A Comprehensive Analysis of Craig MacTavish as GM

[Connor McSaviour]

Anyone who gives him a positive is clearly not assessing the situation were in. Everyone hates Tambo, but we've REGRESSED under Mactavish. He should be axed along with Eakins, no doubt about it.

 

[BoldNewLettuce]

I think your analysis is pretty good, but he's leading two consecutive train wreck starts to the season....that counts for a lot of minuses, IMO.

I would be fine with it if he just stated the obvious which is that the core still needs time to grow and learn the system and learn how to win and more importantly that the core needs to be reevaluated for a possible retool.

 

[Nevins]

igning #22 Sept 19, 2013 Re-signed Nugent Hopkins to 6 year $36 million contract
Rating= +2
Reasoning:I think Nuge will earn his contract, a key part of the future locked up long-term is a good thing.

Serious and good GM don't give that kind of money that early is Nhl career.The 3 youngs guns receive 6 M$ each very early and were place veru soon on 1e line.....Big mistake.....Good team (except for players like Crosby,Malkin,Stamkos,etc...)place there young good players on 2e line.....and give them a transition contract....This was the biggest mistake of the oilers management(only Hall deserve that kind of money that early).....

 

[Replacement*]

Good posts and well thought out on your part even if I disagree with a fair number of key points. Not sure if the +- scale accurately captures some of the moves.

Eakins -10
No centers -10
to name a couple.

This doesn't even capture it. Theres +100 scoring numbers involved in the analysis. In the analysis Eakins, a major factor in the clubs non performance is weighted as -5 when his actual impact to club could be 10 times that.

That Dellow, an insignificant hire, got +3 and basically erases the Eakins impact in the analysis tells how misguided this is. Due to noise introduced in the MacT hires and fires section, and for instance Bill Scott meriting a +3 score the org ends up with an overall +2 in a category where the biggest news of all was the firing of Krueger and Hiring of Eakins. How should that category result in an overall plus score?

I like the attempt to be subjective but I disagree with several of the scores, disagree with weighting being assigned on a per case equivalent basis. Some decisions are imminently more important than others. In fact the Mike Brown for a 4th round pick is given a +1. How on earth can a 4th round pick warrant a +? Its an inconsequential move.

Addionally trading a 2nd line center and not replacing him is given a 0 as if its no impact. In fact the Arco signing is given a positive rating so in effect the org gets a positive rating for getting rid of an NHL vet center, not replacing, and starting the season disastrously with only 2 NHL centers...This is the worst hole coming into the season and somehow the OP is giving a positive rating on this overall transaction.


Theres more to quantifying then putting numbers to something and thinking it results in anything informative.

Plus overall the #'s are skewed to the positive. We're the worst team in hockey and the OP finds a way to give the org a positive rating. That alone should have given some pause for a rewrite.

Conceptually the problem with this analysis is that too many factorials were considered. Some are either close to being irrelevant, don't even need to be considered, or at best receive a neutral rating. Putting more scoring instances in does not increase the overall acuity of this analysis. It results in such things as the importance of a figure skaters and an AHL manager being more important than the NHL Head Coach. The OP had to be wondering about that when putting this all together.

 

[oiler4ever]

IMO the Perron acquisition is the only good move he made, that was in fact mercy of St. Louis due to salary cap issues.

He should not have acquired Niikiitin, he should have waited till August and make a pitch for Boychuk.

 

[Mr Positive]

IMO the Perron acquisition is the only good move he made, that was in fact mercy of St. Louis due to salary cap issues.

He should not have acquired Niikiitin, he should have waited till August and make a pitch for Boychuk.

Boychuck is a RHD, so what you really want is to get Boychuck instead of Fayne, or to trade Petry or Schultz

 

[Dorian2]

Great OP's b=Burnt Biscuits. Awesome to see some of the detail behind a few things.

The thing I find interesting, and it was probably mentioned a few times in another thread, was the Hemmer deal. It basically turned into Hemsky for Fasth (3rd and 5th rounders.)

Really cool to see it laid out in a way that makes more sense

 

[Mr Positive]

This doesn't even capture it. Theres +100 scoring numbers involved in the analysis. In the analysis Eakins, a major factor in the clubs non performance is weighted as -5 when his actual impact to club could be 10 times that.

