Confirmed with Link: Joe Sakic 2021-2022 NHL GM of the Year

[Spleenless Wonder21]

Avs breaking everything after winning stuff. NAK and MacDermid broke the cup, Joe almost broke the mic after winning this award....

Good job though, Congrats to Sakic!!!!

He nearly dropped the mic like it was Dougie Gilmour.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

Ken Holland 4th in voting, the man has been completely clueless for a decade

 

[Heyduke]

 

[expatriatedtexan]

Joe was named on 29 of 42 ballots. He got 16 1st place votes, 8 2nd place votes and 5 3rd place votes.

Anyone else kinda wondering who the 13 geniuses were that left him off their ballots all together.

Happy for Joe though, he truly deserves it.

 

[Bednars Suit Game]

All the GMs he's fleeced the past few years.

 

[Grigowski]

It's a league that rewards failure and punishes success.

Hold on! That's how Joe was able to build this team. Thats the way it goes....

 

[TruePowerSlave]

Joe was named on 29 of 42 ballots. He got 16 1st place votes, 8 2nd place votes and 5 3rd place votes.

Anyone else kinda wondering who the 13 geniuses were that left him off their ballots all together.

Happy for Joe though, he truly deserves it.

This award has often ridiculous voting results. Chiarelli was a finalist the season when he massacred the Oilers with his braindead moves.

 

[SirLoinOfCloth]

Anyone else kinda wondering who the 13 geniuses were that left him off their ballots all together.

Probably the GMs he fleeced in his trades.

Also, pretty cool for Sakic to get the award on his birthday.

 

[shadow1]

Well deserved.

Sakic had a shaky off-season but made up for it with the in-season adds of Aube-Kubel, Manson, Sturm, Cogliano, and Lehkonen.

 

[AllAboutAvs]

Well deserved.

Sakic had a shaky off-season but made up for it with the in-season adds of Aube-Kubel, Manson, Sturm, Cogliano, and Lehkonen.

I don't think he had a shaky off-season. I think it was his plan all along to target the TDL to make most of his moves when he would have more cap space to play with. The only part that people can argue was shaky was the goalie situation. He did put himself into a corner with that one by waiting too long with Gru.

 

[shadow1]

I don't think he had a shaky off-season. I think it was his plan all along to target the TDL to make most of his moves when he would have more cap space to play with. The only part that people can argue was shaky was the goalie situation. He did put himself into a corner with that one by waiting too long with Gru.

The shaky part was nearly losing Landeskog to UFA (signed at like 11pm), and then (as you mentioned) the goalie situation got hairy the next day.

 

[Steerpike]

Awesome GM

Too bad being in the cap era means he can't continue building an even greater team. It's a league that rewards failure and punishes success.

The cap makes being a good GM mean something.

It's like an engineer building a bridge on a budget vs a child king ordering an army of slaves to build a land bridge at absurd expense. The engineer deserves an award. Much less impressed by the guy who went .... hmmm maybe we sign the greatest goalie of all time... and one .... No make that two hall of fame defensemen ... And all of the good forwards.... Ok that looks good.


Now we just need to kill the loser point and only evaluate "greatest season across eras" on fewest regulation losses.

 

[LOFIN]

 

[Markster]

Awesome GM

Too bad being in the cap era means he can't continue building an even greater team. It's a league that rewards failure and punishes success.

I love Joe too but....

Are you aware that salary cap issues on their old teams were why Toews and Kadri became available?

It's easy to curse the cap now but without it we'd be watching TML, NYR, LAK and a few others dominating the league.

 

[Pokecheque]

This is a silly award but I'm glad he won it.

 

[SirLoinOfCloth]

It's easy to curse the cap now but without it we'd be watching TML, NYR, LAK and a few others dominating the league.

Can you even begin to imagine the respect they'd get in the handshake line under those circumstances?

 

[Richard88]

Well deserved.

Sakic had a shaky off-season but made up for it with the in-season adds of Aube-Kubel, Manson, Sturm, Cogliano, and Lehkonen.

Obviously the goalie situation could have been handled better, and the Landeskog contract went down to the wire, but in hindsight it was actually a reasonably solid off-season when you consider that he signed Landeskog to a good AAV; signed Makar to a phenomenal deal that already looks like a complete steal; acquired a goalie that won the cup; and signed depth pieces to cheap deals who ended up being valuable pieces on the cup run (i.e. Helm and JJ).

There's also something to be said for the fact that he didn't make any egregious errors with contracts, which Avs fans take for granted sometimes but which a lot of teams have to deal with. Just look at Edmonton and Toronto who paid more to fix mistakes than Sakic spent on a starter.

 

[Hasbro]

I love Joe too but....

Are you aware that salary cap issues on their old teams were why Toews and Kadri became available?

It's easy to curse the cap now but without it we'd be watching TML, NYR, LAK and a few others dominating the league.

I don’t account Strength of schedule into a GM evaluation. Sam Pollack made himself a stock answer on best GM of all time lists by exploiting bad GMs, Sakic found suckers to exploit.

 

[flyfysher]

Obviously the goalie situation could have been handled better, and the Landeskog contract went down to the wire, but in hindsight it was actually a reasonably solid off-season when you consider that he signed Landeskog to a good AAV; signed Makar to a phenomenal deal that already looks like a complete steal; acquired a goalie that won the cup; and signed depth pieces to cheap deals who ended up being valuable pieces on the cup run (i.e. Helm and JJ).

There's also something to be said for the fact that he didn't make any egregious errors with contracts, which Avs fans take for granted sometimes but which a lot of teams have to deal with. Just look at Edmonton and Toronto who paid more to fix mistakes than Sakic spent on a starter.

Criticizing Sakic for the goalie situation seems unfair to me. He asked Andersen to wait and then Freddie upped and signed with Carolina. In the meantime, Sakic had to take care of Makar and Landeskog first. That was the right play. So, Sakic got backed into DK but what would anyone else have done under the same circumstance? We can complain about what Sakic paid for one season of DK and whatever we think of him, he won the SCF. Good enough. I was good with that. There’s no way I wanted to pay Grubauer $6M on a term contract.

 

[LOFIN]

We can complain about what Sakic paid for one season of DK and whatever we think of him, he won the SCF.

The TSN Toronto radio host Bryan Hayes has said it multiple times (not an authority in anyway but I just remember him saying this multiple times over the years): if you win the cup you don't have to explain anything. Zero. Winning the cup is so damn hard in this league. Obviously you would prefer to have a long window, and if you f*** up going all in we would be crying Joe's head. But just winning one cup is damn hard and doesn't mean you come close again.

If we lost to Lightning (God forbid), Kuemper was still probably going to walk and get a similar contract he will this offseason, considering what the market is and what Jack Campbell is after. It would've been a disaster. But, we won so it's all good. Doesn't matter what we paid to get him, it was all worth it.