Speculation: Do you think you would have outperformed Dorion? #2

[Agent Zuuuub]

Spicy question part 2. Try to leave your modesty or hubris at the door.

Part 1: Do you think you would have outperformed Dorion?

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[Senscore]

I definitely would not have given those deals to Murray or Korpisalo and I think that counts for a lot.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

If I did outperform him, it would be by chance.

I'm not qualified as a pro scout, and I would be relying on the Ottawa Senators pro scouts, which apparently was just giving the guy in the Spartacat suit the leftover Farmboy meals in exchange for watching clips on NHL.com.

I think I would do well with pattern recognition and coming up with creative solutions to the Senators budget issues via trade. Honestly, I miss us being a budget team because it was so fun to come up with wacky ideas that leverage cap vs real money salary vs insured contracts, things like that.

I think if the Senators were paying me and my job was simply to learn as much as possible about the CBA and league, I could be of use as an outside the box creative thinker, but if I were relied on as the General Manager I would be way out of my depth in terms of actual hockey knowledge.

I would love to be the frontman for Dorion's regime because I'm a huge pro wrestling fan and I absolutely love chaotic environments. Dorion was an unintentional great frontman because he distracted from all the bad moves with these terrible meme worthy sound bites so it wasn't like oh our hockey team is doomed, it's like we're A-team. What I'm saying is that I think I could have cut a great promo about trading Stone for Brannstrom.

The big thing is that the last regime just wasn't honest with the fans about how f***ed we were. It would be like if you're on the Titanic and water is gushing in and the captain is telling you that he is so happy that water is gushing in because that Shark to the left is his new girlfriend, and I should stop being a baby and move on from my family who has now drowned by claiming a marine animal as my new girlfriend.

I think if they were just honest about how screwed we were but tried to lean into the Cowboy us vs them mentality instead of trying to blame the fans, they could have at least had less people turn on the team in the midst of the chaos. So I think I may have done a better job than him from the fan engagement POV.

 

[The Waffler]

I don’t even know how Excel or PowerPoint works, so probably not.

 

[RickyLafleur]

Probably, I regularly win the Stanley Cup on NHL 24.

 

[BondraTime]

Hard to do worse than he did with Chych, DBC and Korpisalo, even if you were trying. That is a ridiculously, insanely, bat shit crazy bad job.

I would have f***ed up elsewhere, many times. Would I have done a better job? Probably not. Would I have done a worse job? Probably not. That's an utterly insane, yet relaistic way to look at it, which is insane for an NHL GM vs joe shmoe.

 

[Micklebot]

I don’t even know how Excel or PowerPoint works, so probably not.

I'm just picturing Dorion's epic PowerPoint presentation he used to attract Korpisalo, it must have had everything, fly ins, star wipes, fade transitions, morph transitions!

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

I'm not gonna play that game anymore, but by NHL standards he was objectively bad at his job. That seems undeniable at this point.

 

[Micklebot]

Hard to do worse than he did with Chych, DBC and Korpisalo, even if you were trying. That is a ridiculously, insanely, bat shit crazy bad job.

I would have f***ed up elsewhere, many times. Would I have done a better job? Probably not. Would I have done a worse job? Probably not. That's an utterly insane, yet relaistic way to look at it, which is insane for an NHL GM vs joe shmoe.

Those last three moves really backfired hard.

The Dadonov one though is imo the most egregious since it wasn't about things just not working out, it was about screwing up so bad the league imposed sanctions. I don't think I'd have done that at least...

 

[JungleBeat]

Not at the draft but yes.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

Dorion is an example of someone with a narrow functional orientation finding his way to an upper management position that he was not suited for, and failing because of it.

They should write about him in business schools.

I'm just picturing Dorion's epic PowerPoint presentation he used to attract Korpisalo, it must have had everything, fly ins, star wipes, fade transitions, morph transitions!

He didn't need PowerPoint since he could have just written 4M x 5 years on any basic text editing program. Even notepad.

 

[ChurchOfAlfie]

Anyone who answers yes is lying to themselves. It's easy to build a mock draft on your couch or propose a trade on HFboards.

But that ignores the job title - general *manager*. It's a job where you have to manage the team owner's desires and execute them if you're not given autonomy. I think we all know Eugene did not give autonomy to his staff.

The idea that anyone on here could talk down Eugene, or manage better than Dorion, when he gave insane orders (as he surely did) is laughable.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

Anyone who answers yes is lying to themselves. It's easy to build a mock draft on your couch or propose a trade on HFboards.

But that ignores the job title - general *manager*. It's a job where you have to manage the team owner's desires and execute them if you're not given autonomy. I think we all know Eugene did not give autonomy to his staff.

The idea that anyone on here could talk down Eugene, or manage better than Dorion, when he gave insane orders (as he surely did) is laughable.

This is a great answer.

I'm not going to go into a big thing breaking down each Dorion move, but a big problem even going back to Zibanejad for Brassard is that the fans have a disconnect over what Dorion's as actual job was, and what he had to accomplish over what time frame.

He first had to try to win before Karlsson and Stone became UFAs because Melnyk's finances were going to force a rebuild.

Then he had to do a mix of polishing a turd to raise season ticket numbers and playoff likelihood because of the sale, and making short term moves for his own self preservation.

He clearly set this franchise back a decade with his moves but a lot of fans fail to account for what the actual plan and goals were at the time for the team.