That Dellow, an insignificant hire, got +3 and basically erases the Eakins impact in the analysis tells how misguided this is. Due to noise introduced in the MacT hires and fires section, and for instance Bill Scott meriting a +3 score the org ends up with an overall +2 in a category where the biggest news of all was the firing of Krueger and Hiring of Eakins. How should that category result in an overall plus score?

I like the attempt to be subjective but I disagree with several of the scores, disagree with weighting being assigned on a per case equivalent basis. Some decisions are imminently more important than others. In fact the Mike Brown for a 4th round pick is given a +1. How on earth can a 4th round pick warrant a +? Its an inconsequential move.

Addionally trading a 2nd line center and not replacing him is given a 0 as if its no impact. In fact the Arco signing is given a positive rating so in effect the org gets a positive rating for getting rid of an NHL vet center, not replacing, and starting the season disastrously with only 2 NHL centers...This is the worst hole coming into the season and somehow the OP is giving a positive rating on this overall transaction.


Theres more to quantifying then putting numbers to something and thinking it results in anything informative.

Plus overall the #'s are skewed to the positive. We're the worst team in hockey and the OP finds a way to give the org a positive rating. That alone should have given some pause for a rewrite.

Conceptually the problem with this analysis is that too many factorials were considered. Some are either close to being irrelevant, don't even need to be considered, or at best receive a neutral rating. Putting more scoring instances in does not increase the overall acuity of this analysis. It results in such things as the importance of a figure skaters and an AHL manager being more important than the NHL Head Coach. The OP had to be wondering about that when putting this all together.

I agree that Eakins gets a bit of a pass by this standard, but it isn't that far off. In the section on management it's flooded with minor moves. There could be an adjustment in the weighting, or at least to have multiple entries for Eakins (ie "Hiring Eakins", "Keeping Eakins mid-season", "Keeping Eakins over the summer")

I also have to wonder about making the total effect of hiring Eakins a -2. I think Eakins has potential to turn this team around with some promising improvements so far this season, but the results alone are enough to push his number to maybe a -4 (horrifyingly bad). We are entering that territory if we're comparing it to other teams, and it definitely has a different span of impact than something like hiring Messier.

 

[McBaevid]

I agree with most but the primary job of a good GM is making the RIGHT moves, MacT has made some decent moves but he has yet to address the weak Center and Defensive depth and for that his score should be alot lower.

 

[Connor McSaviour]

Boychuck is a RHD, so what you really want is to get Boychuck instead of Fayne, or to trade Petry or Schultz

Then deal from a point of strength. Petry could've been easily shipped out for a stop gap center. Now his value's been destroyed by Eakins scratching him. Boychuck would easily be our best defenceman.

 

[Mr Positive]

edit, nevermind I was wrong

 

[OrrwastheBeatles]

It's year 8 of a 2 (or 3) part rebuild.

The Oilers finished 30th, 30th, 29th, 24th, and 27th in the last 5 years and yet are off to their worst start in franchise history.

They were 30th in the league in goals against last year and are 30th so far this year.

They have by far the worst D (aggregately) in the NHL and yet they traded away Schultz and Smid for essentially nothing.

They replaced the inadequate goaltending with new, inadequate goaltending.

They are the laughing stock of the league (far more so than when MacTavish took the job).

And you rate him as doing a good job??? Never change Oiler fans (and the Oiler organization).

 

[oiler4ever]

Boychuck is a RHD, so what you really want is to get Boychuck instead of Fayne, or to trade Petry or Schultz

RHD is very hard to find, we have plenty of LHD here.

Boychuk could have been a excellent mentor for Nurse. He would have been a perfect fit for our PP. I dont like the idea of using Hall at the point.

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

This doesn't even capture it. Theres +100 scoring numbers involved in the analysis. In the analysis Eakins, a major factor in the clubs non performance is weighted as -5 when his actual impact to club could be 10 times that.

