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

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

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.

Who makes that hall of fame?

Pierre Dorion
Mike Milbury
John Ferguson Jr.

Was Jim Benning bad enough to fit in there?

 

[thinkwild]

I doubt I could do better. Sure if all my plan A ideas came thru maybe, but its how my plan C or D ideas would work that would be more realistic and we seldom bring those up.

But my goals would have been different.

When Dorion got that unexpectedly early 3 year extension, it seemed to me that this was because he was expected to do some really bad tear down things, 16 new players as Melnyk said in the between two ferns interview, that were going to make him look as bad as Mike Milbury. And the 3 years was to allow him to restore his reputation by how he rebuilt. And I would have hoped that Dorion would have seen his job to be like Marshall Johnston – set the next guy up for success. But Dorion rather than seeing the best young team he could leave, succumbed apparently to players demanding he trade 1st rounders because they were ready now and to stop the rebuilding. I’d rather he left us more like Arizona did for Utah. But I guess his incentives weren’t to do that unfortunately.

 

[Cosmix]

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...

The Zibby trade was a colossal Fup!

 

[Neil Patrick Harris]

I suspect I wouldn't have made some of the mistakes he did, but there's also no way in hell I'd manage to nail something like the Karlsson trade. And we'd probably have ended up with Zadina instead of Tkachuk in 2018.

I did want Sillinger over Boucher in 2021 though, so we would've had that.

 

[Ouroboros]

But Dorion rather than seeing the best young team he could leave, succumbed apparently to players demanding he trade 1st rounders because they were ready now and to stop the rebuilding. I’d rather he left us more like Arizona did for Utah. But I guess his incentives weren’t to do that unfortunately.

If you ask me, this is the exact moment the rebuild went off the rails. Prior to this things were going somewhat decently - they had amassed some talent, had a small smattering of vets [Brown, Paul, Watson, Holden], and still had all of their picks to continue building. The vibes were immaculate.

...and then Tkachuk and Chabot show up at their exit interviews making demands like they're Connor McDavid or something. Now - Pierre Dorion has to take responsibility for run of ill-advised transactions that occurred in the wake of this event, but it's easy to see why it was done.

I think this is an area where the Senators were hurt by not having respected execs/advisors on staff. People that have respect in the hockey world and would have stood up to the impatient kids and said 'no. You aren't ready, and the team isn't ready'.

A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast where Pierre McGuire was the guest, and he said that in most failed rebuilds you can look back and see a sort of 'watershed' moment where teams abandon their original vision and go off course. I think for the Senators that is clearly the Alex DeBrincat trade, and things just spiraled from there. McGuire also mentioned the importance of insulating your youth with quality veterans, and made reference to how much difficulty Ottawa had doing that. He specifically named Ryan Suter as a player they tried to sign in his one year as a Sens exec, but the guy just wasn't interested.

But here's the thing - even if the Sens had kept their picks in 2022 and 2023 the team on the ice isn't currently any better, and they've still got the Bradypocalypse [credit to frightenedinmate#2] looming over them. So I don't know how much changes. You're in a better position to rebuild again I guess.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

If you ask me, this is the exact moment the rebuild went off the rails. Prior to this things were going somewhat decently - they had amassed some talent, had a small smattering of vets [Brown, Paul, Watson, Holden], and still had all of their picks to continue building. The vibes were immaculate.

...and then Tkachuk and Chabot show up at their exit interviews making demands like they're Connor McDavid or something. Now - Pierre Dorion has to take responsibility for run of ill-advised transactions that occurred in the wake of this event, but it's easy to see why it was done.

I think this is an area where the Senators were hurt by not having respected execs/advisors on staff. People that have respect in the hockey world and would have stood up to the impatient kids and said 'no. You aren't ready, and the team isn't ready'.

A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast where Pierre McGuire was the guest, and he said that in most failed rebuilds you can look back and see a sort of 'watershed' moment where teams abandon their original vision and go off course. I think for the Senators that is clearly the Alex DeBrincat trade, and things just spiraled from there. McGuire also mentioned the importance of insulating your youth with quality veterans, and made reference to how much difficulty Ottawa had doing that. He specifically named Ryan Suter as a player they tried to sign in his one year as a Sens exec, but the guy just wasn't interested.

But here's the thing - even if the Sens had kept their picks in 2022 and 2023 the team on the ice isn't currently any better, and they've still got the Bradypocalypse [credit to frightenedinmate#2] looming over them. So I don't know how much changes. You're in a better position to rebuild again I guess.

This is part of the problem with rebuild culture in the NHL. Tkachuk and Chabot have burned basically a half (Chabot) and a third (Tkachuk) of their careers on one rebuild.

