Colorado had chaos with their team, but their new coach still had a training camp and all that. They had injuries as well.
But we had chaos too. It was an offseason of downgrading for cap prepartion. We lost Pouliot from the PK, and Jokinen didn't replace him well. We swapped Eberle for Strome, and Strome took half of a season to find his legs. Sekera missed the first half of the season due to injury, and took time to get to true 100%. Klefbom and Larsson had issues all season as well, both injury and personal, and both missed significant time. Talbot had a rough 1st half.
And believe me, I do understand the arguments for GM failure last offseason as well coaching issues. The PK home/away split was definitely a psychology issue, and that's coaching. (special teams usually are a coaching issue). For the GM, yes Chia did downgrade the team, a team that was already going to start the season without Sekera.
There were also successes. Tmac was the coach while Khaira and Nurse had their breakout seasons, and that only happened because Tmac gave them significant time and patience next to quality players. For Chia, at the start of the year he looked really awful, with Sekera injured, Talbot playing bad, Strome playing bad, Larsson playing bad, Jokinen playing bad, Letestu playing bad, Benning playing bad, Maroon just being average, McDavid being average, and Lucic playing bad. As the 2nd half carried on, these issues were all improved in different ways (maybe not Lucic), and he also made some decent moves along the way like getting picks for Davidson and Maroon, getting Marody traded for and signed, as well as finding Rattie and Aberg.