Try that line of reasoning with a significant other as a test to see if you are corrert with it or not...
What? People said Lack, Kassian, Kesler and whoever else got what they were worth because the market dictated value. That implies that nobody can get ripped off because the market dictated value. I'm sorry if it was super sarcastic, but I wasn't taking your arguments to the absurd extreme, I was literally saying exactly what the argument is. I may have worded it in a way that seemed sarcastic but I didn't say anything other than what arguments were made for Benning's returns in trades.
there are like 4 things he's done well and 40 he's done incorrectly. ive given him more credit than ive ever seen you criticize
you just cant bring yourself to say it, can you? "benning ****ed up x". theres dozens of things you can fill in x
to date ive said
vrbata was a good signing
baertschi was a decent target
forsling (the day of, no less) and jasek were excellent picks. boeser was fine
benning seems like a hardworker and maybe a networker which would be useful - if he wasnt so easily taken advantage of
to date ive seen you say
sbisa might be not the best signing that doesnt make a ton of sense but maybe benning knows something we dont
"the pro scouting in his regime has been poor"
thats it. and yet you prance around, whining about persecution and 'objectivity'
Yeah, I agree, Benning has certainly done things that are good. It's just when you take into account both his good and bad trades, it's still overwhelmingly bad. I like Baertschi, I was skeptical of Pedan at the time but it looks like he could be a good move, and these are both moves I doubt very much Gillis would make himself. Maybe Baertschi but Gillis might not like the implied lack of character. I don't mean that as in Benning doesn't care about character, but Benning may not have agreed on the implied character issue flat out. So it's not a criticism at all, especially since I like the trade. I like Vrbata and McCann, although I think there's a high chance Gillis would have got Vrbata as well, and I think Gillis would have got McCann or one of Scherbak, Pasternak and Goldobin. I like Bartkowski in a vacuum, just don't like Bartkowski + Miller over a better D man + Lack.
I have no problem giving credit where credit is due, but for every Benning move I like, there are like 4 I dislike, and that's not good. Like objectively the overwhelming number of bad moves he's made is crazy, and lots of them are possibly crippling contracts in Sbisa and Miller. Benning is not some chimp throwing feces at a wall of players and trading for the ones it hits, he is someone who has been in hockey for years and surely knows a thing or two. It's just at the moment, he's made some seriously bad moves for the team.
I don't think Gillis was the best GM ever in hockey, but I do think he was very very good at his job. The biggest problem with him was his social skills, he didn't handle other GMs very well, although they did vote him for best GM of the year award. It's not that he was egotistical or snobby as much as he was blunt. I think he thought of himself as intelligent but I don't think he was ever really condescending as much as he was right to the point and says what he thinks. I think that hurt some relationships around the league that hopefully Gillis could repair and maybe have someone else deal with negotiations. That being said, a GM's job is to manage. A GM isn't making the picks, he's hiring a scouting team to make the picks. He gets all the info from the different departments and discusses it and makes the best decision he can. Benning has shown to do the opposite and just fire the people who are seemingly disagreeing with him. That's a bad manager, people who disagree with you are good so you can discuss the player without blinders on. Gillis modernized the team, the players loved him, he made shrewd 'moneypuck' moves to make the team very competitive, he saw the window closing and wanted to get younger and rebuild which was part of the reason he moved Schneider for Horvat. The biggest knock against Gillis that he didn't rebuild the scouting staff quick enough, but even if that's true, that's something he won't need to do again because he did it right the first time. Benning being bad at contract management, asset management and negotiation in general will hurt you every single time he does it.
Benning seems like a nice guy, and while I don't think his amateur scouting record is impressive, it's certainly better than I could do scouting at that level. However, he's simply lost value on the majority of his trades, and the majority of his contracts are overpayments. I would love for that trend to change, I want this team to win, I take no enjoyment in us losing. It just doesn't seem likely it will, and even if it does, his moves up until now have been objectively bad.
I'm sorry Gillis comes into the conversation sometimes, but aside from others bringing him up a lot, I think he should be relevant because Benning's job ultimately is to be better at managing the team than Gillis. Unfortunately, I don't think he has been close to that level, since Gillis was an above average GM and Benning is, I believe, one of the worst in the league. I have no attachment to Gillis, if Benning came in and did a good job I would have been ecstatic. I'm also someone who would be okay with trading long time Canucks, as long as the return was fair and they were handled with class, as sad as I may be to see them go. I have no reason to be biased against Benning at all. Just based on this past year, he is an awful general manager.