It feels like the GM & Coach are the ones who have quit on this team.

You sit back as a fan, as a season ticket holder, and you watch this collapse happen. You see players like Palat, Soucy, Mayfield, Boqvist and the entire 4th line get ice time regularly during this collapse and no one does anything to try to stop this free fall.

The 4th line is a nice thing to have if the top 9 can generate offense. But they don't. Instead we have Casey and 2 barely replacement level players with no finish around the net, no game changing physicality. They have a nice shift where they don't give up goals and can cycle the puck a bit, but no one can score. Gatcomb and Maclean are routinely given high danger chances and do nothing with them. They are Hudson Fasching.

But you keep that line together because you need them to stabilize the bleeding.

Darche needs to answer the fans and ownership (who cannot be happy right now) with why he and his scouts believed there was more juice to squeeze in Palat for this year and next season. Getting rid of Tsyp's insignificant salary to take on the 2nd year of Palat and spending the 3rd looks like a GM who had no idea of what he was doing. Not a franchise-killer move, but clearly he didn't scout Palat well enough to know he was toast.

Trading for Soucy and then stopping the hunt for more defenseman looks equally as stupid. He's a 7th defenseman at best. Lou was better at finding stopgap defensemen. He hit on Tony D, Bortuzzo -- hell, I even liked his grabs of Perunovich and Boqvist at the time because he was trying. Darche got Soucy and stopped trying.

By acquiring Soucy he stopped developing Isiah George who if he had been playing all this time instead of Soucy, might be the superior player. We lost giving George (and other Bridgeport guys) some run in a season we're collapsing because our GM believes Soucy is an NHL defenseman. Even the Rangers didn't believe in him. Sullivan was scratching him all the time.

And now, we're sliding down a hill watching all the good this team did (remember November when we went on the road and beat elite teams playing fast and up tempo?).

He has guys in Bridgeport in Eklund, Beckman and even multiple defenseman options and he's sitting on his hands.

The coach can't stop messing with the lines in search of what exactly? If Roy is in charge of the lines, he should be fired. If Darche is in charge of the lines, we're in bigger trouble.

They're not trying anything. They are going down quietly. It's a terrible message to send to Schaefer -- that we're more interested in the GM saving face over bad moves than giving the guys in Bridgeport or even Shabby another chance.

Darche had a great draft. If you watch that On the Island video, it appears he was deferring to his top scout though so while he gets credit for it, we saw who was pushing Eklund and Aitcheson for those picks while Darche was upset he didn't pull off the Hagens move.

The GM and Coach have let us down. As someone who has a full season plan and already renewed and already said they would pay for the playoff tickets, I'm furious that the front office and coaching staff are just sticking with what they have and literally not trying anything different other than line combos.

Malkin and the rest of the owners put up this year -- they have spent over the cap to help this team. Outside of the parking situation, they are great owners.

Everyone deserved better than this. And Darche and Roy sit on their hands and fiddle with their Palats while Elmont burns.