Silver Nuggets: Former Stars in the Front Office

Let's get a few things out of the way: I love Joe Sakic. He was my favourite player growing up. Second favourite? Patrick Roy. I'm no NHL GM, and I'm no scout.

That said, its a little bit crazy for the Colorado Avalanche and their new front office dream team to pass on Seth Jones, right?

By all accounts, the kid is an animal. He's big, a great skater, can play a shut down role or an offensive-minded role. He was instrumental in the USA winning gold at the WJC. Most importantly, he PLAYS DEFENCE. A right handed d-man at that! Rare commodity for sure.

The consensus seems to be that he and MacKinnon and Drouin are all essentially equal heading into the draft. But, with all things equal, and you look at the Avs organizational depth chart... yeesh. Name one quality d-man on that team past Erik Johnson. Ya, trick question.

It seems like an interesting move that may or may not pan out. What is interesting to me is that the guys calling the shots are legends in Colorado. So even if its not the best call, will they see much in the way of backlash? Guys like Steve Yzerman is not even the GM in the city that he ruled, but has somehow managed to avoid too much scrutiny for his tenure, despite a few glaring errors. Joe Nieuwendyk got WAY more rope than he should have in Dallas, making silly move after silly move before finally being replaced. How long did the Great One get in the desert? Too long.

Fact is, sometimes NHL legends are really smart hockey guys that can be groomed to do jobs that are important to running a hockey team. Sometimes, however, they aren't, and because they are who they are, its hard to get upset with them. Jury is still out on some of them, and maybe Sakic and Roy will turn out to have made the right call, but for now it looks... interesting.

When the day comes that Daniel Alfredsson hangs up his skates, it will be interesting to see how he is deployed within the Ottawa Senators organization.

Sens Links:

• 2013 Report Cards: Defencemen. Really cool series by Ryan, if you haven't checked it out yet! [SSS]
• We can't be right ALL the time, so we need to apologize! [SSS]
• 4 Senator rookies got votes in the Calder race [SSS]
• Best ever 12th overall pick? Marian Hossa, Ottawa Senators. [NHL]
• A look at the Sens depth down the middle. This summer's version of "crowded crease" [6thSens]
• BMurr would like to move up in the draft. I like the sounds of that. [SE]
• Which country is manufacturing the top Sens? [RBM]
• Old news by now, but the Bank is now the CTC. [Sens]

Where would you like to see Alfie in the future? (notice I didn't give a PLAY FOREVER option)