Dear Kevin,
I think we need to talk. Actually, I know we need to talk. You see, I like to observe the Jets and I feel like you are making it harder for people to be a fan of the the Jets. Every time a move is announced people are angry, people are sad. Winnipeg wants a winner, but they also want to see a clear plan. You haven't shown us that and it is getting a little irritating. You talked to the media yesterday and you said a whole lot of nothing. People want to know just a little bit more than they know right now. Instead, we still know nothing.
Yesterday you said that you never actually wanted to go to arbitration with Michael Frolik. I get that; the arbitration hearing can get ugly and it can ruin relationships between a player and a team. You filed for arbitration though. I know that filing for arbitration can protect a player from an offer sheet, but offer sheets rarely happen. You negotiated with Frolik after signing fourth liner Chris Thorburn to a three year deal. I understand negotiating with RFAs after you finish up with your UFAs, but Frolik is a much better and more important to the team's success than Thorburn.
You also mentioned that the Jets used analytics, but you would not disclose which ones because you want it to remain in house. That's fine; if you have a competitive edge there, you should try and keep it…except you do not understand the most basic ones that the analytics community uses and that was shown in Ed Tait's piece on analytics from this spring. You exposed yourself and saying you use something when you do not even understand what the main ideas are is lying. You may use different measures than boxscores to judge players, but I am certain that you have not been using the same type of analytics that your old team, the Chicago Blackhawks, have been using under Stan Bowman, your former boss.
You also mentioned that you consider Mark Stuart a core player. I like Mark Stuart on the bottom pairing. I'm sure Stuart is a nice guy, he may even be a great guy for a young player like Jacob Trouba to be around. A core guy though? No, he should not be a core guy on any team. He is 30 years old and is getting up there in age. He has never been a top four defender on a good team, and yet he is a part of your core.
This leads me to ask you who your core actually is because no one has any idea. Is your core the young players like Evander Kane, Mark Scheifele, and Jacob Trouba. Or is your core older players like Andrew Ladd, Dustin Byfuglien, and Tobias Enstrom. No one knows Kevin; do you even know? If you have to trade away a big name player for the Jets, will you identify them as a former core player to give us a clue or will you say nothing as always? I'm starting to think that is your greatest skill; saying nothing.
Now we can talk about Ondrej Pavelec. You must know he is not a young kid anymore. He is soon to be 27 and really should be better than he is if he is as good as you say he is, but he is a replacement level goaltender. Goalies were plentiful this offseason and you had two amnesty buyouts to use. Instead you named Pavelec the starter at your year end press conference. A couple months later you said the Jets were a small market team that would probably never use a buyout. You said this the day after the Arizona Coyotes bought out Mike Ribeiro due to his behaviour. I am certain that you could have justified buying out Pavelec for the time he hid a DUI from you and then signed a big contract or the countless games he has lost the Jets because he has let in a banana goal. But you kept him because you were seemingly afraid of having to sign or trade for a goalie. You could have done that Kevin, I believe you could have.
You talked again today Kevin and you said nothing. You talked about sometimes you cannot reach an agreement in a set timeframe, but you did not use up all the time available to you. You said a lot of words, but you had no meaning behind them. I want to like the Jets more Kevin, but I am having a hard time separating them from your actions. You overpay and give term to bad players. You miss on good players when more money may have been the deciding factor for them. You have painted yourself into a corner. The fans deserve a better team because they waited so long for this and now they get a team that is going nowhere fast. You though? You deserve the team you built: directionless without a plan.
Sincerely,
A Person Named Cara