Was he?
I mean he traded a 25 year old Bernier, Grabner, and a 2010 1st for an unremarkable speedy but undersized #4 defenseman in Ballard. He made the right bet but lost. And instead of cutting loose an L trade, he doubled down on his $4.2M mistake and kept him around for another 2 seasons.
It seems like you agree that the thought process was correct but the best was made on wrong player so I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. Ballard was 27 years old and under contract for 5 years. Grabner was the main piece fans didn't like losing. The 1st was contingent on a couple of target not being there so it had even less value to the team.
It's like of the Miller trade. If there's a 26/27 year old Miller calibre (or defenseman) with 4-5 years left on an affordable contract the Canucks should make it.
Then he traded Hodgson for Kassian which was just a backwards ass trade. It’s like if we traded Hoglander for Cody Glass or something. Trading an established but young roster player while you’re gearing up for another deep playoff run for a project was quite literally the dumbest thing I had ever seen.
The team (Gillis and AV) had issues with Hodgson. Gillis identified players he would trade Hodgson straight up for and Kassian was available. It didn't help the team in the short term like you said but the team technically got younger so I don't see how that goes against what I said about Gillis not wanting to trade away all of the team's young pieces/picks.
The same principles apply. I don't think anyone of us here want us trading Willander for a 30 year old.
Gillis in reality hoarded picks and prospects and never used them to make the team better. In the end, they never amounted to anything, because statistically, they rarely do from where we were selecting at the time. On top of that, the picks he made were brutal but that’s beside the point.
I’m saying this and I liked Gillis for the most part.
He didn't "hoard" picks and prospects. He had one eye towards the future. In theory that's the way it should be. I think Gillis also underestimated how short a contending window can be so he didn't push in all his chips when he should of, but that's in hindsight. We could have easily won the Cup in 2011. By the summer 2022 he had an eye of retooling.
But yes the drafting sucked. That's actually significant because I think Gillis did count his chickens before they hatch. He so intensely believe in all his sports performance stuff that I think he really did believe his young prospects (including Dane Fox) would amount to something.
