Seems a bit silly to be calling PD a puppet X, I mean most people have to follow the policies put in place by their boss. The directive from EM has clearly be to clear cash and slash the budget.
How many of you would stand up and quit your dream job, of which there are only 32 on the planet? None. Instead we’d all beat down, do the best with what we’ve got, blow sunshine everywhere, and hope to God that you can have some measure of success at your mandate, and outlast the bastard above you.
It would be a little presumptuous to assume that PD is al hunky-dory with the team’s financial situation, with EM constantly shooting himself and the team in the foot, and being unable make a trade or sign a deal without being at a serious financial disadvantage.
This rebuild must be amazing for him as he can do what he does best, oversee the collection of quality players and the development them, without having to deal with major financial set backs at each corner.
He still likely has to cut costs where he can, but I makes me wonder whether EM has set a budget for the next few years, and every penny PD saves now he gets to spend later. It would be a neat explanation for saving a million here and a million there.
Personally I figure that we’ll eventually have a thread or two about the yeoman work PD did while trying to keep the franchise afloat during the dark days of the EM ownership years.
Haha, so much intrigue!
I have no doubt that Eugene Melnyk is a terrible person to work for and his fingertips all over the moves this team is making, but if Pierre Dorion thinks that he's going to outlast him, or that he thinks this is helping his career, he's an even bigger idiot than I thought.
For every bottom-5 season, for every bad trade, his stock is dropping lower and lower. At this point, his reputation is worse than John Ferguson Jr's was when he was fired from the Leafs.
His chances of ever getting another GM job are nill.
If PD really did disagree with Melnyk, his best move to preserve the longevity of his career was to quit before trading Karlsson.
We all know that that was a directive from Melnyk, so Dorion could have declined the contract extension and cited "differences in vision".
Then, he would have been a free-agent GM with a great drafting record who was 8 months removed from a ECF final appearance and hadn't yet had any embarrassing press conference. His chances at landing another job would have been high.
Now? He's the GM of a team that's about to finish bottom 5 for 3 years in a row, has traded away 3 superstars in 6 months for poor returns, is running an organization widely panned as a joke, and his press conferences have been meme-worthy. Nobody is hiring him to be a GM again.
At 45, Dorion should have played the long game. Instead, he took an extension, did Melnyk's dirty work, and ruined his career.
And guess what? He's the next scapegoat in line for Melnyk. Good luck to him, but he's not outlasting anyone.
