Side note... But why do people say the 'market isnt great'? Like how do you know? Do you chat to agents? We replaced Blood in less than 2 weeks, brought in Mosey, every other team is signing players too. Not a dig, I'm genuinely curious as a few people have said it.
If it's because it's the management line that gets rolled out then I'd take it with a pinch of salt and said as to manage expectation of the fan base.
50/50
Half the time it could well be management.
teams, agents & players talk constantly and that's something us fans can only speculate over.
However you can generally see what's going on if you follow NHL/AHL/ECHL to see the level of drop out from the training camps, and post-training camps the number of players re-assigned into the minors.
This is a notoriously tough time to recruit as a GENERAL rule - those that didn't cut it in the NHL out of camp are in the AHL come September.
The only players *generally* coming available mid-late October are those that don't cut it once the season starts (sacked after <10 games) from the NHL/AHL.
Players becoming available mid-late November are unlikely as they will have settled into a team by now.
More players will drop off in the first 6 weeks than the rest of the season combined (no evidence for this, just my guess).
Complete guess work here, but if we had offered Mosey a contract over the summer he would have taken it i think. He left HBF on mutual agreement to come to us.