Lol. Benning was such an enigma when you really think about it.
He was terrible for the most part with UFA's but was surprisingly good at re+upping his own players.
He drafted EP, Quinn, Demko, Brock before an after Joulevi, Virtanen, Podz.
Traded for JT but also traded for OEL.
Ya every GM has hits misses etc but the polar extremes of his are on another level lol.
If he had drafted Igor he likely gets him at a great deal but as a UFA not only overpays but would do it willingly.
I was a big defender of his but after JR and Allvin I now look back and feel like such an idiot for the lengths I went to argue for him. Got banned for it ffs lol.
Don't feel bad, Pierre Dorion had his die-hard defendors and his track record is much much worse than Benning, or any GM that ever had the position in the NHL for that matter. Easily by far the worst GM of all time, and that's including Milbury
Basically, his only successful moves were drafting Tkachuk, Stutzle and Sanderson with 3rd-5th OA picks, drafting Greig and Pinto, signing Zub and Giroux (who wanted to finish his career at home) and some extensions (Tkachuk, Sttuzle, Sanderson, Batherson mostly). He had an incredible opportunity to have a successful rebuild with
unseen wealth at the beginning of a rebuild (Karlsson, Stone, Duchene, Pageau +++ all in their primes for trade and prospects like Chabot, Formenton (he gets a pass on this one), Batherson, Daccord, Nick Paul, etc)
The only 2 moves that didn't blow up in our faces were Karlsson and Pageau, all the rest busted (yeah even the returns for Stone, Brassard and Duchene). He had a great return for Ryan Dzingel which he completely botched (traded the two 2nds for Derek freaking Stepan and Matt Murray, let Duclair walk as a RFA after he scored 31 goals in 87 games for Ottawa)
Let's not forget the Zibanejad, Duchene, DeBrincat, Chychrun and Dadonov fiascos. There was many other bad moves, we could continue all day. I highly wish we had Benning as our GM during the rebuild...