People keep saying "Tanking is so easy, any GM could do it" when there's a ton of evidence around the league that it's not "easy". Most teams flounder for years when rebuilding/tanking. In fact, nobody has responded to my question: Has any team done a scorched earth rebuild in 6 years without any of the team's original picks winning the lottery? I'm not aware of any.
People say "Signing RFAs to good long term contracts is so easy and the bare minimum of a GM's job", yet look around the league. Dubas failed to do it in Toronto with Matthews and Marner. Treliving failed to do it with Tkachuk in Calgary. Yet both got fired and immediately re-hired by other teams.
People say "Rebuilding is so easy when you have all this talent to start with", yet conveniently ignore the fact that "all this talent" actually finished 30th in 2018. Not to mention the fact that team rarely ever get full value for their assets during the teardown part of a rebuild. Go look at what Pittsburgh got for their stars like Kovalev, Straka, Lang, Nedved, Kasparitis, etc. Sweet f*** all. Same with Chicago and Washington's stars in the early 2000's. The only thing that saved those teams was winning was winning multiple lottery picks and drafting top 2 a few times.
There's also this bizarre notion that all the good moves and all the bad moves are equal in value. Like, the Stutzle contract is one of the best contracts in the NHL in the last 20 years. Top 5 easily, up there with MacKinnon, Draisaitl and Jack Hughes. Yet, people will hold it up there as somehow equivalently offset by downgrading from a 5th round pick to a 6th round pick for half a season of Gudbranson. Or losing Balcers to waivers. Heck, even the Stepan trade, which was one of the worst, doesn't even crack the top 5 good things in terms of impact.
It's absolutely funny how the anti-Dorion crowd keeps moving the goalposts:
1. At the beginning of the rebuild, they argued Dorion was terrible at drafting because he drafted Tkachuk instead of Zadina.
2. Then a couple years later the argument was "well, it's easy to draft, but it doesn't matter if the players walk away as soon as they turn 24 and their RFA years are over" and "signing RFAs is the easy part"
3. Then when all our young players started signing 7-8 year deals, the argument was "well, it doesn't matter, because Dorion is terrible at pro scouting and terrible at trades, so he won't be able to add the players required to help improve the team after the rebuild"
4. Now that he's proven he can make good pro acquisitions like Zub, Giroux, DeBrincat, Chychrun, even Hamonic, the argument became "well, sure the rebuild is coming along well, but of course it did, he had all these amazing assets to start with, anyone could do that".
The mental gymnastics are truly astounding. It's amazing to see how deep they are willing to dig to avoid admitting they were wrong about Dorion. We could win the cup next year and people will argue that any other GM would have done it in 5 years instead of 6. Now, their last glimmer of hope is that the new owner will clean house, as if it will somehow prove them right (it doesn't).
Sorry for the delay, very late response but I always try to do my follow ups.
- It's true that a bit of luck at the draft could have helped but we did great selections the few times we drafted high (Tkachuk might be the 2nd or 3rd best player from his draft, Stutzle and Sanderson both could be top-3 too). Problem also is we didn't have our pick in 2019 and we massively reached in 2021. We then traded our 2022 and 2023 picks for established players (which isn't a bad thing in a vacuum)
- Why was it such a fail regarding Matthews and Marner contracts? They were much more proven and productive when they got extended... I love Stutzle and Tkachuk but they are not in the same tier (which would corroborated by pretty much every non-Sens fan)
- Matthew Tkachuk was still RFA after his bridge, the problem was more that he didn't want to play for Sutter no?
- Can't mix up talent and team results. Most teams that finish at the bottom have some pretty valuable talent. What you're omitting here is that usually teams don't go for a earth scorched rebuild while their core players are in their prime. Also, pretty hard to compare with things that happened 25+ years ago, I don't remember the context and what happened exactly. But in today's market, good players are valuable on the market and return some pretty good futures. Look at Dubois who just got traded.
- you're right that not all moves are equal but Stutzle one of the best contracts in the last 20 years? I mean, he got $8,350,000 AAV after scoring 58 pts and being -27... That was a bit risky but not too much when you project Stutzle, which is THE thing I trust Dorion with : managing his own prospects.
- That said, there's not just some minor blunders like Balcers, Duclair or Stepan. Some would cite you Zibanejad or Duchene for example.
1. I never did, I actually didn't take part of this debate IIRC. I wanted Zadina but was also pretty happy with Tkachuk and didn't care about how many goals he scored
2. maybe "easy" is not the right word, don't think I used it many times but at the same signing your young players to contracts is what should be expected. Compare our contracts to other young stars in the league, why do you keep saying they are that good? It seems pretty much standard. Batherson's was great though, but unfortunately just 4 years left now
3. ok?
4. Zub is much better than they expected, Giroux wants to retire in his hometown. DeBrincat and Chychrun, we paid heavy prices to get them. Still good on Dorion for making these moves (but Hamonic? uh...) but that has nothing to do with the assets at the start. Who said that?
There's no mental gymnastics, just pure analysis. And how are people "wrong" about Dorion? While we have some very nice young players :
- Giroux turns 36 next season
- Batherson only 4 years left
- Norris has shoulder injuries
- Chabot has been asked to do too much for too much without any support and his overall game has been affected
- DeBrincat doesn't want to extend long term
- Chychrun has 2 years left
- Zub has 4 years left
- coaching is not efficient?
- goaltending isn't stable
So how will we replace guys like Giroux, Batherson, DeBrincat? Keep in mind, we're not even talking about a playoffs team... What if Chychrun decides he wants to contend elsewhere and test the market?
After Greig, Ostapchuk and Kleven, the pipeline looks pretty dry, we better start drafting well again because it doesn't look like the last 3 drafts will produce much so if we want to fill out the roster with quality (crucial if you have big aspirations), we have to start treating our assets carefully and stop wasting 2nd + 3rd + 4th + 7th to repair mistakes (for example)