In the case of someone like Chabot, you're asking the guy to suffer through a minimum 5 year rebuild AFTER his career has already started. Tkachuk one year less, but very early in the process too.

You're right that execs should stand up to player demands if they don't think it's in the best interest of the team, but if I were them, or at least Chabot, I would have just been asking out and suggesting they get guys that fit their timeline better.

In the end, supporting your rebuild with external pieces is almost always required. If you strike out on basically all of those, it's gonna hurt and set you back.

 

[Ouroboros]

This is part of the problem with rebuild culture in the NHL. Tkachuk and Chabot have burned basically a half (Chabot) and a third (Tkachuk) of their careers on one rebuild.

In the case of someone like Chabot, you're asking the guy to suffer through a minimum 5 year rebuild AFTER his career has already started. Tkachuk one year less, but very early in the process too.

You're right that execs should stand up to player demands if they don't think it's in the best interest of the team, but if I were them, or at least Chabot, I would have just been asking out and suggesting they get guys that fit their timeline better.

In the end, supporting your rebuild with external pieces is almost always required. If you strike out on basically all of those, it's gonna hurt and set you back.

Both Tkachuk and Chabot had the option to not sign long-term with the Senators though, right? I guess I'm less sympathetic to this sort of thing.

Not only that, but a big part of the team's failure to improve rests on their shoulders. If Thomas Chabot was an elite, game-changing defenseman then the Senators wouldn't be as bad as they are. Lately we've been hearing about how he needs to start taking his off-season training more seriously. At 27 years old. Which explains a lot, because my perception of the guy is that he's gotten incrementally worse every season since signing his 8x8 contract. You can go on down the list with core - why can't Brady Tkachuk play without the puck or control his emotions in losses? Why is Tim Stutzle still whining and diving like a child?

Some of this is because of a lack of mentorship, and that's becoming an increasingly difficult problem for teams like Ottawa to navigate. Prior to the trade deadline, The Athletic published a piece about trade protection in the NHL...

In fact, according to data from Puckpedia, CapFriendly and reporting from The Athletic’s NHL staff, the number of trade clauses is on the rise in a major way. In 2018-19, there were 170 players with some form of protection in their contracts. In the past six seasons, that has gone up 44.1 percent.

Add it all up and you’ve got a quarter of the league (245 of 965 players) entering Friday’s trade deadline with more say than ever about where they can and can’t be moved. That’s nearly eight players per team. And it would be more, but players must be 27 years old or have seven seasons of NHL service to be eligible for such clauses.

I just don't know what a team like the Ottawa Senators can do about that.

Outside of mentorship and having vets around, at some point the players are going to have to start holding themselves to a higher standard if they're serious about winning. In Colorado you've got Nathan MacKinnon literally policing his teammates diets like some little food fascist, while in Ottawa you've got Brady Tkachuk going out on the night the Sens are eliminated from the playoffs, getting hammered and screaming about how they're going to bring the Cup back to Ottawa. McDavid demanded that all the Oilers show up to training camp 2 weeks early this year.

Maybe the whole thing was just doomed to fail from the start.

 

[Alex1234]

You can’t botch a trade to the extend that the league robs you from a 1st

A fu…ing 1st

 

[Alf Silfversson]

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.

I have management experience and have learned on the job in three very different environments. Dorion was GM for 6 years or so and never seemed to learn a damn thing. If I was paid full-time to learn on the job as an NHL GM I would 100% outperform Dorion's horrendousness. Especially some of the more egregious errors he made later in his tenure.

 

[Tnuoc Alucard]

 

[Xspyrit]

I would have never imagined saying this before knowing Dorion but yes, I would have done better than him. Even without all the stuff that I called without hindsight, simply by doing less moves that would blow in my face.

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.

When many other fanbases see a GM as Santa Claus, it’s not a good sign

 

[Tuna99]

View attachment 881843

Best to just throw a massive tarp over it and then change the topic to hot-dog recipes.

 

[Tnuoc Alucard]

Best to just throw a massive tarp over it and then change the topic to hot-dog recipes.

 

[Tuna99]

View attachment 881852

Travis Green sees this hotdog and all he can think is this hotdog needs to be in better shape, stick together way better and be more compact and not so stretched out.

And if this hot dog doesn’t do that Travis Green will jump into the bench and punch it in the f***ing face

 

[Micklebot]

Travis Green sees this hotdog and all he can think is this hotdog needs to be in better shape, stick together way better and be more compact and not so stretched out.

And if this hot dog doesn’t do that Travis Green will jump into the bench and punch it in the f***ing face

Travis Green is just Joey Chestnut in disguise, he's switch over to vegan dogs and is still pounding them back like a boss

 

[Samboni]

IMO the worst trade PD made was the Dadinov trade to Vegas; it was either stupidity or dishonesty.

