Cause that is not exactly true...
He inherited a roster that includes two of the BEST players in the world coming fully into their prime... a team that was capable of being within an eyelash of making the conference finals in 2016-2017. It took Holland years to even come close to the success that Chiarelli accomplished and Chiarelli, as much as we all like to trash him, had a much much much worse roster to work with when he took over.
I am all for praising Holland for forming what appears to be a good team right now but lets not pretend he had it as rough as previous GMs did here, or that he made some kind of miraculous transformation.
That 2016-2017 team had a very fortunate season with Talbot in a career season. A lot went right for them. And the right after, Chia ditched a lot of talent right after wasting picks in his first season to get G Reinhardt
Unless I remember wrong, Chiarelli’s team made the playoffs once, he bled talent like crazy in an attempt to speed up a rebuild. Holland inherited few assets and while he had the two best players and some very good / great players (Nurse, Nuge etc), there were next to no assets and few young players bubbling up. Bouchard, McLeod, Yams and Pulju were question marks (still are, but getting there). No goalie, two or three D worth a damn and a few forwards. Not a lot to work with at all.
Now they have a full top 9 (couple of wingers playing above their spot), two above average NHL goalies (one of which may be elite) and a legitimate, if flawed, D corps. With plenty of players bubbling up. I don’t think what he’s done in the short time here should be undersold, IM
I’m not happy about the Kassian deal, AA deal (Covid made it worse), and Kulikov being misused (also on coaching), maybe one or two other minor things but this is the best GM they’ve had since Sather (f*** Lowe’s one out of body off-season, he also skewered the team and orchestrated the DoD)