The Greatest General Managers in Canucks History (#2)

[Canucks1096]

I do think Nonis is a little underrated, of course I won't ranked him in the top 3. He doesn't have the tenure.

What I am most impressed about is, when there is a weakness, he goes out and fix it. Burke had two main weaknesses a winger for the Sedins and goaltending. Nonis fix those issues right away. Drafting Schneider and traded for Luongo. Getting Carter for the Sedins and no cap for Carter, got a solid replacement in Pyatt.

2004 draft was one of the best drafts Canucks had. 2007 was bad, but before this season. Raymond was the only 2nd round pick to score a goal in the last 15 years. Nonis drafted him.

Didn't overpaid for the Richard trade. Matched the Kesler offer sheet.

2008 off season Nonis would of had a lot of cap to improve the scoring

 

[likash]

I do think Nonis is a little underrated, of course I won't ranked him in the top 3. He doesn't have the tenure.

What I am most impress about is, when there is a weakness, he goes out and fix it. Burke had two main weaknesses a winger for the Sedins and goaltending. Nonis fix those issues right away. Drafting Schneider and traded for Luongo. Getting Carter for the Sedins and no cap for Carter, got a solid replacement in Pyatt.

2004 draft was one of the best drafts Canucks had. 2007 was bad, but before this season. Raymond was the only 2nd round pick to score a goal in the last 15 years. Nonis drafted him.

Didn't overpaid for the Richard trade. Matched the Kesler offer sheet.

2008 off season Nonis would of had a lot of cap to improve the scoring

I think he would have kept Naslund and maybe Linden would have signed for another year. Gillis did the right thing letting them go.

I think Nonis problem is that he does not look and act like confident and decisive person.I;ll give him credit for not listening to Aqua and trade for Brad Richards.

There are users posting on canucks.com like canuckstravella and king heffy who say Benning is not to blame because Gillis destroyed the team. One of them is blaming Gillis for not buying out Luongo in 2013 for 27 milions. I'm curious under what name they post here.

Things like this show you what power the media has on weak minded people and casual fans . That was the narative they were pushing after 2014. Now i understand why some users defend Jimbo. They trully belive that he inherited scorched earth and it took him seven years just to repair the damage.

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

I do think Nonis is a little underrated, of course I won't ranked him in the top 3. He doesn't have the tenure.

What I am most impressed about is, when there is a weakness, he goes out and fix it. Burke had two main weaknesses a winger for the Sedins and goaltending. Nonis fix those issues right away. Drafting Schneider and traded for Luongo. Getting Carter for the Sedins and no cap for Carter, got a solid replacement in Pyatt.

2004 draft was one of the best drafts Canucks had. 2007 was bad, but before this season. Raymond was the only 2nd round pick to score a goal in the last 15 years. Nonis drafted him.

Didn't overpaid for the Richard trade. Matched the Kesler offer sheet.

2008 off season Nonis would of had a lot of cap to improve the scoring

I agree that Nonis got and gets a bit of a raw deal among Canucks’ fans. The 2004 draft was brilliant, as was the Luongo trade and signing Willie Mitchell. Signing Anson Carter as a UFA was a great value move, too - 33 goals for $1m that season was outstanding.

But there’s pratfalls, too. He was never able to replace Carter after he left. He kept trying to plug holes in the roster with replacement level garbage like Isbister and Ritchie in the hopes that he would hit gold like he did with Carter again. And if the 2004 was one of the best drafts in franchise history, the 2007 draft was one of the worst. And while Luc Bourdon was taken from us too soon, and I feel he would have been a good top four defender, the decision to take him over Anze Kopitar was baffling.

But what gets me about Nonis is the manner in which he was dismissed. Expectations were higher in 07/08 after they’d made the second round, but Luongo struggling through his wife’s difficult pregnancy set us back a bit and the rest of the team not being talented enough to really make up for that caused us to miss. I think the best thing Nonis did was to not make the Brad Richards trade in a bid to save his job (IIRC they wanted Kesler, Edler and a 1st), which made the Aquilinis publicly accusing him of being disloyal and a traitor very odd.