I also believe that he got bent over on many trades which resulted in the team overpaying for assets. He also misjudged the skill set of players that he signed in FA. I think he based his assessments on performance played several years in the past.

It’s easy to criticize and be an arm-chair GM, but we don’t have skin in the game. I think that it’s clear that he was trying to do the owner’s bidding and then swung for the fences after Melnyk died.. the end result was mostly a failure on many fronts. Could I have done better? Not with my knowledge and skills. Being a GM is one of the toughest jobs in hockey and most of them have a short shelf life.

 

[branch]

Absolutely without question

 

[Senscore]

IMO the worst trade PD made was the Dadinov trade to Vegas; it was either stupidity or dishonesty.

I also believe that he got bent over on many trades which resulted in the team overpaying for assets. He also misjudged the skill set of players that he signed in FA. I think he based his assessments on performance played several years in the past.

It’s easy to criticize and be an arm-chair GM, but we don’t have skin in the game. I think that it’s clear that he was trying to do the owner’s bidding and then swung for the fences after Melnyk died.. the end result was mostly a failure on many fronts. Could I have done better? Not with my knowledge and skills. Being a GM is one of the toughest jobs in hockey and most of them have a short shelf life.

Had I been GM I definitely would not have ever been comfortable enough to do a trade call by myself

 

[Beech]

most 3 year olds could have outdone him

 

[Samboni]

Had I been GM I definitely would not have ever been comfortable enough to do a trade call by myself

Two of PD’s biggest faults were arrogance and insecurity. He thought that he knew more than others and was threatened by others.

 

[bicboi64]

Who makes that hall of fame?

Pierre Dorion
Mike Milbury
John Ferguson Jr.

Was Jim Benning bad enough to fit in there?

Benning deserves to be up there, so many damn short-sighted moves

 

[BondraTime]

Funniest thing was firing McGuire a month after Melnyk wasn't the boss anymore. And this has nothing to do with McGuire being some great exec, he wasn't.

Can't tell me that he was that detrimental to the team that an extra set of eyes that were beyond desperately needed was kicked to the curb

And the blame for Del Zotto being 100% placed on McGuire was hilarious, the guy was on the job for 2 weeks when he was signed

Dorion is a petulent child, he put a kibosh on any media appearances by McGuire, as well as Troy Mann, because he doesn't work well with others. Not even going to get into the Trent Mann embarrassment Dorion brought along, that's beyond comprehension.

He was an absolute trainwreck of a GM from a job perspective, the Sens are in a terrible position because of him. But the behind the scenes stuff is just as bad, if not worse.

My favorite quote was that he only went 2 years with Zub in 2021 because it lined up with Thomson and JBD being top 4 guys in 2022/23. Absolute gem

 

[Larionov]

I'll say this in Dorion's defence - the culture that Melnyk created, and the demands that he made, are what led to that botched trade. For Melnyk, saving money was everything, and the truth was always optional. Dorion wanted to please the boss, and clearing $5 million off the books would have earned him an, "atta boy" from Euge. Let's be clear - Dorion is still a huge putz - but leadership and culture starts at the top.

 

[stempniaksen]

Better? Probably not. Worse? Definitely not.

There are a handful of spots where I would have avoided disaster like the Korpisalo signing, the Dadonov fiasco and the Zibanejad deal (probably the Duchene deal too).

However the argument for Dorion is that he somehow stumbled his way into Stutzle/Sanderson/Greig in the 2021 draft and I wouldn't have taken any of those players (Obviously I would have taken Stu 3rd but in "my" scenario Karlsson goes somewhere else for a single better asset than SJS gave up).

Then there's also all the brown nosing and succumbing to pressure that Dorion had to endure in the Melnyk years and I probably wouldn't have been able to keep my mouth shout long enough through the dark days to keep the job.

 

[stempniaksen]

I'll say this in Dorion's defence - the culture that Melnyk created, and the demands that he made, are what led to that botched trade. For Melnyk, saving money was everything, and the truth was always optional. Dorion wanted to please the boss, and clearing $5 million off the books would have earned him an, "atta boy" from Euge. Let's be clear - Dorion is still a huge putz - but leadership and culture starts at the top.

I always wonder if Dorion was even more under the gun prior to this trade than we thought. Something along the lines of "since we're not making the playoffs shed X million by the end of the season or you're out" type of message from Euge. Obviously doing what PD did in that situation puts a dark spot on your reputation and probably/definitely costs you another GM gig, but maybe he thought he wouldn't get a chance anyways and was just trying to stay on a little longer.

I'm probably giving him too much credit in sense and it was all just a mess up, but an outright lie to save his bacon at least seems like it's in the realm of possibilities.