Dorion actually did an excellent job in the Debrincat off-season of building excitement around the team. People on Reddit were making tshirts. I suspect season ticket numbers were stronger (although they only went up substantially after Melnyk's regime sold lol). He only failed in that the team did not make the playoffs.

 

[GCK]

I would have obviously answered no before but after learning that Dorion would completely ignore his pro scouts and basically be the only pro scouting voice, I could have done better high and drunk.

 

[Ouroboros]

Half of you people would still be waiting for Logan Brown, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie and Rudolfs Balcers to break out.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Anyone who answers yes is lying to themselves. It's easy to build a mock draft on your couch or propose a trade on HFboards.

But that ignores the job title - general *manager*. It's a job where you have to manage the team owner's desires and execute them if you're not given autonomy. I think we all know Eugene did not give autonomy to his staff.

The idea that anyone on here could talk down Eugene, or manage better than Dorion, when he gave insane orders (as he surely did) is laughable.

Much of what worked out the worst for him was after Melnyk passed away or after Melnyk gave the spending green light.

I'd be a lot more interested in how other qualified candidates may have performed than how I would have done and the reality is they never would have taken/gotten the job because of the Melnyk shit, so it's largely a moot point in the end. They rode together. Bad Boys 4 Life.

Half of you people would still be waiting for Logan Brown, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie and Rudolfs Balcers to break out.

Ironically though, having a GM with over extended patience, hence a potato vs PD argument, would likely have fared better. Or at least left a better situation for today. It was the aggressive stuff that seemed to burn him.

 

[Hale The Villain]

We're talking about one of the worst GMs of all time here people.

When you collosally f***ed up almost everytime you did anything of significance and had no attention to detail for the little things, it's not difficult to imagine that even someone less "qualified" could do a better job.

A random HF boards poster would almost certainly not be a good GM, but it's not a stretch to say they would do better than Dorion, especially if they came into the job with some humility instead of smugness and didn't make so many self-imposed mistakes.

Put another way, I would absolutely have preferred a potato be GM over Dorion. A potato wouldn't have acquired Brassard, Duchene, Murray, DeBrincat, Chychrun, Korpisalo, etc... because a potato can't pick up the damn phone and shoot themselves in the foot like Dorion did.

 

[ChurchOfAlfie]

Half of you people would still be waiting for Logan Brown, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie and Rudolfs Balcers to break out.

I will not stand for Jonathan Dahlen erasure.

 

[bicboi64]

I would absolutely do a better job than Dorion.

I'm sure I'd have my own mess ups, but I wouldn't have gave up on Zibby for Brass (this ended up costing us more than it would have to extend Zibby for the deal NYR gave him), I wouldn't have paid for Duchene because he's never been a high end 1C, wouldn't have gotten Murray cuz he's shit, never have acquired Cat when a scoring winger was not one of our needs, wouldn't have acquired Chychrun when we already had Chabot and Sandy, wouldn't have signed Korpisalo, etc...

Like doing nothing and just being a conservative GM who goes waiver wire/bargain bin shopping would've produced more than Dorion.

 

[Mark Stones Spleen]

I'd still have all three of the upcoming first round picks. I can objectively state that much at least.

 

[Hale The Villain]

Half of you people would still be waiting for Logan Brown, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie and Rudolfs Balcers to break out.

Still better than bumping those guys out of the lineup by trading assets and wasting millions on Stepan, Gudbranson and Sanford

 

[lancepitlick]

I honestly don't see how I could have done any worse. And there is no way in hell I should have any job in the NHL.

I 100% would not have traded Zbad, traded for ADC, Chychrun, Duchesne, nor signed Korpisalo/Murray.

That right there leaves the team in a better situation than they are in currently.

I also never understood dumping Demelo/Duclair.

I wouldn't have traded for Zaitsev.

And I wouldn't have picked Tyler Boucher (I don't scout picks but at the time I thought Dorions logic was moronic).

None of that is even hindsight bias, I thought they were all bad at the time.

Can't see how I do any worse trading Stone/Karl/Pageau/Hoff/Paul if it came down to having to do that.

And coaching was bad during Dorion, so can't do much worse there.

Draft picks I defer mainly to scouts but emphasize BPA. Probably still end up with similar guys.

Nobody in league history has made his Dadynov blunder other than Dorion, so I probably don't screw that up.

Just doing what I noted above is FIVE additional first round picks, if you count Zbad. That's completely insane. The guy traded FIVE good first rounders for what now amounts to Kubalik, a 2nd rounder and Chychrun (probably a late first or 2nd rounder). That's absolutely terrible. Milbury-esque.

 

[swiftwin]

This thread would be a great case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect.

 

[BigRig4]

If you had just not signed a single free agent or made a single trade over the last 3 years you would arguably be ahead over Dorion lol. You'd be losing out on Giroux which is admittedly tough but no Murray, Korpisalo, MacEwen, DeBrincat, Chychrun etc. is easily a net positive.

 

[Agent Zuuuub]

Anyone who answers yes is lying to themselves. It's easy to build a mock draft on your couch or propose a trade on HFboards.

But that ignores the job title - general *manager*. It's a job where you have to manage the team owner's desires and execute them if you're not given autonomy. I think we all know Eugene did not give autonomy to his staff.

The idea that anyone on here could talk down Eugene, or manage better than Dorion, when he gave insane orders (as he surely did) is laughable.

Fine judge his performance after Melnyk died.

Arguably even worse and more harmful to the franchise than with Melnyk.

I will not stand for Jonathan Dahlen erasure.

I'm still salty about Stephane Da Costa