How is Mactavish still employed ?

[Dorian2]

Your welcome

 

[I am the Liquor]

We lost that game.

 

[I am the Liquor]

Nobody wants to contemplate the unthinkable, but if you really think about it, the answer to the OP's question is fairly obvious.

 

[Dorian2]

We lost that game.

 

[Gone]

Nobody wants to contemplate the unthinkable, but if you really think about it, the answer to the OP's question is fairly obvious.

It is that type of Nepotism that will guarantee the Oilers win nothing while Katz is owner.

 

[TheRebuild]

We hired Chiarelli to be in charge of the team, he's a veteran GM with more knowledge of hockey and the behind the scenes particulars than any of us have. He's decided to keep MacT around for whatever reason. Maybe MacT's a bad GM but okay as an assistant GM

And you forgot about MacT's love affair with Eakins VainGretzky. I was hopeful about MacT as GM but he was a total failure.

I hear he makes a mean omelette

 

[Aequitas]

I personally believe that mact was screwed over by lowe just as much as anyone else. He should have been given an assistant gm opportunity under a veteran gm to learn the job. The position he is in now is where he should have started. Of course a rookie gm is going to make mistakes (and by rookie I mean 0 management experience at all). They are paying him either way so he might as well learn from Chiarelli. Maybe he can salvage a career.

 

[Raab]

MacT gets to much **** after gagners lockout season all most all of us would have signed him to a deal in the 4-5m range,Nikitin was stupid as hell but Howson was definitely vouching for him,Ference almost everyone was wanting to bring him here and we're plugging him into there lineup,Chasing Clarkson was 100% stupid at the dollar point he was looking for the team was always looking for the Lucic type player and got caught up in it. When Fayne came from Jersey I would had wanted an extra year also Fayne let the team down and is a better player than what he showed here to this point.
He did not Draft Nurse because he saw his grandfather in the bathroom they were targeting him all along, and at the draft interview he's said he had a good feeling that the player would still be there when he selected, Schultz being a Norris candidate was really bad but most fans were saying that about him when he signed he so I don't think everyone should act like Schultz was the only one.

You also failed to mention his biggest mistake which was firing Krueger and replacing him with Eakins.

Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years. Does anyone think we trade Hall if we have Ristolainen anchoring the top unit with Klefbom? Even if we make the Hall trade, how much better does our defence look with Ristolainen instead of Nurse. MacT and his delusions of toughness and a shut down dman had us picking a defenceman that should have been taken closer to pick 20.

MacT and Lowe are both still here and in on hockey related decisions. The only reason people think they're not is because the organization had to have a big PR scam to convince the masses they were no longer involved because of the amount of negativity being directed at the OBC. I believe the billboard was the tipping point where Katz realized he had to do something.

 

[subnet]

We hired Chiarelli to be in charge of the team, he's a veteran GM with more knowledge of hockey and the behind the scenes particulars than any of us have. He's decided to keep MacT around for whatever reason. Maybe MacT's a bad GM but okay as an assistant GM

And you forgot about MacT's love affair with Eakins VainGretzky. I was hopeful about MacT as GM but he was a total failure.

I think Chia is a smart guy and trust him to make the best decisions he can (so far). I'm pretty sure it could be the 'opposite guy' strategy (think Seinfeld). By keeping him around and having him involved, you ask MacT and then do the complete opposite. Genius I think!

 

[Tarus]

I personally believe that mact was screwed over by lowe just as much as anyone else. He should have been given an assistant gm opportunity under a veteran gm to learn the job. The position he is in now is where he should have started. Of course a rookie gm is going to make mistakes (and by rookie I mean 0 management experience at all). They are paying him either way so he might as well learn from Chiarelli. Maybe he can salvage a career.

Lowe didn't screw him over, he went to bat for his buddy just to get the job.

Got his ass punted out of hockey ops entirely for his faith in Mactavish too.

 

[rboomercat90]

Lowe, with some success as a GM, along with a long history of being a willing "yes man" for an ownership group with a tight budget, and some decent connections around the league(Sather, team canada etc), probably could have gotten a job somewhere else in the NHL if he ever really wanted to. It probably wouldn't be a top job, nor would be all that much in demand, but he wouldn't be on Mactavish's level of begging his former agent for an AHL head coaching job either.