That Dellow, an insignificant hire, got +3 and basically erases the Eakins impact in the analysis tells how misguided this is. Due to noise introduced in the MacT hires and fires section, and for instance Bill Scott meriting a +3 score the org ends up with an overall +2 in a category where the biggest news of all was the firing of Krueger and Hiring of Eakins. How should that category result in an overall plus score?

I like the attempt to be subjective but I disagree with several of the scores, disagree with weighting being assigned on a per case equivalent basis. Some decisions are imminently more important than others. In fact the Mike Brown for a 4th round pick is given a +1. How on earth can a 4th round pick warrant a +? Its an inconsequential move.

Addionally trading a 2nd line center and not replacing him is given a 0 as if its no impact. In fact the Arco signing is given a positive rating so in effect the org gets a positive rating for getting rid of an NHL vet center, not replacing, and starting the season disastrously with only 2 NHL centers...This is the worst hole coming into the season and somehow the OP is giving a positive rating on this overall transaction.


Theres more to quantifying then putting numbers to something and thinking it results in anything informative.

Plus overall the #'s are skewed to the positive. We're the worst team in hockey and the OP finds a way to give the org a positive rating. That alone should have given some pause for a rewrite.

Conceptually the problem with this analysis is that too many factorials were considered. Some are either close to being irrelevant, don't even need to be considered, or at best receive a neutral rating. Putting more scoring instances in does not increase the overall acuity of this analysis. It results in such things as the importance of a figure skaters and an AHL manager being more important than the NHL Head Coach. The OP had to be wondering about that when putting this all together.

This is a great post, I agree with pretty much all of it, and I did think it was a bit of a exercise in futility as I was putting it together as some things have a far greater impact then other things, but I find many people are highly emotionally charged about this team and without putting caps on the max worst and max best ratings they would let one particular issue skew their view greatly. For example while the center issue is glaring it is entirely possible that he turns around and fixes it next week so if I assigned an arbitrary -48 to it, is that an accurate reflection of him, part of the problem is that we are looking at decisions that we are presently living in and don't have any objective means of looking at them as they unfold with the knowledge of what is to come. What I think this best does is examine the frequency at which he is making good or bad decisions, like any general manager some good or bad decisions are infinitely more impactful then a large number of relatively inconsequential decisions made. What makes the whole process even harder, is sometimes the most inconsequential of decisions made end up having huge impacts, we could sign some relatively unknown out of college like Jordan Oesterle and if he turns around and becomes the next Brian Rafalski or Dan Boyle that is a hugely impactful move, but looking at it without the benefit of hindsight we have no clue whether or not that is the case, we just try to make a reasonable prediction based on the info we have.

I don't think it would be very much trouble for me to move it to a 10 point rating system, with a max of 10 on either side which would eliminate some of the static of small positive, but largely ineffective moves or I could just put multiplier's on decisions that are far more critical then some small signing like a x5 multiplier on the head coach position.

Edit: Also I know Sam Gagner played the position of center for us, but he could never handle the defensive responsibility of the position, which is why I didn't view his subtraction as negatively as you. I see it more like we miscast a winger and moved him to the center position against ours and his best interests.

 

[McJeety McJeet]

I agree with most but the primary job of a good GM is making the RIGHT moves, MacT has made some decent moves but he has yet to address the weak Center and Defensive depth and for that his score should be alot lower.

Defence didn't look too bad last game now that we're actually playing the best ones we have. Centre is not good, everyone saw this coming that said Arco has been ok.

Coaching is a huge problem and our #1 issue IMO. I think it'll take 40 to 60 games under a new coach to get Eakins system out of the players who have been using it for 87 games.

I think MacT's player moves have been mostly positive. What's scary is he believes Eakins' approach is, going to be, a winning strategy. I just don't see it working.

 

[Up the Irons]

This doesn't even capture it. Theres +100 scoring numbers involved in the analysis. In the analysis Eakins, a major factor in the clubs non performance is weighted as -5 when his actual impact to club could be 10 times that.

That Dellow, an insignificant hire, got +3 and basically erases the Eakins impact in the analysis tells how misguided this is. Due to noise introduced in the MacT hires and fires section, and for instance Bill Scott meriting a +3 score the org ends up with an overall +2 in a category where the biggest news of all was the firing of Krueger and Hiring of Eakins. How should that category result in an overall plus score?

