Who is the worst GM in NHL history?

[Inkling]

Mel Bridgeman might be a candidate except no one thinks of him as a GM after he disappeared forever following being named the Senators' first GM in 1992 and being fired two years later. He's famous for repeatedly selecting ineligible players in the expansion draft.

 

[Fixxer]

Honorable mention to Mike Gillis. Couldn’t draft his way out of a paper bag, cost the Canucks a Stanley Cup and was an arrogant jerk who alienated people. He set the franchise back for almost a decade. Couldn’t replace Ehrhoff or get a real line mate for the Sedins. ****ed up having 2 top 10 goalies somehow. Propped up gimmicky stuff like sleep doctors and hiring Chayka’s company Stathletes which is now being exposed as bad representatives of analytics to sell himself as some kind of genius. Fired AV and hired John Tortorella. The list goes on and on. He’s the worst GM to win the GM of the year award. Only reason why people ever thought he was good because the Sedins and Luongo had incredible peaks but fizzled because they had no support from the terrible management.

He's also lucky that the Schneider/Horvat trade didn't turn out bad. It could have been so bad had Horvat not been as great as he's been. In fact, he traded Schneider for the 9th overall pick. Said it was great to pick in the top 10... but yeah, if you pick wrong and trade a 1b goalie for it, it can turn pretty bad!!!

 

[Cats2TheCup]

Can someone explain the Mike Millbury situation? I wasn't paying attention to hockey during those years.

 

[nbwingsfan]

Chiarelli built a team that:

won a Cup
made a 2nd Finals
4 100 point seasons and 1 President's Trophy
4x won their division
made the playoffs 7 out of 9 seasons

yeah, he was brutally bad in Edmonton (even if he gave them their best season in a decade), but he doesn't warrant consideration for this list outside of recency bias

He also traded

Wheeler for Peverly

1st,2nd, top prospect for Kaberle (this is viewed as a bad trade for everyone because Toronto couldn’t draft anyone good, but in original value this was seen as a lot)

Seguin for Eriksson, Smith, Morrow

Hall for Larsson

Eberle for literally nothing but $2M cap hit a year later

Acquired Manning and his $2M cap hit to be a scratch in the AHL

Never mind the countless awful contracts like Lucic, Koskinnen, NMC to Kelly, etc.

Littered with poor moves that are slightly clouded by him lucking into a cup from a team with a core built for him.

 

[Beige Van]

I'll go Mad Mike, with Houle a close second.

 

[LeftHeartInSF]

Chia has traded away more star talent than some franchises ever have in their entire history.

 

[Ivo]

He also traded

Wheeler for Peverly

1st,2nd, top prospect for Kaberle (this is viewed as a bad trade for everyone because Toronto couldn’t draft anyone good, but in original value this was seen as a lot)

Would do those trades 100 times out of a 100 again. I mean, these were deadline trades in a cup-winning season. From a long-term perspective they might seem bad, but who know whether the Bruins win the cup without them? Peverley was an important contributor to the cup winning team and Wheeler was nothing like he is today back then. Kaberle came in for futures, and had 11 points in the playoffs. Remember, Boston played in 3 game 7s and two of them were decided by one goal. A little detail could have prevented their cup win.

Chiarelli also made some very important depth trades prior to Boston's cup win:
Horton and Campbell for Wideman, 1st, 3rd
Recchi and 2nd for Lashoff and Karsums
Seidenberg and Bartkowski for Bitz, Weller and 2nd
Kelly for 2nd

All of these trades brought in important pieces for an acceptable price. The Kessel trade was also a great one value-wise, although did not significantly impact the cup run.
I get it that Chiarelli's Edmonton stint was legendary bad, but winning a cup in Boston should automatically disqualify him from being the worst GM ever. Do you think any Bruins fan regrets Chiarelli being our GM from 2006 to 2011?

 

[Chan790]

Part of the problem is that some GMs have wildly-different careers in different markets. Eddie Johnston's term with the Whalers is easily worse than anybody on this list, even Milbury, when taken alone. Then, he goes to Pittsburgh, wins multiple Cups and is hailed as a great hockey coach and administrator.

 

[Neely2005]

While he is not the worst GM ever I'm surprised to see John Ferguson Junior listed as an option. Yes the Rask for Raycroft trade was bad. However he was also under pressure from the MLSE board of directors to make moves to keep the Leafs in the playoffs and it was reported he wanted to make other moves so they could rebuild and get younger players at the time, which he was not allowed to do.

Brian Burke was probably a worse GM for the leafs than JFJ was.

 

[ScaredStreit]

Can someone explain the Mike Millbury situation? I wasn't paying attention to hockey during those years.

