NHL GM rips his own team, says trades are coming.

A National Hockey League general manager is clearly very underwhelmed by the performance of his team this season.

On Saturday Anaheim Ducks general manager Bob Murray was rewarded by the Ducks franchise for his many years of hard, and quality, work with a short 2 year contract extensions. Now that is of course great news for Murray but the length of term on his new deal would appear to suggest that he may have a limited amount of time to take the franchise from it's current state and back into Stanley Cup relevancy. 

Now it's not that I myself am interjecting my opinion on the current state of the Ducks' here, Murray himself held a press conference where the announcement regarding his extension was made official and as you would expect he fielded a number of questions from the members of the assembled media during that press conference. One of those questions was regarding the current state of the Ducks and how Murray views them when compared to the rest of the league. Before answer Murray went out of his way to state that there is a clear distinction between Stanley Cup contenders and playoff teams and it's clear he does not feel the Ducks belong to the contender group.

"I don't think at the moment the way we're playing, we're a Stanley Cup contender," said Murray as per Helen Elliott of the Los Angeles Times.

Now obviously these are not the kind of comments that a general manager can make lightly, after all his salary is earned by building as competitive a team as humanly possible, but it became rather apparent during Murray's media availability that he does not intend to let his team stagnate in it's current state for very long at all. Murray has already made some moves this season, most recently acquiring forward Daniel Sprong in a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but made it clear there are more changes coming down the pipeline.

Murray stated that he and the Ducks are "actively looking to improve" their current roster and said of the organization's current goal scoring issue are "It's on our minds big-time".

What trade that may be remains to be seen, but if the Sprong deal is any indication it may be that the Ducks will be forced to give up some of their depth on the blue line to help bring more youth into their core of aging forwards.

[pub]