Craig Patrick
“Why does everyone think Craig Patrick screwed Pittsburgh hockey over? He said at the beginning of the off-season that he was only going to look for top prospects in return for Jagr (that is what he got).”He still has about 15 free agents left to sign (who have a realistic shot of playing with the team). Craig isn’t the GM of the N.Y Rangers, where money pretty much grows off trees, and he can spend all the cash he wants. Pittsburgh is a small market team. I trust Craig Patrick. Nobody in Pittsburgh thought it was a very good move to trade Petr Nedved, who was one of the teams best players for Alexei Kovalev, who at the time hadn’t produced to his full potential. Now Kovalev scores 40+ goals a season, and Nedved, who plays pretty good hockey, doesn’t put up those kind of numbers. And about 10 years ago when he traded away Paul Coffey, who at the time was the leagues best defenseman, and Mark Recchi, who was having the best season of his life, for Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson, and Ken Wregget. If Craig didn’t make that trade I can guarantee the Pens wouldn’t have won the cup that year. Craig Patrick is a risk-taking GM. That’s all he did here. If these three players the Pens got turn out to be anything in the NHL nobody will care that they had to give up Jagr for them. All I’m saying is it is too early to judge the move that Craig Patrick made yet, because we have not seen these prospects really play in the NHL. Once he see them play, then we can say who won the trade.
P.S. I’m not quite sure where everyone is getting there info, but the $5 million given to the Pens from the Caps over the next couple of years is not the future considerations.