I like the attempt to be subjective but I disagree with several of the scores, disagree with weighting being assigned on a per case equivalent basis. Some decisions are imminently more important than others. In fact the Mike Brown for a 4th round pick is given a +1. How on earth can a 4th round pick warrant a +? Its an inconsequential move.

Addionally trading a 2nd line center and not replacing him is given a 0 as if its no impact. In fact the Arco signing is given a positive rating so in effect the org gets a positive rating for getting rid of an NHL vet center, not replacing, and starting the season disastrously with only 2 NHL centers...This is the worst hole coming into the season and somehow the OP is giving a positive rating on this overall transaction.


Theres more to quantifying then putting numbers to something and thinking it results in anything informative.

Plus overall the #'s are skewed to the positive. We're the worst team in hockey and the OP finds a way to give the org a positive rating. That alone should have given some pause for a rewrite.

Conceptually the problem with this analysis is that too many factorials were considered. Some are either close to being irrelevant, don't even need to be considered, or at best receive a neutral rating. Putting more scoring instances in does not increase the overall acuity of this analysis. It results in such things as the importance of a figure skaters and an AHL manager being more important than the NHL Head Coach. The OP had to be wondering about that when putting this all together.

agree that some moves are far more impactful than others, like a coach vrs. a stats guy or are 4th line checker.

in summation:

small good moves might be slightly higher than small bad moves, but the Eakins hire demolishes the scale to the bad side. That one move may prove to be the planet killing asteroid on this rebuild.

At this point, I would be surprised if this story plays out any other way.

 

[rboomercat90]

You deserve to be commended on your effort into this post. You clearly put a lot of time into it. I just found it to be very subjective to what side of the fence you already sit on regarding Mactavish, though.

I thought you were far too generous on some of your reasoning on the positive side of the ledger and down played some of the negative moves. Some of your comments and ratings made no sense at all and I thought were just there to get that number over zero. The one that sticks out in my head was you giving Mactavish a +2 rating for Bob Nicholson's hire. This hire has nothing to do with Mactavish and it can be argued that it happened because of the poor job management has been doing.

I guess the biggest thing I have trouble with is how a GM can have a positive rating when his team has only been able to win 29 of his first 87 games and had been at the bottom of the standings the entire duration of his tenure on the job.

You have created an interesting thread though and I look forward to reading through the comments.

 

[MarkGio]

I think there should be a weight system. A trade that affects the bottom 6 is less impactful on the organization long term than a trade affecting the top 6. Likewise with a 7th round draftee versus a 1st rounder. Or an assistance coach hiring versus a head coach. And so fourth

 

[Replacement*]

This is a great post, I agree with pretty much all of it, and I did think it was a bit of a exercise in futility as I was putting it together as some things have a far greater impact then other things, but I find many people are highly emotionally charged about this team and without putting caps on the max worst and max best ratings they would let one particular issue skew their view greatly. For example while the center issue is glaring it is entirely possible that he turns around and fixes it next week so if I assigned an arbitrary -48 to it, is that an accurate reflection of him, part of the problem is that we are looking at decisions that we are presently living in and don't have any objective means of looking at them as they unfold with the knowledge of what is to come. What I think this best does is examine the frequency at which he is making good or bad decisions, like any general manager some good or bad decisions are infinitely more impactful then a large number of relatively inconsequential decisions made. What makes the whole process even harder, is sometimes the most inconsequential of decisions made end up having huge impacts, we could sign some relatively unknown out of college like Jordan Oesterle and if he turns around and becomes the next Brian Rafalski or Dan Boyle that is a hugely impactful move, but looking at it without the benefit of hindsight we have no clue whether or not that is the case, we just try to make a reasonable prediction based on the info we have.

I don't think it would be very much trouble for me to move it to a 10 point rating system, with a max of 10 on either side which would eliminate some of the static of small positive, but largely ineffective moves or I could just put multiplier's on decisions that are far more critical then some small signing like a x5 multiplier on the head coach position.

Edit: Also I know Sam Gagner played the position of center for us, but he could never handle the defensive responsibility of the position, which is why I didn't view his subtraction as negatively as you. I see it more like we miscast a winger and moved him to the center position against ours and his best interests.

