Its getting to the point where Gillis and co and the success acheived under them may likely be a perfect storm in a happy little accident from Aquaman. Aquillini wants results and we all know how terrible this team will be for next few years. If Benning was able to sway him with his fumbly vocabulary then we are doomed. Its nice that he spends all this money on the team but he is a trust fund baby billionaire who has no idea about anything hockey
The success achieved under Gillis and co was the culmination of the work of three separate general managers and absolutely ZERO work from Franky.
Burkie's wheeling and dealing, Nonis's lucky latter round drafting and Gillis's eye for value, financial wizardry and charismatic ability to convince a bunch of very talented and very strong willed individuals to work together to get to one game away from a SC.
When you're rich as god, it's easy to loosen the purse strings to support a winner. It's when the road starts becoming bumpy when one's TRUE nature is revealed and since 2011, it's been effing downhill the entire effing way (with an extremely minor Eddie Lack / Zack Kassian fueled blip in 14-15).
We got vets being treated like crap (CHiggs). We got vets getting pissy (Kes). We got vets turning into crybabies in the 2nd year of their contract (Vrbs). We got vets that haven't even started to play in the 3rd year of their six year 36 million dollar contract (Eriksson). We got vets that are ABSOLUTELY leaving a crap tonne of money (comparatively speaking) on the table because they've had enough of the management crap show (Sedins). We've been through three coaches in five years (AV, WD, TG). We just had our most iconic player in team history peace out of this clustereff.
There should be doubt in anyone's mind where the root of the problem lies.