I agree that Savard did well but he was given a pretty good deck:
Lafleur, Naslund, Carbonneau, Walter, Robinson, Gainey, Tremblay, Ludwig, Nilan, McPhee, Napier, Acton, Wickenheiser, Delorme, Paslawski, Green, Wamsley and Sevigny.
There is some skills, size and grit in this line-up.
He also had Kurvers, Lemieux, Momesso, Hunter, Chelios, Kordic and Turcotte in the pipeline.
Between Kurvers and Chelios or Beaulieu and Tinordi, who do you choose?
Finally in 1984, he ended up with two first round (5th: Svoboda, 8th: Corson (He trade Wamsley for this pick)), a second round (29th: Richer) and two third round picks (Roy (he traded Picard for that pick) and Bonar).
I am not saying that Savard was a bad GM, he was great.
He did become a GM only two years after his retirement as a player.
Not all were so good:
- Kurvers for Martin St-Amour (to make things worst, later Kurvers was traded for Scott Niedermayer).
- Got rid of Chelios (for Denis Savard - maybe Corey had something to do with this trade...).
- Traded Leclair, Desjardins and Dionne for Recchi
- Refused to traded McPhee for Cam Neely.
He was dealt with a different situation.
Let's not compare Savard and Bergevin.
Bergevin was also given a good deck:
- team was at it's worst;
- Price, Pacioretty and Subban with Plekanec and Markov;
- First top-3 pick since 1980.