Lowe's success as a GM came when EIG had a tight budget and was micro managing his every move. Once they increased his budget and gave him more autonomy towards the end of their ownership tenure was when things started to fall apart. Makes me wonder if Nichols or their board had more to do with his limited success than he did. Even still, that limited success was over 10 years ago and his GM hires were complete disasters in the interim. I can't see any owner, other than someone who wants to see his team go into a complete free fall, giving Lowe any kind of meaningful job. Both of them are on their last job in the NHL.

 

[Aerchon]

Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years. Does anyone think we trade Hall if we have Ristolainen anchoring the top unit with Klefbom? Even if we make the Hall trade, how much better does our defence look with Ristolainen instead of Nurse. MacT and his delusions of toughness and a shut down dman had us picking a defenceman that should have been taken closer to pick 20.

MacT and Lowe are both still here and in on hockey related decisions. The only reason people think they're not is because the organization had to have a big PR scam to convince the masses they were no longer involved because of the amount of negativity being directed at the OBC. I believe the billboard was the tipping point where Katz realized he had to do something.

I think Nurse was widely considered the BOP or close enough that its revisionist history to say he "should" have taken Risto.

Our weakness on the right side makes me think we "should" have taken Risto but otherwise can't say there was any true hype to take Risto over Nurse at 7.

I also think the Risto hype is a bit gross on this board. This board loves their puck moving point getting defenseman. Risto is still struggling with top 4 quality of competition and most likely will for a while.

People forget how limp noodle our team was at the time of the pick as well. A swack of tiny forwards. Our defense not much better. The toughness Nurse brought to the table over Risto was certainly an aspect to his game most pundits felt the Oilers needed.

 

[Tarus]

Lowe's success as a GM came when EIG had a tight budget and was micro managing his every move. Once they increased his budget and gave him more autonomy towards the end of their ownership tenure was when things started to fall apart. Makes me wonder if Nichols or their board had more to do with his limited success than he did. Even still, that limited success was over 10 years ago and his GM hires were complete disasters in the interim. I can't see any owner, other than someone who wants to see his team go into a complete free fall, giving Lowe any kind of meaningful job. Both of them are on their last job in the NHL.

His willingness to work under a tight budget and be loyal to an ownership group is exactly what would make him interesting to other teams. Most GMs demand autonomy(like Sather, who left after the pro-micromanaging EIG faction won the power struggle), and Lowe had no problem running every decision past a boardroom. As I said though, he could get a job, but probably not a top one(aka, not a GM job, more like Assistant GM), which is more than you can say for Mactavish

It should be noted that the EIG was driving much of the goofiness after the 2006 season as well. A lot of which had to do with the ownership group trying to show the city that Katz's claims that they were cheap wasn't true, which didn't land well considering they had just shipped Smyth out of town over what was believed(and was widely reported) to be 100k . Even the summers that followed with the embarrassing efforts to sign Hossa and Heatley were ownership driven as Katz sought to make his mark in a big way.

 

[Raab]

I think Nurse was widely considered the BOP or close enough that its revisionist history to say he "should" have taken Risto.

Our weakness on the right side makes me think we "should" have taken Risto but otherwise can't say there was any true hype to take Risto over Nurse at 7.

I also think the Risto hype is a bit gross on this board. This board loves their puck moving point getting defenseman. Risto is still struggling with top 4 quality of competition and most likely will for a while.

People forget how limp noodle our team was at the time of the pick as well. A swack of tiny forwards. Our defense not much better. The toughness Nurse brought to the table over Risto was certainly an aspect to his game most pundits felt the Oilers needed.

, You don't pick toughness or stay at home dmen in the top 10. Taking Nurse over Ristolainen was idiotic given our completely lack of RHD in the system. Fixing MacT's mistake cost us a 1st overall pick. MacT and Lowe are complete morons. No idea how to build a team and always chasing someone else's template for success.

 

[Up the Irons]

I personally believe that mact was screwed over by lowe just as much as anyone else. He should have been given an assistant gm opportunity under a veteran gm to learn the job. The position he is in now is where he should have started. Of course a rookie gm is going to make mistakes (and by rookie I mean 0 management experience at all). They are paying him either way so he might as well learn from Chiarelli. Maybe he can salvage a career.

