Dear Gregory Sherman & Company,
This past summer, many of us Avalanche fans mourned the fact that the Avs' front office did little to bolster the roster. Optimistic fans (the minority) submitted that you and the Avs front office were simply not tweaking with what worked last season and got the Avs back in the playoffs when a last place prediction was wide spread throughout the land. "If it ain't broke, why fix it"? Fair argument. However, many of us fanatics, myself included, were definitely members of the former mindset. And yes, the Avs exceeded expectation and squeaked back into the playoffs as the 8th seed (hooray!), but why not build on that excitement and success by trimming some fat and adding some heat??
As good a signing as Daniel Winnik was, it was hardly the kind of aggressive move(s) that every other team in division seemed to be making by the handful. So as upset, frustrated, angry, bewildered, confused and constipated as many of us were that you and your cronies hid in your Wal-Mart furnished underground bunker and watched reruns of Bewitched rather than wheel and deal, we'd like to offer our public "thank you" for the recent acquisitions. Time will truly tell, but right now the additions of Fleischmann and O'Byrne seem almost prescient. Hunwick hasn't done much to make us forget Colby Cohen and his mythical booming right handed shot (and who sadly only played 3 games in a unipron), but the other two additions overshadow Hunwick's less than glamorous debut, so we'll allow the benefit of the doubt on Video Lock Error.
We fans want to witness and know that the people running our beloved team care about the team as much as we do - right or wrong as that logic/idiocy may be. So it's in that vein that we say 'thank you' for looking like you're trying to make the team better these past few weeks. You could have done nothing and simply kept promoting AHLers to the 4th line, then the 3rd, and so on until Kevin Porter is the top line left wing, but you didn't (sort of). You went out and took note of your surplus of D, and turned that bounty into a much needed repair to your decimated top lines. Very astute, good sirs and madams. We thank you.
Cordially,
MHH
P.S. - Now please tell Stewart to not punch people's helmets. We miss him.
Paul's Coffey's note's: Maybe, just maybe, the reason Shermie and his boys did so little this summer was to see what they had in that bevy of prospects coming into camp last August. That way, they could asses the situation (not the Jersey Shore guy) and make informed, dare I say, "intelligent" decisions concerning the personnel. I know I'm not the first to propose that analysis, but it seems more evident now. Or maybe they were simply performing some damage control due to all the injuries.....
I also wonder how many of these moves the Avs proposed, as opposed to how many were brought to them from the outside.....
Either way, I'm glad for the acquisitions of Snatch (hitting and blocking), and Flesh (making the 3rd period his bitch)!