpglet me start by saying that Lou deserves to be a HOFer for his 28 years as a GM, winning 3 cups and appearing in two other finals, leading the USA squad to the gold at the Worlds in 1996 and is/was an incredible builder for the longest time. But truthfully since the 2005 strike he has done nothing, and has decimated the franchise that he built into greatness.

 

  The last ten years, his drafts have been awful. Actually they havent even been that, they have been putrid bordering upon Nauseating. A few lowlights:

 

2005: Best player, Nicolas Bergfors who they managed to use to pry Kovie from Atlanta. He scored 35 goals with the team before they discovered that he had an aversion to getting hit (really). Mark Fayne and Mark Fraser managed to each play one hundred and something games for the team from the draft class.

Next pick in the draft after Bergfors was TJ Oshie.

 

2006: Matt Corrente first round pick played 34 games. nobody from the draft played 100 games in the NHL.

 

2007 Mike Hoeffel was the Devils first pick (second round) never made the NHL. Matt Halischuk, a 4th liner played 100 plus games in New Jersey.

Next pick after Hoeffel was the very servicable Nick Spalling.

 

2008: MattiasmQkpqoYIBEx6ID04irAbLBQ.jpg Tedenby was the first rounder, he managed 120 games and 10 goals before leaving to go and play in the Swedish league. They somehow managed to draft Adam Henrique in the third round, he is a good solid middle six forward.

Two picks after Tedenby Tyler Ennis went off the board, the next pick was John Carlson.

 

2009: Jacob Josefson went number 20 in the draft, he has 190 games in the NHL with a career high of 6 goals last year, probably a year away from going to Sweden and joining his buddy Tedenby. The second round was Gelinas who has a decent shot but no real skill on the back end.

Marcus Johanson of the Capitals went a few picks after Josefson.

 

2010: Jon Merrill was the teams top pick, a decent defenseman but nothing special. Nobody else from the draft has or will make the NHL.

 

2011: Adam Larsson was the first pick of the Devils, fourth overall, a good defense prospect but not a lot of offensive skill and frankly a tad overrated. Right behind him in the draft were Ryan Strome, Zibinajed, Scheifele, Couturier and Dougie Hamilton any of which i would hands down take before Larsson. Reid Boucher has also appeared in the NHL from that draft just enough to prove that he is not an NHLer. Nobody else has or will make the league.

 

2012: Stefan Matteau was the first rounder, has looked awful at the AHL level and has 2 goals in 24 games in the NHL. The second round produced a good defensive prospect in Damon Severson, nobody else will make the NHL from this class. Tanner Pearson, a solid player for the Kings went one spot after Matteau.

 

2013: Something named Steven Santini was the first pick for the Devils in the second round. Nobody else from the draft class looks like much of anything.

 

2014: John Quenneville was their  first pick, getting ready to turn pro and considered a middling prospect.

 

  So that is ten drafts, and I give you that some decent defensemen, albiet a tad overrated in my book in Larsson, Severson and Merrill have been drafted. None have done anything yet to write home about at the NHL level, IMHO one will flame out, one will be mediocre and one will be good, you pick which is which.

  But at forward, other than Henrique not a real NHL forward has come out of the draft in ten years. Not one. Josefson may have a career as a 4th liner if he is lucky, a big maybe at that. Matteau is a zero. Boucher? Get real.

 

 TRADES:

 

The Kovie trade was wonderful Kovie came for a bag of beans and not much else, a great trade for lou.

 

Schneider came over for the draft pick that became Bo Horvat who is a star in the making in Vancouver at center. A very good trade for both.

 

Other than that, not much. Zidlicky in for a pick, and then out for one. Kurtis Foster same thing. Bryce Salvador for Cam Janssen may have been the 3rd best trade of the time frame.

 

FREE AGENTS or ROSTER MANAGEMENT:

Lost David Clarkson which was addition by subtraction. But then,

Lost Parise and Kovie,the two best players on the team. this after signing Kovie to a contract that the league ganked a pick from the Devils for because of cap circumvention. Do you know blatant it has to be for Bettman to notice cap circumvention? Christ, Chris Pronger just got traded. So did Nathan Norton. But Lamoriello screwed up a contract and then lost the player a few years later anyway.

 

  Coming in to replace Clarkson, Parise and Kovalchuk the Devils added every thirty something who was looking for a final payday. Ryan Clowe, Marty Havlat, Cammelleri, Gomez, Ryder and Ruutu all signed and failed miserably (except Cammelleri who was decent) to the surprise of Nobody except their GM.