Nah. It was a panick promotion after Tambo did nothing at the TD, when the team was in 8th place with 15 games remaining, then prompted fell off a cliff.

Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years. Does anyone think we trade Hall if we have Ristolainen anchoring the top unit with Klefbom? Even if we make the Hall trade, how much better does our defence look with Ristolainen instead of Nurse. MacT and his delusions of toughness and a shut down dman had us picking a defenceman that should have been taken closer to pick 20.

MacT and Lowe are both still here and in on hockey related decisions. The only reason people think they're not is because the organization had to have a big PR scam to convince the masses they were no longer involved because of the amount of negativity being directed at the OBC. I believe the billboard was the tipping point where Katz realized he had to do something.

That's a good point. A buddy told me a good rule of thumb to go by at the draft:

When in doubt, go with the Swedish or Finnish Dman.

I'm still confident Nurse will be a good Dman, but Risto will probably be better. But, it is in keeping with the Oil's long history of preferring good ol Canadian boys.

 

[Aerrol]

, You don't pick toughness or stay at home dmen in the top 10. Taking Nurse over Ristolainen was idiotic given our completely lack of RHD in the system. Fixing MacT's mistake cost us a 1st overall pick. MacT and Lowe are complete morons. No idea how to build a team and always chasing someone else's template for success.

I agree with the bolded, and I definitely did not want to pick Nurse at that spot over Risto (he is only somewhat less tough than Nurse with a boatload more offensive skill...), but I should note that it wasn't a huge reach either, based on the rankings available at the time. I actually thought Nurse was lower until I went back to look:

http://www2.tsn.ca/draftcentre/feature/?id=86218
http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articl...kings-mackinnon-reclaims-top-spot-from-jones/
http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=88636

 

[duul]

The only move I really didn't like from MacT was hiring Eakins. Admittedly there was a lot of hype around him as a coach that season and at the time I liked the signing. Krueger showed promise here and we should have stuck with that to see what would happen. I don't like to speak too much about his player transactions since he didn't make any major moves, and instead chose to make a lot of low level traded and signings since he probably had not contacts around the league due to being a rookie GM. I will say though that in my experiences with MacT as a person, he's a very friendly and wise man. He is a nerdyish type who knows a lot about the game and the players. He had a few strange comments like the Schultz Norris one (keep in mind all 30 teams were after him yet MacT nabbed him). It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that Chiarelli would want MacT around. He has valuable insight into the org and I do believe he was thrown into probably the worst situation one could be thrown into in the NHL.

 

[Raab]

I agree with the bolded, and I definitely did not want to pick Nurse at that spot over Risto (he is only somewhat less tough than Nurse with a boatload more offensive skill...), but I should note that it wasn't a huge reach either, based on the rankings available at the time. I actually thought Nurse was lower until I went back to look:

http://www2.tsn.ca/draftcentre/feature/?id=86218
http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articl...kings-mackinnon-reclaims-top-spot-from-jones/
http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=88636

He wasn't a reach, but anyone who watched him should have seen his limited upside. Poor decision making, poor shot, and average pass.

 

[CupofOil]

He wasn't a reach, but anyone who watched him should have seen his limited upside. Poor decision making, poor shot, and average pass.

That's nonsense. Nurse was always noted as having a very high upside but was raw. Scouts were drooling over his skillset leading up to the draft and all he did was improve every year since being drafted. Offense took a sizeable spike up in his draft+1 then +2 season and was an absolute beast in the WJC and won the Gold Medal MVP with a stellar performance. Now he had one year where he struggled as a 20 year old rookie in the NHL and all of a sudden he has limited upside according to some around here.

I'd agree that he has questionable offensive IQ but his upside isn't all of a sudden limited just because he struggled as a rookie. I understand that you haven't changed your stance on Nurse since the beginning but to say that "anybody who watched him should have seen that he has limited upside" is bologna.