Thanks for this and seeing my response as a critique that was intended constructively. I realize you went through a lot of work on this and the thing that I can be most appreciative about is a detailed listing of the many moves/decisions in the time frame. Perhaps looking at that without rankings and bolding the ones that are very salient gives a much better picture.

I look at Perron and the goalie additions being a major positive in MacT's work. I look at coaching decisions and Center decisions as being a negative. I don't think MacT had addressed D needs either in his 2yrs.

But overall, as I've stated theres been no improvement in performance so hard to see a positive overall rating.

Anyway thanks on behalf of the board for your detailed listing and work on this. The listing itself is a useful reference.

 

[AlowlyMcOilersfan]

It's a nice breakdown of the moves MacT has made. Thanks for putting the time and effort in, OP.

 

[The Human Torch]

This team is looking 1974/75 Washington Capitals bad. That should be a pretty good indication of how a GM is performing.

 

[McDrai]

The way I see it, the hiring of Eakins cancels out all of the decent moves MacT has made, but I like the guy so I would fire Eakins and have MacT be the interim coach for the rest of the season. If we improve under MacT during the season then maybe he can stay on as coach. If not then he can always be a scout as he does have a good hockey mind.

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

In light of feedback I will be making the following changes:

- I'm not sure MacT had anything to do with the Nicholson hiring so I will remove it entirely.
- The Eakins hiring is downplayed by confines of the scale, being that this is obviously a far more critical hiring then the other hirings/firings I will be putting a 4x multiplier on his score and also I will be adding a 2x multiplier to Acton as he is our associate coach.
- I will increase the negative marking on the center position by 1, a worse score then that I feel would be unfair at this juncture cause he still has the opportunity to make up for that mistake before it causes too much damage, if at the end of the year he did nothing meaningful to patch up our issue at center a more negative number would be justified.
- I will decrease the negative on Nikitin by 1
- I totally missed Bryzgalov in the signing section so I will add him.

 

[Spawn]

I appreciate the work and thought put into it. It's quite nice seeing all the moves laid out for all to see.

I don't think I agree with a lot of it though. Not sure how his roster decisions has so many +'s or neutrals when this team is still the worst in the league. MacT has had 2 offseasons and an entire season to re-work the team. And the thing is, he has re-worked it almost entirely. But we're still the laughing stock of the league.

Here were the guys that were NHLers when MacT took over that are still here now:

Hall
Eberle
RNH
Yakupov

Petry
Schultz

That's it. He's turned over 2/3rds of the skaters and gone through like 5 goalies. +25 on roster decisions? If that was the case then I can't imagine even the worst coach in the league would be capable of having this team still the worst in the league.

 

[Oi'll say!]

Extremely well written but I wasn't able to get through it because I disagree so vehemently with how the overall grade is giving equal weight to both insignificant & crucial facets of his job, and the fact that MacT is getting off Scot-free on the decrease in value of assets that occurred under his watch, before he traded them at their career lows in value.

IMO MacT inherited assets like Sam Gagner and DD with a certain value attached to them and their substantial decrease in value as nhlers over the course of 3 months is in large part a measure of his epic failure to develop players. Considering their value on the day they were traded would make sense if the old coach had stayed and the team around them were the same but MacTs stench is all over those deals.

If those two players were the only ones to tank so badly that would still be a damning indictment of the new MacT regime but it's the tip of the iceberg. Yak is struggling, Eberle is struggling, Petry is the new whipping boy of the franchise, Hall is lost defensively, Schultz is fading away and the goalies are every bit as bad as DD was under Eakins. If you look at Scrivens' last twenty games played he is brutal and he only has about 80 total NHL starts. The best thing that you could say about prospect development is that Hall has offensively plateaued and RNH got physically stronger.

Truth is there is ONE thing that MacT and Eakins have to get right (developing the young players) and in that area they are a solid -5. They could do everything else right but if Hall et al flounder they still get a big F-.

The only thing left for MacT to do to sink any lower is to trade away the Oilers first round pick in 2015 for a fourth rounder in 2016.