 

 So the scortched Earth that Lou has left the Devils is a farm system devoid of talent, no real young forwards excepting Henrique to build around and truthfully he is a second or third liner on a good team, a bunch of good but unproven defensive prospects who I think are slightly overrated as a whole and a Hell of a goalie. He has to be to make up for this F Troop of a team.

  As a Wings fan I make fun of Kenny Holland all the time about how someone needs to wake him up and get him to make a trade, but Lamoriello, wow, he simply took the organization that he built to greatness and ruined it. The 2010 cup final was a fluke but it convinced him that he was doing it right when in fact even that team was fractured and flawed and filled with holes and that was plain to whoever watched them play. Now there is nothing left, a half a dozen real NHL players and a bunch of foreign legion rejects. And now he is in Toronto. I hope for the Leafs sake that Shanny and Babs have final say on all personnel moves and Lamiorello just deals with contracts or something. 

The last decade he has been a fraud. end of story.

 

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@yave1964  Man, that is some incredible research to back up your point of view. Excellent stuff, it's one thing to make a broad based statement, another to come wielding stat after stat to back it up. Very nice research my man. I have thought the same thing, even thought of doing something like you did, but you beat me to the punch, and I'm glad, cause I could not have come up with such an in depth post.

 

 I'm VERY glad that this fraud has been chosen to get the Leafs back on track. He should set them back a few years when It's all said and done. Shanny will keep tight reigns on him, but he will still do some stupid stuff and prolong the agony of Leaf fans everywhere!! WHHOOOOOOO!!!!

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 I don't know much about John Quenville, but he's the great hope that some kinda center can come in and save the day from all the worthless draft picks that Lou stockpiled. It really is UGLY, Lou's draft history the past decade. It really makes me wonder, how do you go from a GREAT drafter, to somebody who could not pick a player if his life depended on it??  It's easy to say the game passed him by, but by all accounts, the players still play the same, bigger and stronger and a tad harder to project,....but in the end, good players are good players. Did Lou get stupid in his old age, the onset of Alzheimer's or something....it really is puzzling. 

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I can't speak for other Leafs fans, but, I agree with you 100% about Lou. It is a big concern......

 

Everything else that Shanny has done is just sooo good after soooo many years of mediocrity in TO. 

 

I think they brought him in for his contacts, and intend to keep a tight leash on him otherwise. I also whistle when I pass a graveyard at night..... 

 

Fingers crossed  :unsure[1]:

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I don't know much about John Quenville, but he's the great hope that some kinda center can come in and save the day from all the worthless draft picks that Lou stockpiled. It really is UGLY, Lou's draft history the past decade. It really makes me wonder, how do you go from a GREAT drafter, to somebody who could not pick a player if his life depended on it??  It's easy to say the game passed him by, but by all accounts, the players still play the same, bigger and stronger and a tad harder to project,....but in the end, good players are good players. Did Lou get stupid in his old age, the onset of Alzheimer's or something....it really is puzzling.

Quenneville from what I have read is a checking center with little offensive upside, at BEST he is a 3rd liner. Not saying he is a complete waste, way too early for that, but a checking center as a first rounder? Very curious.

I have been watching what the Leafs are doing with interest, Shanny was a former Devil who was drafted by Lou and began his career with him, and Jacques Lemaire was brought in as a personnel advisor, he obviously was a former coach of the Devils who won the cup in 1995, so a lot of the Leafs high command come from the Devils glory days. Lemaire IMHO is one of the brilliant minds in the game, Shanny is not far behind, obviously they wouldn't have brought in their old boss if he didn't have something left in the tank but I just don't see it. Maybe he just got bored.

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Calling him a fraud and a fake is a bit over the top IMO. Has he lost his touch in recent years? Yes. There's no denying that.

The drafting has been poor, but I really hate playing the "they should have drafted this guy instead" game. You go back and look at the scouting reports at the time and almost every pick they made made sense at the time. It's not like they were constantly reaching for guys. It's also pretty difficult to draft impact players when your first pick is 20th or later for the better part of a decade.

That said, they clearly could have done better, and having Tedenby and Josefson bust at the same time Parise, Kovalchuk, and Clarkson all left pretty much crippled them up front.

They have done a very good job rebuilding the defense though. Just 4-5 years ago they pretty much had nobody in the system on defense. Now they've got Larsson, Severson, Merrill, Gelinas, Santini, etc. Plus rebuilding in goal with Schneider.