Say what you will about Nonis, but those two remarks from the Aquilinis seemed wildly offside to me. Question his competence and his moves all you like, but disloyal or a traitor? I don’t think so.

 

[Jyrki21]

Nonis is just a case of the poor historical record of the Vancouver Canucks that the 6 GM's prior to Quinn are pretty much unknown.

We'll get to Nonis when we get to him, but I was, frankly, fine with him and didn't like the signalling behind his quick dismissal by Aquilini. (Who has magically since leaned hard into abandoning the "miss the playoffs and you're gone" standard, stupid as it was in a 30-team league). He was looking better than Burke in the early-going, navigating the brand-new salary cap just fine, committing to a plan and being willing to do things his predecessors were loath to do, like draft a scorer in the first round. I think much of the derision sent his way is from his time in Toronto when he was basically operating under a present-day-Aquilini style order to do everything and anything, no questions asked. He frankly wasn't bad in Vancouver and there was no way he was around long enough even to be able to conclude that he was.

No joke. I was born in Montreal and basically had no awareness that Vancouver even had an NHL team until about '79 or '80.

In the mid-to-late-2000s – so like in the modern, Internet age when the Canucks had the Sedins and Näslund or Luongo and such – I was talking with a guy in suburban Montreal who was surprised to learn Vancouver "still" had an NHL team called the Canucks. This wasn't some teenage anglo-hipster from Mile End, it was an athletic, francophone young male in his 20s (i.e. prime demographic to be a diehard Habs fan and who surely sometimes watched sports highlights). I was floored.

 

[likash]

If one day Benning win the cup here. Remember to put him as greatest gm. Why? Because you're making Gillis best GM based on team accomplishment.

There is no doubt that if Jimbo wins the cup with the Canucks then he becomes the best GM in the team history. It would be insane to dispute that.

You seem to be emotionaly attached to him. Why? .

He made the playoffs twice in seven years. In 2015 on the back of the " nothing" Gillis left him with and in 2020 when the pandemic saved the freefall. Make no mistake , in february-march the team was sinking like the Titanic. He was going to miss for 5 consecutive years. In the offseason he lost the backbone of this team: Marky and Tanev because of.... how can i say it: " cap space does not matter". I remember Jimbo's fans using this words since he signed Pizza and Dorsett.

 

[4Twenty]

I do think Nonis is a little underrated, of course I won't ranked him in the top 3. He doesn't have the tenure.

What I am most impressed about is, when there is a weakness, he goes out and fix it. Burke had two main weaknesses a winger for the Sedins and goaltending. Nonis fix those issues right away. Drafting Schneider and traded for Luongo. Getting Carter for the Sedins and no cap for Carter, got a solid replacement in Pyatt.

2004 draft was one of the best drafts Canucks had. 2007 was bad, but before this season. Raymond was the only 2nd round pick to score a goal in the last 15 years. Nonis drafted him.

Didn't overpaid for the Richard trade. Matched the Kesler offer sheet.

2008 off season Nonis would of had a lot of cap to improve the scoring

2007 was the worst draft by a professional sports team ever. Not even an AHL regular.

Dreadful.

 

[Jyrki21]

There is no doubt that if Jimbo wins the cup with the Canucks then he becomes the best GM in the team history. It would be insane to dispute that.

I don't think that's automatic, for what it's worth. A GM who builds a consistent contender is generally going to be more deserving of praise than one who wins a knockout tournament (that can depend as much on luck as anything). It's just that in most cases they are the same guys. But I don't think, for example, that Chiarelli vaults to the top of the Bruins' GM list or that Burke did more in Anaheim than his predecessors.

All the GM can do is build a team good enough to win, but if you get too deterministic on the outcome it can become kind of silly (like winning 16 games takes a drastically different strategy than winning 15). For example, think of the 2004 or 2006 Finals (in which 3 of the 4 participating teams were basically unlikely to be there) and taken to the extreme, the winning GMs were the best and the losing GMs second-best, but the opposite would have been true if Game 7 went a different way.

