Whether you think Dorion did a great job or was terrible over the past 7 years, I think you have to ask: is he the best man for the job given where the team is currently at?
He seems good at amateur scouting, but all the defining moves from this point forward (for the next 1-7 years) will be based mainly on pro scouting, trades, signings, coaching, balancing out the roster and cap management.
Is he the best person for this or are there other GMs who would do a better job? Infer what you will from the previous 6-7 years, but that's the question. Even if Dorion did the best job humanly possible of trading for picks/drafting, it's 100% possible there's someone better at making pro for pro trades, signing and finding a coach etc.
You shouldn't be giving out jobs 100% based on history, it should be forward thinking.
The real problem with assessing Dorion is splitting the Melnyk era from post-Melnyk era work. In my eyes, the Melnyk era version is almost impossible to assess because there's no way to determine what was Dorion's work and vision vs. what was Melnyk's meddling vs. what was a lack of resources doing to Dorion's ability to produce results.
We do know the severe lack of resources resulted in:
1. Some of the lowest paid coaching staffs in the league, ie. having to hire inexperienced coaches
2. A front office consisting of Dorion, as GM, and a lawyer, as AGM, with no hockey management experience at any level
3. Below cap floor rosters, in real dollar amounts for some of those years
4. No ability to sign pending free agents to market rate contracts or to attract unrestricted free agents in the summer
5. Thin professional scouting department
We can argue on the margins of whether he did a good job relative to the resources he had but it's pretty clear, from a philosophical standpoint, that the organization prioritized operating profits and reduced expenses at the cost of icing a competitive team.
Now, post-Melnyk era is kind of an interesting discussion but obviously a very very small sample size. So, it would be pretty hard to draw any definitive conclusions from one year of work, although I think we could all agree that it should be seen as mostly positive, on the whole, even if we didn't make the playoffs due to injuries. In pts%, we were .524 compared to an aggregate .430 from 2018-19 to 2021-22. That's a pretty significant improvement. In pts, we were 13 better than the year before despite significant injuries at the C, D and G positions. Add on the additions of Giroux, Debrincat and Chychrun in the span of 1 year and signing Stutzle to what might end up being one of the best contracts in the league and I think you can say he performed his role pretty well.
Ultimately, this might come down to a choice between seeing what he can do when he's allocated the appropriate resources vs. deciding it's time to hand the reigns to someone with 20+ years of experience to get this thing over the line. I could be easily convinced of either option but when the discussion starts with this over-generalization of his tenure, like he ever had the opportunity to do the job
for real for most of it, I take issue with the discussion for its lack of context. Anyone who wants to boil it down to "we missed the playoffs for 6 years so he should be fired" is just looking to vent, not discuss.