Nobody wants to contemplate the unthinkable, but if you really think about it, the answer to the OP's question is fairly obvious.
We hired Chiarelli to be in charge of the team, he's a veteran GM with more knowledge of hockey and the behind the scenes particulars than any of us have. He's decided to keep MacT around for whatever reason. Maybe MacT's a bad GM but okay as an assistant GM
And you forgot about MacT's love affair with Eakins VainGretzky. I was hopeful about MacT as GM but he was a total failure.
MacT gets to much **** after gagners lockout season all most all of us would have signed him to a deal in the 4-5m range,Nikitin was stupid as hell but Howson was definitely vouching for him,Ference almost everyone was wanting to bring him here and we're plugging him into there lineup,Chasing Clarkson was 100% stupid at the dollar point he was looking for the team was always looking for the Lucic type player and got caught up in it. When Fayne came from Jersey I would had wanted an extra year also Fayne let the team down and is a better player than what he showed here to this point.
He did not Draft Nurse because he saw his grandfather in the bathroom they were targeting him all along, and at the draft interview he's said he had a good feeling that the player would still be there when he selected, Schultz being a Norris candidate was really bad but most fans were saying that about him when he signed he so I don't think everyone should act like Schultz was the only one.
You also failed to mention his biggest mistake which was firing Krueger and replacing him with Eakins.
We hired Chiarelli to be in charge of the team, he's a veteran GM with more knowledge of hockey and the behind the scenes particulars than any of us have. He's decided to keep MacT around for whatever reason. Maybe MacT's a bad GM but okay as an assistant GM
And you forgot about MacT's love affair with Eakins VainGretzky. I was hopeful about MacT as GM but he was a total failure.
I personally believe that mact was screwed over by lowe just as much as anyone else. He should have been given an assistant gm opportunity under a veteran gm to learn the job. The position he is in now is where he should have started. Of course a rookie gm is going to make mistakes (and by rookie I mean 0 management experience at all). They are paying him either way so he might as well learn from Chiarelli. Maybe he can salvage a career.
Lowe, with some success as a GM, along with a long history of being a willing "yes man" for an ownership group with a tight budget, and some decent connections around the league(Sather, team canada etc), probably could have gotten a job somewhere else in the NHL if he ever really wanted to. It probably wouldn't be a top job, nor would be all that much in demand, but he wouldn't be on Mactavish's level of begging his former agent for an AHL head coaching job either.
Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years. Does anyone think we trade Hall if we have Ristolainen anchoring the top unit with Klefbom? Even if we make the Hall trade, how much better does our defence look with Ristolainen instead of Nurse. MacT and his delusions of toughness and a shut down dman had us picking a defenceman that should have been taken closer to pick 20.
MacT and Lowe are both still here and in on hockey related decisions. The only reason people think they're not is because the organization had to have a big PR scam to convince the masses they were no longer involved because of the amount of negativity being directed at the OBC. I believe the billboard was the tipping point where Katz realized he had to do something.
Lowe's success as a GM came when EIG had a tight budget and was micro managing his every move. Once they increased his budget and gave him more autonomy towards the end of their ownership tenure was when things started to fall apart. Makes me wonder if Nichols or their board had more to do with his limited success than he did. Even still, that limited success was over 10 years ago and his GM hires were complete disasters in the interim. I can't see any owner, other than someone who wants to see his team go into a complete free fall, giving Lowe any kind of meaningful job. Both of them are on their last job in the NHL.
I think Nurse was widely considered the BOP or close enough that its revisionist history to say he "should" have taken Risto.
Our weakness on the right side makes me think we "should" have taken Risto but otherwise can't say there was any true hype to take Risto over Nurse at 7.
I also think the Risto hype is a bit gross on this board. This board loves their puck moving point getting defenseman. Risto is still struggling with top 4 quality of competition and most likely will for a while.
