I do recall Gainey saying he wouldn't be involved in the draft because he just joined the team. It was Savard's and Timmins draft. If you recall, Savard was the one that pushed for Urquhart in the 2nd round.
As for who is ultimately responsible for drafting, that is going to vary from team to team since it's up to the management on how they want to handle who does what and how much say they have.
Do you actually believe this?
So what you're saying, depending on the team and how they've structured they're authority on who's the senior drafting person and makes the final decision, that in some/most scenarios it's the GM, but in others it could be a head scout?
I highly highly doubt this. At the end of the day, all these scouts (including Timmins) are highly reputable advisors. Maybe in 2003 since Gainey was less than 2 months in the job he let Timmins make more of the selections, but even he TT was less than a year on the job, so he deferred to the entire scouting staff to make the decision collectively and they decided on AK in round 1, with speculation that TT wanted Getzlaf.
My point in all this is, in 99% of the cases, GM gets final say on the draftee.
The story is that Gainey gave Sather a choice of McDonagh or Fischer (which sounds like Gainey), and Sather went for McDonagh. It's kind of like how he gave Sather a choice of Plekanec or Balej back when the Kovalev trade happened.
Following this, Timmins begged Gainey not to trade McDonagh, but it was to no avail. The next day Gainey announced the trade and said that Montreal finally had a first line center. The day after, we signed Cammalleri and Gionta, and Gainey told us they only signed with Montreal because they wanted to play with Gomez.
Frankly that sounds like a story concocted by Habs fans to create a potential scenario where we wouldn't have gotten bent over the table in that deal. Not saying it's impossible, but I'll remain skeptical until a reputable source comes out with it.
Whatever the case, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the Habs front office when that deal was hashed out. Hopefully someday we get the truth from either side because it's still a trade that made no rational sense, either back then or in hindsight.
You might be right hototogisu about the story. However being that fly on the wall in that office would have been great.
Taking that out of the equation, let's look at the facts and pieces of the trade:
To MTL
Scott Gomez: An overpaid, barely 2nd line at the time C. My thought process behind Gainey's thought process is if you get Gomer, you would get Gionta hooked come July. Bad decision IMO because Gionta's a smurf who can score 20+ goals. That's great and all, but size + skill is the key, not no size + skill or size + no skill.
Tommy Pyatt: Don't know much, but I remember Tommy being the 12th/13th F and pretty good at killing penalties (although you shouldn't quote me on it)
Michael Busto: An undrafted, TOP 6 CHL PLAYER BY AGE 19, was ECHL fodder for the most part, not even close to respectable prospect.
To NYR
Chris Higgins: Top 9/Top 6 on our very bad depth/injured team. Cancer in the dressing room apparently.
Ryan McDonagh: A slowly progressing NCAA draftee (normal for NCAA). Undervalued by Gainey, righteously valued by Timmins.
Doug Janik: Career AHLer who could barely crack NHL lineups only on injury.
Pavel Valentenko: Career KHLer who drafted in the 5th round, wasn't projected to make teams I would think, and if he ever was, probably the highest projection was probably 3rd line.
So looking back at this trade, the major parts of this trade are:
Gomez, Pyatt for Higgins, McDonagh. In hindsight, yes this was a terrible deal as Higgins was serviceable in their top 9 before handing him off to Calgary and McDonagh turned out to be a good top 4. Gomez was a #2 C for 1 year, and #3 then #4 C by the end. Pyatt wasn't serviceable at all for Martin, so basically you can write him off.
Ridiculously bad trade in hindsight. I don't think as much at the time, still pretty bad though.