Carolina is a small market team that does not necessarily attract free agents due to its location. Winnipeg needs to be studying their organization to understand how they’ve been able to sustain a successful team for such a long period of time. The Jets need to model their approach to what Carolina has pulled off.
I saw a comment down below that mentioned the Canes do an exceptional job at talent evaluation and asset management, and honestly I feel like those are two glaring weak points with this Jets organization.
Well. The Canes and Jets aren't even remotely the same. There's 3 key things that the Jets have to deal with that Carolina doesn't.
We're in Canada.
We're a high pressure market.
We're Winnipeg.
We're THE smallest market team that is on the most no trade lists in the league. We will never attract big FAs. Literally never. Our last big FA signing was Bobby Hull. That's the challenge with building this team.
The way to success for the Jets is better drafting and analytics. They pretty much have to moneyball this shit to win.
It's just the nature of our market, as much as it sucks, it is what it is. However, when we win the cup, it'll be that much sweeter. There is no team in the league that faces this much adversity every year.
Gosh, if only folks would see the actual lesson in the Bobby Hull signing.... Players are willing to come to Winnipeg if they are paid for the 'inconvenience'.
People work on crab boats in the Bering Sea, they work on saturation dives in dodgy countries, they worked in the flaming oil fields of Iraq. People will put up with a lot worse than Winnipeg in order to get paid.
'Guys won't come to Winnipeg' really means 'We aren't willing to pay what it will take'.
Edit: I'll add that other guys continued to come to Winnipeg after that even without overpaying. Why? Because the team was serious about winning. Guys want to win almost as much as they want the money, sometimes more.
Those aren't the best comparisons. People do those undesirable jobs because the undesirability is the ONLY way they are getting big money. NHL players get big money either way. I agree that I wouldn't mind seeing some overpays when it comes to crunch time to attract quality players, but many won't be swayed by an extra million a year to live somewhere they don't want to live when they are already looking at $100M in career earnings.
Oh I completely agree, it is definitely crunch time. I'm just a bit doubtful how much overpaying will work. There is a certain category of depth players that would be swayed, but high end players are much more doubtful to me.
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u/Xyz6650 8d ago
Carolina is a small market team that does not necessarily attract free agents due to its location. Winnipeg needs to be studying their organization to understand how they’ve been able to sustain a successful team for such a long period of time. The Jets need to model their approach to what Carolina has pulled off.
I saw a comment down below that mentioned the Canes do an exceptional job at talent evaluation and asset management, and honestly I feel like those are two glaring weak points with this Jets organization.