 

[likash]

Bruins have won the Cup before Chia. The Canucks don't have any cups.

The team we have now is his team. Only Horvat and Edler remain from the old team. If he wins, he does it with his creation.

If he build it and wins the Cup how is he not the best? All others before him have failed to win it.

 

[Izzy Goodenough]

So a GM that can't manage the cap is going to win the cup? What precedence is there for that? Benning currently has 85M on the books, but only 68M in effective cap to draw from to play on the ice. I haven't looked recently but I bet there are teams riding player with another team picking up part of their cap. So their situation is the converse of the Nucks. That is what shrewd GMs do.
Realistically, Bennings 7 years in the job have been pretty bad with no evidence he will not just keep digging a bigger hole before he finally leaves.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

lol, i honestly cannot believe this thread exists.

gillis was better than pat quinn?

you have got to be kidding me.

oh my goodness. that result is so delusional and so revealing.

Krutov, there is no need to be hysterical.
Gillis being voted over Quinn is likely largely based on the average age of posters here, most of which probably started watching the team during the Nonis/Gillis eras. I started watching around the 1993-1994 team and can appreciate Quinn, but Gillis had a great body of work here and the results are enough proof of it.

 

[Burke's Evil Spirit]

I agree that Nonis got and gets a bit of a raw deal among Canucks’ fans. The 2004 draft was brilliant, as was the Luongo trade and signing Willie Mitchell. Signing Anson Carter as a UFA was a great value move, too - 33 goals for $1m that season was outstanding.

But there’s pratfalls, too. He was never able to replace Carter after he left. He kept trying to plug holes in the roster with replacement level garbage like Isbister and Ritchie in the hopes that he would hit gold like he did with Carter again. And if the 2004 was one of the best drafts in franchise history, the 2007 draft was one of the worst. And while Luc Bourdon was taken from us too soon, and I feel he would have been a good top four defender, the decision to take him over Anze Kopitar was baffling.

But what gets me about Nonis is the manner in which he was dismissed. Expectations were higher in 07/08 after they’d made the second round, but Luongo struggling through his wife’s difficult pregnancy set us back a bit and the rest of the team not being talented enough to really make up for that caused us to miss. I think the best thing Nonis did was to not make the Brad Richards trade in a bid to save his job (IIRC they wanted Kesler, Edler and a 1st), which made the Aquilinis publicly accusing him of being disloyal and a traitor very odd.

Say what you will about Nonis, but those two remarks from the Aquilinis seemed wildly offside to me. Question his competence and his moves all you like, but disloyal or a traitor? I don’t think so.

Nonis was a stand up guy, and did some good contract and AHL level work. I will maintain that the smartest thing he ever did was bring Alain Vigneault into the organization - a non-obvious move that paid huge dividends (as opposed to the Luongo deal, which basically fell into his lap and would have been made by anyone).

I also don't really evaluate GMs on the success and failure of individual drafts, it's mostly scouts doing that work (and Nonis left all that to Delorme). The 2004 vs 2007 drafts are a wash, to me.

But he was a terrible, terrible scout. Even worse than Benning. In 3 seasons as Canucks GM, Nonis acquired basically an entire roster of non-NHL calibre players on one-way contracts:

Steve McCarthy
Nolan Baumgartner
Aaron Miller
Eric Weinrich
Sean Brown
Marc Bergevin
Mika Noronen
Maxime Ouellet
Tyler Bouck
Lee Goren
Jeff Cowan
Marc Chouinard
Tommi Santala
Byron Ritchie
Brad Isbister
Matt Pettinger
Kris Beech

Nonis was always criticized for being too timid as Canucks GM, but we should be grateful for it. We got to see what kind of things Nonis Unleashed accomplished in Toronto, and his stint there was one of the worst performances in GM history.

