We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.
The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.
I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.
If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.
I never said Dorion had zero part of the blame. First, nobody is even close to perfect and he probably did some of the damage on his own but the problem is there is always a big asterisk with this owner. But that's probably where the major difference between Dorion and Murray, at some point you have to able to convince the owner which decision/direction wouldn't be good for the team. Examples :
- Zibanejad should have never been traded. Even if he was taking some time to really "arrive", giving him something like 5.35 per really shouldn't have been a problem. Trading him for Brassard, who used to be a pretty good player on his own, is kinda going all in on the very short term, but it was lacking foresight on what could happen after that.
- Burrows : again, another player with his best days behind him. In the end, giving up Dahlen doesn't look like it will hurt much, but Burrows was "expensive" (relatively of course) to acquire and re-sign. Should have went for a younger/cheaper player to acquire/sign (ala Namestnikov?)
- Oduya : another guy with a really good career but couldn't fill Methot's shoes at all in his last NHL season. He was "cheap" but you have to convince your boss that you absolutely need to invest more to fill that very important position of need.
- Condon/Anderson : both extensions were too fast, too soon, too expensive. Painted ourselves in a corner with that goaltending duo which really didn't help to turn things around and ultimately, it resulted in a rebuild
- Duchene : I had no problem paying that price to get Duchene but going into a rebuild while another team has your 1st doesn't make any sense. If you make that type of move (upgrading Turris to Duchene), then for sure you're not going to rebuild the next year. Crazy comparison but it would be like the Sharks trading their best players for futures because they have a tough start. They wouldn't even do their best to turn things around with the Sens holding on their 1st round pick. That's where it shows that Dorion has no decisional power. Dorion is really not as stupid as people are saying, of course he didn't want to happen this way, and of course he would have liked to spend/invest to try and turn things around, but no he had to reduce salaries, cheap out players next contracts as much as possible and spend assets to "save money" in trades.
Hoffman : tough situation with Karlsson but either trade Hoffman for the best return (even if in your own division) or try to fill a position of need (pretty sure a guy with a more expensive salary than Boedker on defense would have been more useful). Trading a 1st liner for a 2nd/3rd line tweener doesn't accomplish anything to turn things around
From where I am sitting, Dorion has been Melnyk's puppet. He's not managing the team on his own like most GMs do, he's managing it under Melnyk precise directives, he really doesn't have the same latitude as others do and I think it's pretty obvious. Yes, Dorion could have done better on many decisions even though he had some hard directives (and probably screwed up by himself somewhere) but it's impossible for us to say how much blame he has in this. That'd be pretty unrealistic and yet many have gone with a petty harsh opinion about this for a while (and insults), which doesn't make much sense to me. But not really surprised, this is internet after all.
That's why I am saying both extremes (blindly defend or trash him) are pretty ridiculous positions.
