If Brackett walks and the Canucks drafting turns to shit, I think it would be pretty clear who is primarily responsible for our current core.
There is too much inherent randomness in drafting to attribute successes or failures to one guy.
I've been posting for the last five years about how drafting is overrated, and how even if Jim Benning was a scouting savant, that's such a small aspect of managerial duties that it doesn't matter. That applies to a much lesser degree when assessing the director of amateur scouting because it is his entire job; however, the impact on the organization can be mitigated if strength is added in other areas. A team does not live and die by scouting; far from it.
I feel the need to point out that finding intelligent and competent staff is actually harder than finding good players.
There are more good players in the league than there are intelligent and competent staff. There are also equity measures (salary cap, the draft) that give all teams an opportunity to acquire good players.
There are no such measures for staff.
Look no further than Edmonton to see that your organization can be plagued by incompetent staff for over a decade with no remedy in sight.
Gilman, our cap genius: Fired.
Brackett, our drafting genius: Pushed out.
In a league where acquiring intelligent staff is incredibly difficult, Benning has gone out of his way to remove our most intelligent ones, leaving us at a severe disadvantage. Look at how awful the cap management has looked with Gilman gone. I shudder to think about what our drafting is going to look like without Brackett.
This is the type of blow that could take years and years to rectify. Even when Benning is fired, guys like Judd Brackett don’t come around often. It’s very likely that the new GM will be forced to settle for someone mediocre to head up the draft.
At the same time, this post nails it; this is not good news, because Judd Brackett by most accounts is a very smart guy.
Again, I've attempted/made arguments
in favour of Benning (and a guy like Ken Holland) by arguing essentially that his job is managing people, not identifying players.
If he is a good people manager (essentially an HR role), that is inherently more important than if he can correctly identify and distinguish the future AHLer from the future Danish league journeyman by watching a college game in North Dakota. The general manager of an 800M organization should not be directly scouting or managing payroll or negotiating contracts; he should be using his vast network (traditionally either developed through years of business experience or years of experience within the sport) to find highly specialized managers/executives to fill those roles, while providing the overarching direction for the team and strategic guidance as needed.
Losing Judd Brackett is not a singularly big deal. I don't think there will be an enormous difference between him and the next upcoming person qualified for this role. However, my fear now is that Benning will look to assume these responsibilities himself, which inherently goes against the idea of finding specialized experts. I tried to make the argument that it doesn't matter that Jim Benning isn't a scouting savant; he's trying to make it so that it does matter if he is or not. Yikes.