 

[Mister Wolf]

I’m sure this will be a civil thread

 

[MS]

I agree that Nonis got and gets a bit of a raw deal among Canucks’ fans. The 2004 draft was brilliant, as was the Luongo trade and signing Willie Mitchell. Signing Anson Carter as a UFA was a great value move, too - 33 goals for $1m that season was outstanding.

But there’s pratfalls, too. He was never able to replace Carter after he left. He kept trying to plug holes in the roster with replacement level garbage like Isbister and Ritchie in the hopes that he would hit gold like he did with Carter again. And if the 2004 was one of the best drafts in franchise history, the 2007 draft was one of the worst. And while Luc Bourdon was taken from us too soon, and I feel he would have been a good top four defender, the decision to take him over Anze Kopitar was baffling.

But what gets me about Nonis is the manner in which he was dismissed. Expectations were higher in 07/08 after they’d made the second round, but Luongo struggling through his wife’s difficult pregnancy set us back a bit and the rest of the team not being talented enough to really make up for that caused us to miss. I think the best thing Nonis did was to not make the Brad Richards trade in a bid to save his job (IIRC they wanted Kesler, Edler and a 1st), which made the Aquilinis publicly accusing him of being disloyal and a traitor very odd.

Say what you will about Nonis, but those two remarks from the Aquilinis seemed wildly offside to me. Question his competence and his moves all you like, but disloyal or a traitor? I don’t think so.

Nonis was a weak GM. A deer in the headlights. A fat kid who had the keys to dad's Cadillac but no idea what to do with it. A decent AGM/contract negotiator who had no business ever being an NHL General Manager.

He put on his big boy pants briefly in the 2006 offseason with the Luongo deal but other than that spent 3 years being terrified to make a move or do anything to fix obvious problems with the team. Cried when he had to fire Marc Crawford.

He was deservedly fired after the failure of the Benning-bad 2007 offseason.

Now, the one good thing about a scared do-nothing GM is that while he doesn't make good moves to push the team forward on the ice, he also doesn't make bad moves to blow assets or set the team back long-term. So at least he has that as a legacy.

 

[4Twenty]

Nonis was a weak GM. A deer in the headlights. A fat kid who had the keys to dad's Cadillac but no idea what to do with it. A decent AGM/contract negotiator who had no business ever being an NHL General Manager.

He put on his big boy pants briefly in the 2006 offseason with the Luongo deal but other than that spent 3 years being terrified to make a move or do anything to fix obvious problems with the team. Cried when he had to fire Marc Crawford.

He was deservedly fired after the failure of the Benning-bad 2007 offseason.

Now, the one good thing about a scared do-nothing GM is that while he doesn't make good moves to push the team forward on the ice, he also doesn't make bad moves to blow assets or set the team back long-term. So at least he has that as a legacy.

Lots of folks give him credit for Willie Mitchell. I remember an after hours segment where Scott Oake suggested Mitchell left money on the table to come home and he laughed.

That $3.5m is comparable to $6.5m today. It was a big overpay but at least he was a very good player for us.

 

[Burke's Evil Spirit]

Oh yeah, dude also cried when he was hired. That guys tears/60 was off the charts.

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

Oh yeah, dude also cried when he was hired. That guys tears/60 was off the charts.

What was his Tears Above Replacement?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

never forget about nonis’ benningesque 2006 trade deadline

Vancouver Canucks acquire	Date	St. Louis Blues acquire
Eric Weinrich [TBODY] [/TBODY]	March 9, 2006	Tomas Mojzis 2006 3rd round pick (#77-Vladimir Zharkov) [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

New Jersey Devils acquire	Date	Vancouver Canucks acquire
2006 4th round pick (#107-T.J. Miller) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	March 9, 2006	Sean Brown [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Anaheim Ducks acquire	Date	Vancouver Canucks acquire
Brett Skinner 2006 2nd round pick (#38-Bryce Swan) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	March 9, 2006	Juha Alen Keith Carney [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Buffalo Sabres acquire	Date	Vancouver Canucks acquire
2006 2nd round pick (#46-Jhonas Enroth) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	March 9, 2006	Mika Noronen [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Vancouver Canucks acquire	Date	Atlanta Thrashers acquire
2007 conditional 4th round pick (3rd round if McCarthy re-signed with Thrashers) (#115-Niklas Lucenius) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	March 9, 2006	Steve McCarthy [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

he gave away four top 107 picks in a good draft that would take place in his home arena (as well as their 5th rounder that year too, which he’d traded in december for omelette.

