Satyar Shah

Like Tolsky is not a top paid GM.

Heck, they even drew a hard bargain with their head coach.

He's not even one of the highest paid coaches, Rod Brindamore, despite his longevity and clear success with the hurricane.

So they have a way of doing business under Tom Dundon, where they do find really smart executives that are good at what they do,

but they're not paying top dollar for those individuals.

And if you're looking for individuals that could have similar acumen, that could be excellent at what they do without paying them a lot of money, you kind of have to go into a pool where those individuals don't have a ton of experience, like a Darren Hermiston, for instance.

And I'm not saying he doesn't have experience working...

You know with players but in terms of actually being an executive and if you can go mine those areas where you find executives or the next level that the next wave of executives and you start hitting on guys that have that acumen you bring them in on a cheap level and they end up you know overperforming.

Well, that's one way to get around it.

And I think that's when the Hurricanes did a really good job of.

Obviously, they spent a lot of money or they spent resources at the very least on their analytics department.

That's been a big edge of theirs.

But it's not about just spending the money.

It's about finding people and perhaps taking some chances on certain individuals that hadn't had opportunities before to have bigger roles.

And that's how you can make up for the fact that you didn't go after the top executives.

But that comes down to your ability to...

evaluate and recognize who the next executives that do these things at an excellent level are.

And is Hermes in one of those players or one of those individuals?

I certainly hope so.

But if that's what you're looking for, if you're not spending top dollar on executives, that's kind of the pool you have to go and swim in.