The forwards stink, no doubt. And it's been an issue for a long time. If you want to blast Lou for that, fine. But I think the foundation he set with the kids on defense and Schneider in goal is pretty solid. Especially considering their average draft position, their financial issues, Kovalchuk quitting on the team, etc. The Devils have been through a lot of **** in recent years, not all of it under Lou's control. He may not be what he once was, but I don't think he's as bad as people make him out to be.

We'll just have to wait and see what he does in Toronto with the Hydra of hockey minds they have in charge. Sometimes you can have too many chefs in the kitchen.

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@MadDevil  Well, to be fair to Lou, who are the scouts giving him information....they should not be let off the hook for recommending all these bums. In the end, Lou does not have to take their advice, the pick is his and his alone, but he was getting some very crappy info from these guys. Bad enough I would expect a changing of the guard for the Devils scouts....hopefully Lou steals a bunch of them back to screw up the Leafs...ha ha!

 

 On the bright side, I still think we have not seen the best Henrique we will see. He needs some elite speedy wingers and there is really nobody that matches that description. If he was to be paired with some offensive weapon type wingers, I could see a nice solid 75 pt season from Adam. I hope they make him captain in 2016...this next year is a huge year for his development. He's just a special player, hell...he already has to 2 game winning goals in Game #7's, one coming in OT...he is a money player who is just scratching the surface.

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You cannot say that it is because they pick number 20 or lower, lots of teams do and remain in contention year in and year out. The Devils have a wretched draft history for a decade, easily the worst in the game by far. Lou deserves to be faulted for that. The trade history is not as bad but not good either. Free agency and roster management is as bad as his drafting. For the past decade the Devils have slipped to mediocrity and then worse and he has done nothing to reverse the slide. He deserves to be in the Hall in the builder category for his first two decades of turning the Devils into one of the best teams in the league, but for the past decade he has simply destroyed the team, the cupboard is bare and even mediocrity is years away. Lou deserves to be reviled for that as well.

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Lou deserves to be reviled for that as well.

 

 That odd whimpering is 5 of the 10 Devils fans weeping softly as they read your post.

 

 

 Just kidding MD, the latest NHL census has shown that they have officially entered triple digit fan base numbers, they now have 106 loyal fans.

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My concern with the direction the Leafs are taking is that they have a lot of strong personalities (people with big egos) in management, and adding more of them to the mix doesn't mean better results. The old adage of "too many chefs in the kitchen" is appropriate here.

 

I used to work in a workplace where five different people (in five different positions) were making changes to our system and codebase -- without telling anyone else what they were doing or even that they were doing anything. It was chaos. Things were breaking that had been working perfectly fine previously. The system would go down without any rhyme or reason (until I'd find out later that someone else screwed up a change they made to it). You can't operate that way. All changes have to go through one person, not half a dozen.

 

The Leafs have become a "compiler" when it comes to management. :confused[1]:

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I'm not really a believer in the Hydra approach to management. Between Dubas, Lou, and Shanny, who has the most influence? Dubas is supposed to be this progressive analytics guy right? As much as I've defended Lou, he's not exactly known for being a "stats guy". Is Lou there to actually build the team? Is he there to show Dubas the ropes? Is he just a figurehead? The whole thing just feels weird. It's like Shanahan said "Hey, let's throw all these guys that know a lot about hockey at the problem and hope it works".

That said, I do think Lou can do a lot in terms of setting a tone. You read any of those Players Tribune articles from ex-Devils and they all laud Lou and his loyalty. If he can help set up that kind of culture in Toronto, it could really help them going forward. Or it could all blow up in their faces. It's definitely going to be interesting to see how the power dynamic works over the next few years.

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@MadDevil  Just a gut hunch, but my feeling is Lou will basically be a yes man for Shanny. He's a figure head who will not have autonomy to make his own decisions...at least not major ones. I believe they wanted Lou for his organizational skills and to keep a watchful eye over the franchise. Shanny could not name himself GM, so he got himself an experienced guy who will have to run all things hockey past his desk.

 

  Don't for one second think Shanny does not know what kind of mess that Lou made of the Devils this past decade....he won't let the same thing happen to his Leafs....but Lou's presence gives Shanny the ability to stick his nose in and around whereever he wants. There is not many GM's who would put up with that....but Lou is really just collecting a pay cheque while working in close quarters with Shanny...he needed a yes man and he got one.....and at the same time, he gives a hockey legend one last kick at the can.

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