When I think of Pacioretty I think of the 2007 Draft. We had traded our first in the Ryan Smyth trade and the second in the Zednick deal.
Going into the final weekend of the season Toronto beat Montreal knocking Montreal out and giving us a chance to leapfrog Toronto with a win over the Devils which Dubie delivered on.
If we had a regulation loss we would have been in Montreal's draft slot. With their picks they selected Ryan McDonagh at 12 and PK Subban with their second. With a pick they got in a trade they selected Pacioretty at 22. Our selection at 15 went to Edmonton and they took Akex Plante. If we hadn't made those trades would we have finished out of the playoffs and been in Montreal's spot? A regulation loss to the Devils instead of the shootout win would have accomplished that. Would we have selected McDonagh or Subban? We'll never know.
For the record I'm still happy that we made the playoffs but in retrospect I realize that you don't accomplish it via the unsigned UFA route.
That is why you never trade a first round pick for an unsigned UFA unless you are a clueless, moronic, imbecilic, brain-dead GM who should be in the unemployment line.
We can blame Cappy all we want but realistically he didn't supply the players. In that draft Montreal gets McDonagh, Pacioretty and Subban in the first 2 rounds. In the meantime we get another midget D man Mark Katic in the 3rd. Subsequently we draft other physical D man in later years like Ness, Spurgeon and Kitchon (the latter 2 we don't even sign). Look at LA and Anaheim run all over us and you'll understand the GM is a major problem. Thankfully the last 2 years he addressed the size issue on Defense. Hopefully in the next five years he'll address our long term problem in goal.