Houle. But he wasn't a GM. Corey thought he was which was the dumbest mistake of them all. Yet, he was appointed as one so he is the worst one. But based on ratio experience/results? Gainey gets it. Gauthier not that far behind yet we will not be there as a GM that long to get the trophy.
Houle is the worse yes but he was thrown in the wolves by Corey who had no idea what he was doing.
Gainey/Gauthier on the other hand had GM experience and completely mismanaged assets on this team.
It's ok to trade guys like Ribeiro, Latendresse, S.Kostitsyn and Grabovski if they don't fit with the team but get some ****ing return for your value. Those 4 guys were traded for Niinimaa, Pouliot, Ellis, Boyd, Pateryn and a 5th. Only ****ing Pateryn is left from those trades and most of the players we traded away are still young. It's ridiculous.
The Gomez trade just puts it over the top. To trade a great young prospect who is developing to be a solid top pair guy for an over the hill veteran who makes more than most stars in the league was brutal. Add to the trade Higgins, who was a solid top 9 player.
The team drafted well under Gainey (thank you Timmins) but I have never seen assets being mismanaged like that in my life.
Only trade I could say we won with Gainey was the Pacioretty/Gorges trade for Rivet. Every other is up for debate or a loss.
Houle, and it's not even close, wasn't really totally his fault (Corey is to blame for all of this), but he was the man in charge, so he gets the vote, easily.
Grundman is in the discussion because of Wickenheiser?
Doug Wickenheiser was big, strong, a center and had just scored 89 goals and 170 points in the WHL. He looked a damn good bet!
Denis Savard was a great choice and in fact had slightly better number (181 points but significantly less goals). But he had enough question marks that he wasn't even second overall but third choice of the draft. He was smaller, a wingman, had posted his numbers in a slightly weaker league etc. He seemed to have a bit less value. In hindsight, he had the runaway best career of the draft but I don't see how picking Doug was dumb given what he had shown. Today's crowd would scream bloody murder if we let passed someone like him at the draft ('Big center! Big Center! Arg! *stroke*).
When you get pocket aces preflop, you gotta bet them. If pocket kings break them, so be it, you still can't second guess your bet.
Houle was the worst, no Question. Gainey was actually above average in his first few years. He did improve the team a lot from the Houle mess. Then it sadly went downhill. We all know the events it coincided with so I'll cut him a break.
Gauthier on the other hand might be solidifying his hold on the number two spot.
Rejean Houle is probably the worst but Gainey got my vote. I would like to take this opportunity and say again:
**** you Mr. Gainey, and **** you Mr. Gauthier.
It's the first time thay you take this opportunity, no?
I like Gauthier. That Kaberle trade tho... he was gambling that Kabs would keep us around until Markov? Ugly. But that Markov gamble will pay off long run. I like his other moves, other than not landing a biggy and going for "depth". He dumped Kostitsyn - hurray!
Houle had some nice finds, or some nice people working for him.
Grundman...no win situation, and he was not in charge. Nobody could have solved that. He lost a couple Hall of Famers before he started.
Gainey did well... if that meant not sacrificing all for a Cup... he did as well as anyone could. Not even Pollock could have done better with that mandate. His patchwork was genius. I wished he would have gone for it all. I suspect he'll be back as a GM one day. Maybe he'll lose his desire for gentle boys (Turgeon, Audette, Hogue, etc.)
Last edited by tinyzombies: 03-23-2012 at 01:44 AM.
Grundman is in the discussion because of Wickenheiser?
Doug Wickenheiser was big, strong, a center and had just scored 89 goals and 170 points in the WHL. He looked a damn good bet!
Denis Savard was a great choice and in fact had slightly better number (181 points but significantly less goals). But he had enough question marks that he wasn't even second overall but third choice of the draft. He was smaller, a wingman, had posted his numbers in a slightly weaker league etc. He seemed to have a bit less value. In hindsight, he had the runaway best career of the draft but I don't see how picking Doug was dumb given what he had shown. Today's crowd would scream bloody murder if we let passed someone like him at the draft ('Big center! Big Center! Arg! *stroke*).
When you get pocket aces preflop, you gotta bet them. If pocket kings break them, so be it, you still can't second guess your bet.
Houle was the worst, no Question. Gainey was actually above average in his first few years. He did improve the team a lot from the Houle mess. Then it sadly went downhill. We all know the events it coincided with so I'll cut him a break.
Gauthier on the other hand might be solidifying his hold on the number two spot.
For some reason, I always thought he would trade himself for Mike Milbury. Guess that would have made too much sense, though.
Blame Corey and Molson for his tenure, though. Seeing the most skilled players leave year after year leaving Koivu with scrubs like Craig Darby, Juha Lind, Johan Witehall...
Houle. Far and away Houle is the worst GM in recent history. You can discuss the reasons behind this all you want (little experience, meddling upper management) but the fact remains that Houle took a team that had been a contender for for at least two decades and systematically destroyed it. Even setting aside the Roy trade - Odelein for a broken down Richer? Turgeon, Fitzpatrick and Conroy for a broken down Corson and Murray Baron? Bure for Zalapski and Hoglund? Brashear for Cullimore? Acquiring Juha Lind for Scott Thornton (not an offensive dynamo himself, but he would score in his next season more than Juha Lind scored in the rest of his career)? A first round pick (10th overall) for a Trevor Linden that hadn't broken 20 goals in four years?