Traded multiple HOfers, many all-stars, virtually every pick he kept was a bust, hired awful coaches (even made himself coach), etc. He traded away Palffy, Luongo, Chara, McCabe, Bertuzzi, Jokinen, 2nd overall pick (Spezza), and got...Oleg Kvasha and a few other scrubs. I think I just vomited in my mouth a little.

 

[Cats2TheCup]

Traded multiple HOfers, many all-stars, virtually every pick he kept was a bust, hired awful coaches (even made himself coach), etc. He traded away Palffy, Luongo, Chara, McCabe, Bertuzzi, Jokinen, 2nd overall pick (Spezza), and got...Oleg Kvasha and a few other scrubs. I think I just vomited in my mouth a little.

Oh man, he's the guy who did THAT!!! I completely understand now. Panthers fan here who benefited from that. Was too young to care about other teams MGMT. It all makes sense now, thank you.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

He also traded

Wheeler for Peverly

1st,2nd, top prospect for Kaberle (this is viewed as a bad trade for everyone because Toronto couldn’t draft anyone good, but in original value this was seen as a lot)

Seguin for Eriksson, Smith, Morrow

Hall for Larsson

Eberle for literally nothing but $2M cap hit a year later

Acquired Manning and his $2M cap hit to be a scratch in the AHL

Never mind the countless awful contracts like Lucic, Koskinnen, NMC to Kelly, etc.

Littered with poor moves that are slightly clouded by him lucking into a cup from a team with a core built for him.

Peverley and Kaberle trades you make 100 out of 100 times. Without those 2 moves there is no 2011 Cup, period.

Peverley-Ryder-Kelly line carred them over Montreal, and Peverley stepped onto the top line in The Finals after Horton went down and produced. Kaberle made the 3rd pair dangerous and kicked in 11 points in the run

all Hall has given NJ is the #1 overall pick 2 of 3 years, big loss.

also, he brought in far more of that Cup team than was handed.

Chiarelli acquired Chara, Savard, Horton, Seidenberg, Boychuk, Ference, McQuaid, Kaberle, Peverley, Kelly, Thornton, Campbell, Paille, Ryder...and hired Julien

 

[LeafsNation75]

Brian Burke was probably a worse GM for the leafs than JFJ was.

Burke still made some good trades for them like JVR for Luke Schenn, along with getting Gardiner and Lupul for Beauchemin.

 

[JTToilinginToronto]

10 years ago this would have been Milbury and it's not even close.

Now, while I still ended up voting Milbury, I did give some consideration to Chia. Which is saying something.

 

[Scottkmlps]

Sam McMaster

 

[tarheelhockey]

Oh man, he's the guy who did THAT!!! I completely understand now. Panthers fan here who benefited from that. Was too young to care about other teams MGMT. It all makes sense now, thank you.

I would add a bit more background to that story.

Imagine yourself as an Islanders fan in 1995. Your team is 3 years removed from a Conference Final. 2 years ago, all-time legendary coach Al Arbour finally gave up the bench. Now you hear that your team has hired Mike Milbury. You decide to go find out this guy's background.

Here's what you find:

• Playing career: Was a mediocre goon defenseman for the Bruins during the Don Cherry era. His most significant act as a player was climbing into the stands and beating a fan with a shoe.

• Start in coaching: Hired as a Bruins assistant in a country club move. Advanced immediately to a head coaching gig in the AHL where he did nothing of note in 2 years.

• NHL coaching: Inexplicably promoted to coach the Bruins during Peak Ray Bourque. Won a president's trophy, made the finals. Forced the NHL to make a rule that ASG coaches couldn't use goons in their lineup. Astounded everyone by quitting after two 100-point seasons.

• Recent activity: Agreed to coach Boston College, then quit before even starting the job. Landed a job as an analyst on ESPN next to Barry Melrose, who had basically the same set of qualifications at that point in time.

So you hire this guy as your coach. And within 3 months he gets the GM job on top of that.

So you now have a GM/coach with no GM'ing experience, whose coaching experience amounts to 2 unremarkable years in the AHL and two out-of-nowhere successful years in the NHL, and has outright quit his past three jobs.

And THAT is the guy who proceeds to dismantle your entire organization piece-by-piece over the coure of the following decade, leaving it such a shell of itself that in 2019 we are still a decade away from finishing the buyout of his signature draft pick and still trying to work through the effects of the organization's fall from grace into becoming a black sheep in its own market.

Tonight, you can turn on the TV and see this same individual saying stupid things for attention as part of NBC's broadcast team. That's what a brief run of unexpected success followed by abject failure looks like in the hockey country club world (c.f. Don Cherry).

 

[Rebels57]

Milbury for sure.

 

[WWAD]

What about Eddie Johnston at Hartford?

Eddie Johnstons time in Hartford was absolutely brilliant, if he was a double agent working for Pittsburgh the whole time.