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The Official Post-Bitch 2025-26 Regular Season Thread

Preston said:
I get this. You were equally mad about Tre, so I'll give you a pass. I see many others who are angrier about this hire than they were about Tre. That is dumb IMO.


In any case, I have more faith in people than most here. I like giving people the benefit of the doubt and am curious to see what Chayka can do in this market. His heart is in the right place, and he was just a kid when he got hired the first time around. I think he'll likely do better here. More support, more and better resources, 10 years older, etc.
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It’s difficult to properly articulate with words how little reassurance I get out of an argument that essentially boils down to “I know this guy was a worthless piece of shit the last time he did this job, but hey, he was young and he’s hopefully learned a lot in the intervening five years doing theoretical hockey math in his basement in between shifts flipping burgers at Wendy’s”.
 
LeafGm said:
It’s difficult to properly articulate with words how little reassurance I get out of an argument that essentially boils down to “I know this guy was a worthless piece of shit the last time he did this job, but hey, he was young and he’s hopefully learned a lot in the intervening five years doing math in his basement in between shifts flipping burgers at Wendy’s”.
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Chayka clearly relied heavily on analytics in Arizona and made a lot of good moves making the team competitive in 3 years, despite having a shitty owner that forced moves like Taylor Hall on him and blocked other good analytics moves like Toffoli.

the idea that he did nothing good is not based in fact.
 
There's video of him talking to buffalo about trying hard to acquire Ryan O'Reilly too, days before St. Louis closed the deal.
 
leafman101 said:
Chayka clearly relied heavily on analytics in Arizona and made a lot of good moves making the team competitive in 3 years, despite having a shitty owner that forced moves like Taylor Hall on him and blocked other good analytics moves like Toffoli.

the idea that he did nothing good is not based in fact.
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We’ve been over this before, and other than Schmaltz for Strome (which is largely a wash), you haven’t been able to come up with any actual examples of the “good” things he did in Phoenix.

Not to mention that they were a shitty non-playoff team when he got there, they were a shitty non-playoff team throughout his tenure there and they continued to be a shitty non-playoff team after he left.

And the Mammoth team that’s now in the playoffs has almost none of his fingerprints left on it at this point.
 
LeafGm said:
We’ve been over this before, and other than Schmaltz for Strome (which is largely a wash), you haven’t been able to come up with any actual examples of the “good” things he did in Phoenix.

Not to mention that they were a shitty non-playoff team when he got there, they were a shitty non-playoff team throughout his tenure there and they continued to be a shitty non-playoff team after he left.

And the Mammoth team that’s now in the playoffs has almost none of his fingerprints left on it at this point.
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They did make he playoffs his 4th and final year for the record.
 
zeke said:
They did make he playoffs his 4th and final year for the record.
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No they didn’t. They didn’t even come close. 11th in their conference in points percentage.

They only “got in” because it was the Covid playoffs where they let pretty much everyone in.
 
LeafGm said:
We’ve been over this before, and other than Schmaltz for Strome (which is largely a wash), you haven’t been able to come up with any actual examples of the “good” things he did in Phoenix.
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Analytically it’s clearly not a wash, which again is the point.

He got Crouse for taking Bollands contract. He traded for Kuemper and Ranta giving them one of the best goalie tandems in the league for years. He drafted Chychrun and Keller. He made clearly analytic influenced depth moves like Demers, Hinostroza, Hjalmarsson, which isn’t anything to write home about, but he was clearly a nerd.

Obviously Toffoli would’ve been a great move..

The team unquestionably improved while he was there, both analytically and in the standings.
 
Upon looking at the Coyotes in the Chayka years, I think a big problem was that this was a team with almost no interesting pieces. They really should have bottomed out, but I don't think that's what the mandate was.

They mostly had picks outside of the top 5 and even traded the 7th overall pick for an aging (but solid enough analytically) Derek Stepan in a desperate attempt to get into the playoffs. And then did it again by acquiring Taylor Hall, a move that we know was forced upon by ownership. Not having a single top 4 pick in all of those years, despite being that shit, kind of killed them more than anything else really. Then there's the fact that no one wanted to play there.. So how are you gonna improve?

It was just really hard for them to acquire those cornerstone pieces that are necessary for them to become anything more than a bubble team.

When it comes to drafting, I've never put that much on the GM. I think he dropped the ball on the Hayton pick obviously, I'd prefer my GM to value different qualities in a player than that.. But for me, the draft is the head scout's thing mostly.


My one critique is that he didn't have a Forsling waiver wire moment that the Panthers always seemed to have. He did a lot of things to trim around the edges and the team did improve on the nerdies by the end of his time there.. but without an actually interesting and elite core, you're not gonna get very far no matter what kind of shuffling you do around the edges.
 
A GM that cut his teeth with a franchise that liked to spend near the cap-floor, and a fan-favourite pick to sheild the corporate bosses.. sure seems to point to a certain direction for this team.
 
I really don’t buy that Mats is coming back as a PR shield for ownership. He doesn’t need this.

From all the reports, including from his friends, he loves this team and feels strongly about an erosion of the integrity of the team over the last few years. Why would he agree to become a part of that.
 
leafman101 said:
I really don’t buy that Mats is coming back as a PR shield for ownership. He doesn’t need this.

From all the reports, including from his friends, he loves this team and feels strongly about an erosion of the integrity of the team over the last few years. Why would he agree to become a part of that.
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I’m sure that’s not how the job was pitched to Mats. But that’s clearly what his job is—to put lipstick on the pig that is hiring Chayka.

Hopefully he thinks better of it and turns it down.
 
wait are you now saying they are intentionally hiring a pig they think needs lipstick?

along with your american politics takes you've become a hellacynic in your dotage!
 
I'm obviously not a fan of hiring chayka but I'll hold judgement until I see his off season work. There is a lot of easy improvement to make here for a so called analytics guy. We have a ton of cap and a lot of places the roster needs improvement.
 
If Sundin was strictly a PR hire there wouldn't be this much hullaballoo about what role he'd be serving. They clearly value whatever it is he's pitching, but Chayka sort of feels like " most expereienced nerd" they can find.

Like, this isnt Tre, or a disaster hire, probably, but im just not sure how you can look at his Zona tenure and be wowed.
 
Oh...and firing Berube is probably the first test of whether or not he's shit. If he doesn't take one look at our analytics performance and fire Berube, that's a huge red flag.
 
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