Sorry - we can bemoan the Gomez signing and the Kaberle trade but those have nothing, nothing on the farce that was the Rejean Houle era.
Interesting that Houle seems to be getting praised for finding Ribeiro, Ryder and Markov in the draft while ignoring all the crap choices he made (Jason Ward, Eric Chouinard, etc etc) but all the great picks that Gainey made (Halak, Streit, Subban, Maxpac, Price over Brule) he gets no credit at all for - it was all Timmins!
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryHabs
The team drafted well under Gainey (thank you Timmins) but I have never seen assets being mismanaged like that in my life.
Only trade I could say we won with Gainey was the Pacioretty/Gorges trade for Rivet. Every other is up for debate or a loss.
Okay. Kovalev trade. Debate it. I say it was a great move. You apparently think it was a loss and would have preferred Jozef Balej and a 2nd round pick that never made the NHL?
When trying to blame the demise of the Habs on a GM, let's not let Serge Savard off the hook entirely either. He did win 2 Cups, but accelerated the run into mediocrity with a few terrible moves like:
-Chelios for Savard - Denis was eventually dispatched to the Lightning for no return, this was far worse than the Gomez trade IMO
-Desjardins, LeClair, Dionne for Recchi - didn't work out so well
-Guy Carbonneau for Jim Montgomery - yes this actually happened
-Bellows for Marc Bureau - Bellows got more points with the Lightning the following season than Bureau got in 3 years for the Habs
-Lebeau for Tugnutt - before Tugnutt was anywhere close to decent
-Muller & Schneider for Turgeon & Malakhov - Turgeon was the best player at that point, but the D really suffered losing Schneider after Desjardins was gone too
And let's not forget his draft record. Here's his first round picks:
Alfie Turcotte
Petr Svoboda
Shayne Corson
Jose Charbonneau
Tom Chorske
Mark Pederson
Andrew Cassels
Eric Charron
Lindsay Vallis
Turner Stevenson
Brent Bilodeau
David Wilkie
Saku Koivu
Brad Brown
Terry Ryan
I count 3 decent NHL'ers out of 15 first round picks.
Houle had to cope with a scouting staff that became dormant under Savard, with Ronald Corey who micromanaged everything and an ownership group that demanded he shed payroll.
Gainey had Timmins - one of the best head scouts in the business - and he still manged to destroy this team. He has no excuse for his terrible moves except that he's a terrible GM.
And don't forget the money Gainey worked with compared to Houle.
Houle and Gainey were the worst GMs ever... but because Gainey had so much money to work with, he gets my vote.
And let's not forget his draft record. Here's his first round picks:
Alfie Turcotte
Petr Svoboda
Shayne Corson
Jose Charbonneau
Tom Chorske
Mark Pederson
Andrew Cassels
Eric Charron
Lindsay Vallis
Turner Stevenson
Brent Bilodeau
David Wilkie
Saku Koivu
Brad Brown
Terry Ryan
I count 3 decent NHL'ers out of 15 first round picks.
Koivu, Cassels, Svoboda, Corson.
That's 4 players who were, at least at some point in their career, 1st line / 1st pairing players.
I'd add Turner Stevenson (644 games, 190 pts) as a decent NHLer. A bad 1st round pick with hands of stone, but still a decent NHLer. Same can be said for Chorske.
And then, there are those great picks in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th... rounds : Lemieux, Richer, Roy, LeClair, Desjardins, Schneider, and then you also have Lumme, Odelein, Brisebois, Conroy, Savage, Rivet, Bure, Tucker, Theodore, Vokoun, Robidas.
That's a bad 1st round record, but, overall, it's not too shabby.
Houle and it's not even close. Anyone that picks Gainey has no clue about hockey.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CGG
When trying to blame the demise of the Habs on a GM, let's not let Serge Savard off the hook entirely either. He did win 2 Cups, but accelerated the run into mediocrity with a few terrible moves like:
-Chelios for Savard - Denis was eventually dispatched to the Lightning for no return, this was far worse than the Gomez trade IMO
-Desjardins, LeClair, Dionne for Recchi - didn't work out so well
-Guy Carbonneau for Jim Montgomery - yes this actually happened
-Bellows for Marc Bureau - Bellows got more points with the Lightning the following season than Bureau got in 3 years for the Habs
-Lebeau for Tugnutt - before Tugnutt was anywhere close to decent
-Muller & Schneider for Turgeon & Malakhov - Turgeon was the best player at that point, but the D really suffered losing Schneider after Desjardins was gone too NOT A TERRIBLE TRADE BY ANY STRETCH
And let's not forget his draft record. Here's his first round picks:
Alfie Turcotte Petr Svoboda Shayne Corson
Jose Charbonneau
Tom Chorske
Mark Pederson Andrew Cassels
Eric Charron
Lindsay Vallis Turner Stevenson
Brent Bilodeau
David Wilkie Saku Koivu
Brad Brown
Terry Ryan
I count 3 decent NHL'ers out of 15 first round picks.
Anyone who is not casting a vote for Houle couldn't have lived through that hellish era. The man was in completely over his head. Got fleeced on virtually every trade he made. The team went from a declining but still somewhat competitive one to an absolute trainwreck under his watch.
There aren't enough rotten things to say about he, Tremblay, or Ron Corey. That trio earns a special place in Canadiens hell!