 

[Raab]

That's nonsense. Nurse was always noted as having a very high upside but was raw. Scouts were drooling over his skillset leading up to the draft and all he did was improve every year since being drafted. Offense took a sizeable spike up in his draft+1 then +2 season and was an absolute beast in the WJC and won the Gold Medal MVP with a stellar performance. Now he had one year where he struggled as a 20 year old rookie in the NHL and all of a sudden he has limited upside according to some around here.

I'd agree that he has questionable offensive IQ but his upside isn't all of a sudden limited just because he struggled as a rookie. I understand that you haven't changed your stance on Nurse since the beginning but to say that "anybody who watched him should have seen that he has limited upside" is bologna.

Not at all, when you have limited offensive IQ and a poor shot how do you expect that player to become a #1 dman? All the defensive dmen who've become #1's all have bombs from the point. Every single one of them. Again you don't take dmen with limited offensive upside that early in a draft. Nurse was taken because he was tough, and had size, some of the worst reasons to draft a dman. One saving grace is that he can skate half decent. Should be able to hopefully play second pairing at some point.

 

[TheRebuild]

Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years.

I'm not convinced entirely it was a mistake yet. As of now, yes Nurse hasn't looked very good in the NHL. I'm willing to give him some more time to see what he can do though.

 

[CupofOil]

Not at all, when you have limited offensive IQ and a poor shot how do you expect that player to become a #1 dman? All the defensive dmen who've become #1's all have bombs from the point. Every single one of them. Again you don't take men with limited offensive upside that early in a draft.

He doesn't have to be a #1 Dman to be a successful pick and I think there's some untapped offensive potential with him. He was a very solid goal scorer in junior, scored 3 last season. I think he could be a 8-10 goal, 25-30 point guy who is a force defensively. I just don't see anything outside of questionable offensive IQ that would lead one to believe that he has limited upside. He might never reach his full potential but the skillset is there to be a big time impact Dman.

 

[Halibut]

The question isnt why Mactavish is still here, we all know the answer to that. The question really is why wasnt he promoted when Chiarelli was hired?

I mean it worked for Kevin Lowe.

 

[Raab]

He doesn't have to be a #1 Dman to be a successful pick and I think there's some untapped offensive potential with him. He was a very solid goal scorer in junior, scored 3 last season. I think he could be a 8-10 goal, 25-30 point guy who is a force defensively. I just don't see anything outside of questionable offensive IQ that would lead one to believe that he has limited upside. He might never reach his full potential but the skillset is there to be a big time impact Dman.

Well when the guy picked right behind him is putting up 41 point seasons and playing 25 minutes a night in a position where the organization had absolutely nothing in the pipeline. On top of that we've seen one of our 1st overall picks moved out to see that lack of depth addressed. I think its a very good reason to be pissed off about the pick. I understand a lot of you liked the pick at the time, but it was brutal from day 1 and I said it at the time. Our pick at that spot should have been one of Ristolainen, Horvat, Pulock. Nurse was a stupid pick given what we had for LHD at the time. Is anyone convinced he'll be better then Klefbom who we had in the system? Sure he MAY be better then Marincin, Musil, Simpson, and Davidson but even thats questionable now with the emergence of Davidson last year.

 

[CupofOil]

Well when the guy picked right behind him is putting up 41 point seasons and playing 25 minutes a night in a position where the organization had absolutely nothing in the pipeline. On top of that we've seen one of our 1st overall picks moved out to see that lack of depth addressed. I think its a very good reason to be pissed off about the pick. I understand a lot of you liked the pick at the time, but it was brutal from day 1 and I said it at the time. Our pick at that spot should have been one of Ristolainen, Horvat, Pulock. Nurse was a stupid pick given what we had for LHD at the time. Is anyone convinced he'll be better then Klefbom who we had in the system? Sure he MAY be better then Marincin, Musil, Simpson, and Davidson but even thats questionable now with the emergence of Davidson last year.

I'd deal Nurse for Risto because Risto is further along in his development (although he struggles a lot more than Buffalo fans would like to admit) but I don't get all the anger about MacT picking Nurse. Of all his screw ups to be up in arms about, picking Nurse is way down the list. To call it a blown pick already before we have any idea what Nurse or Risto for that matter are is pretty silly is you ask me. We're talking about 21 year olds here.