 

[Bertuzzzi44]

2. Quinn
3. Burke
4. Nonis
5. Milford

Agree with a previous poster, Pat got robbed.

 

[Fatass]

Quinn was a great leader, that’s for sure. I have him number 2 behind Gillis. Quinn picked Nedved over Jagr. We win the Cup in ‘94 with Jagr on the team. Today we think picking Juiolevi instead of Tkatchuk was bad. It’s nothing compared to missing Jagr.

 

[Jyrki21]

Bruins have won the Cup before Chia. The Canucks don't have any cups.

The team we have now is his team. Only Horvat and Edler remain from the old team. If he wins, he does it with his creation.

If he build it and wins the Cup how is he not the best? All others before him have failed to win it.

The Cup is the goal, but it's overall a pretty poor measure of much considering how black/white it is (only one team wins it, placing the worst team in the league on even footing with the runner-up or top regular season team). There's a reason no one outside of North America takes knockout competitions as anything more than they are. Just the fact that you can cite Bruin championships from a 6- or 12-team league as relevant to performance measurement in a 30-team capped league with a draft should send up red flags of why it's not a very helpful measure.

All that is apart from the fact that being bad is rewarded with good players in North American sports and that is another confounding factor if you only look at one outcome and not how they got there.

 

[kaiser matias]

2007 was the worst draft by a professional sports team ever. Not even an AHL regular.

Dreadful.

Edmonton's 1990 draft was worse. Nothing can top going 0 for 12.

 

[Canucks1096]

Quinn was a great leader, that’s for sure. I have him number 2 behind Gillis. Quinn picked Nedved over Jagr. We win the Cup in ‘94 with Jagr on the team. Today we think picking Juiolevi instead of Tkatchuk was bad. It’s nothing compared to missing Jagr.

Jagr told Que, Van, Det, Philly that if he got drafted by them. He won't be coming to North America. It was reported he only wanted to come to North America to play with Lemieux. This has nothing to do with Quinn thinking Nedved would be better. Everyone at that draft knew Jagr was the best player.

If most people on this forum was old enough to understand what Quinn did. There is no way Quinn is 2nd.

 

[PM]

Drafting should not even be considered for GM. It’s a function of scouts (most who have been with the org through multiple regimes) and being a bad team lower in the standings. Trades, signings and off ice improvements are what matters. And finally, results. Which is why Burke is #3 after Quinn/Gillis who at least made it past the second round.

 

[I am toxic]

Jagr told Que, Van, Det, Philly that if he got drafted by them. He won't be coming to North America. It was reported he only wanted to come to North America to play with Lemieux. This has nothing to do with Quinn thinking Nedved would be better. Everyone at that draft knew Jagr was the best player.

If most people on this forum was old enough to understand what Quinn did. There is no way Quinn is 2nd.

I won't even bother engaging people who didn't live through the 80's on this.

It is no contest. Quinn literally achieved the impossible, ending two decades of a culture of failure. What Gillis achieved was only - only - improbable, and never happens but for Quinn paving the way. And I am a big fan of what Gillis did, but it is not even close. But no surprise, I would bet those who voted Gillis over Quinn never lived through the 70's and 80's.

 

[PM]

I was too young to really care about the business side of hockey when we had Quinn. Also didn’t even see the first thread so didn’t vote for him or Gillis but I’d admit I’d probably vote Gillis based on recency and a more sound knowledge of his moves.

So I’m curious what older posters think about the impacts of the cap and how it relates to our older GMs? Not just the salary impacts but the impacts on trades. Trades were insane pre-2005 compared to after and especially now. Like 8 player trades of actual decent-good players and superstars getting moved without NTCs. Trading star players for cash.