re wings will win in article ragraca vela acs oakland edu ragraca vela acs oakland edu randy a graca writes golchowy alchemy chem utoronto ca gerald olchowy writes bryan murray has done very little as gm yzerman fedorov cheveldae chaisson the whole russian strategy was a product of the previous gm murray has made a couple of decent trades that s about it that would hardly rank him as the best gm there are many teams in the nhl who have taken a liking to russian players the whole russian strategy is not specific to detroit or to devellano who was gm before murray what the previous gm also did was to trade away several players who have gone on to do well with other teams most notably in my memory murray craven who had a few very good years with philly after leaving here also it s not the volume of trades that will necessarily improve a team but the quality of them trading adam oates for bernie federko was just plain stupid even if federko used to be a great player at one time most of murray s trades have worked significantly to the wings advantage with those that didn t being soured mainly by injury to the players involved such as troy crowder who suffered back problems from which he never really recovered devallano went earlier and more extensively to the russian strategy than anyone else and was the first gm to waste high draft choices on young russians devallano would still be gm but he succombed to demers pleading to make the oates federko et al trade which is the deal that sealed his fate murray has made some decent trades no doubt but these are more due to the stupidity or cheapness of other teams than brilliance on his part washington was too cheap to pay ciccarelli so they essentially gave him away and carson was really a big anchor to the team and he was able to sucker a rookie gm to give him paul coffey for deadweight if detroit still fails this year because he was one defenseman short then he will have wasted an opportunity because manson was available and he was unable to pull the trigger it is his judgement that he has enough with what he s got yzerman doesn t have that many more years in his prime gerald