People forget how limp noodle our team was at the time of the pick as well. A swack of tiny forwards. Our defense not much better. The toughness Nurse brought to the table over Risto was certainly an aspect to his game most pundits felt the Oilers needed.
I personally believe that mact was screwed over by lowe just as much as anyone else. He should have been given an assistant gm opportunity under a veteran gm to learn the job. The position he is in now is where he should have started. Of course a rookie gm is going to make mistakes (and by rookie I mean 0 management experience at all). They are paying him either way so he might as well learn from Chiarelli. Maybe he can salvage a career.
Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years. Does anyone think we trade Hall if we have Ristolainen anchoring the top unit with Klefbom? Even if we make the Hall trade, how much better does our defence look with Ristolainen instead of Nurse. MacT and his delusions of toughness and a shut down dman had us picking a defenceman that should have been taken closer to pick 20.
MacT and Lowe are both still here and in on hockey related decisions. The only reason people think they're not is because the organization had to have a big PR scam to convince the masses they were no longer involved because of the amount of negativity being directed at the OBC. I believe the billboard was the tipping point where Katz realized he had to do something.
, You don't pick toughness or stay at home dmen in the top 10. Taking Nurse over Ristolainen was idiotic given our completely lack of RHD in the system. Fixing MacT's mistake cost us a 1st overall pick. MacT and Lowe are complete morons. No idea how to build a team and always chasing someone else's template for success.
I agree with the bolded, and I definitely did not want to pick Nurse at that spot over Risto (he is only somewhat less tough than Nurse with a boatload more offensive skill...), but I should note that it wasn't a huge reach either, based on the rankings available at the time. I actually thought Nurse was lower until I went back to look:
http://www2.tsn.ca/draftcentre/feature/?id=86218
http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articl...kings-mackinnon-reclaims-top-spot-from-jones/
http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=88636
He wasn't a reach, but anyone who watched him should have seen his limited upside. Poor decision making, poor shot, and average pass.
That's nonsense. Nurse was always noted as having a very high upside but was raw. Scouts were drooling over his skillset leading up to the draft and all he did was improve every year since being drafted. Offense took a sizeable spike up in his draft+1 then +2 season and was an absolute beast in the WJC and won the Gold Medal MVP with a stellar performance. Now he had one year where he struggled as a 20 year old rookie in the NHL and all of a sudden he has limited upside according to some around here.
I'd agree that he has questionable offensive IQ but his upside isn't all of a sudden limited just because he struggled as a rookie. I understand that you haven't changed your stance on Nurse since the beginning but to say that "anybody who watched him should have seen that he has limited upside" is bologna.
Drafting Nurse over Ristolainen is the biggest mistake that MacT made. It will haunt us for years.
Not at all, when you have limited offensive IQ and a poor shot how do you expect that player to become a #1 dman? All the defensive dmen who've become #1's all have bombs from the point. Every single one of them. Again you don't take men with limited offensive upside that early in a draft.
He doesn't have to be a #1 Dman to be a successful pick and I think there's some untapped offensive potential with him. He was a very solid goal scorer in junior, scored 3 last season. I think he could be a 8-10 goal, 25-30 point guy who is a force defensively. I just don't see anything outside of questionable offensive IQ that would lead one to believe that he has limited upside. He might never reach his full potential but the skillset is there to be a big time impact Dman.
Well when the guy picked right behind him is putting up 41 point seasons and playing 25 minutes a night in a position where the organization had absolutely nothing in the pipeline. On top of that we've seen one of our 1st overall picks moved out to see that lack of depth addressed. I think its a very good reason to be pissed off about the pick. I understand a lot of you liked the pick at the time, but it was brutal from day 1 and I said it at the time. Our pick at that spot should have been one of Ristolainen, Horvat, Pulock. Nurse was a stupid pick given what we had for LHD at the time. Is anyone convinced he'll be better then Klefbom who we had in the system? Sure he MAY be better then Marincin, Musil, Simpson, and Davidson but even thats questionable now with the emergence of Davidson last year.