Player Discussion Linus Ullmark (G)

[JSSSTP]

One of the worst GMs of all time.

Top 3 easy.

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

 

[Senovision]

We struck gold by paying Ullmark 8 mil to not play for Bos, and 1mil for Korpisalo to take Boston down from the inside, masterful chess move to destroy a division rival

Korpisalo is 9 and 6, so he is winning more games than he is losing. Not taking down Boston from the inside so far.
Korpi has the same save percentage and goals against as Forsberg. Forsberg is 8 and 10 and they are both backup goalies.

 

[Agent Zuuuub]

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

yes.

not only did he suck at evaluating hockey, no one respected him or took him seriously.

 

[Micklebot]

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

I don't think he was actually in the running for worst GM of all time, it's just that he lasted a long time while being bad. Most GMs worse than him would have gotten fired much quicker so you have a laundry list of bad moves for him while worse GMs are less memorable.

Now, he may be up there for most damage done, though the few home runs he did hit offsets that a bit, even if you want to attribute them to luck.

 

[Byron Bitz]

I don't think he was actually in the running for worst GM of all time, it's just that he lasted a long time while being bad. Most GMs worse than him would have gotten fired much quicker so you have a laundry list of bad moves for him while worse GMs are less memorable.

Now, he may be up there for most damage done, though the few home runs he did hit offsets that a bit, even if you want to attribute them to luck.

I think the timing of the ownership change kept in along a few extra years. He wasn’t able to get another job in hockey operations, he’s working in media now.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

Good luck finding four others GMs who were definitely worse and stuck around for 7 years.

 

[PlayOn]

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

I doubt anyone here actually has enough knowledge of GMs throughout history to do a ranking.

Dorion didn’t do anything well besides drafting but I don’t know that he hemorrhaged our future either. Certainly didn’t help it. Maybe if he’d traded Stützle or Tkachuk, an actual major piece of the rebuild, it would’ve created irreparable damage. As it stands I don’t think he put us in a position where we can’t recover, he just made Staios’ job a lot harder than it needed to be.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

I still can't believe that Pierre Dorion is going to play in net for Sweden at the 4 Nations tournament.

I know that he was a goalie in Junior A or something, but it's pretty impressive none the less.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

I still can't believe that Pierre Dorion is going to play in net for Sweden at the 4 Nations tournament.

I know that he was a goalie in Junior A or something, but it's pretty impressive none the less.

corrected this for you

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

corrected this for you

Someone correcting my post to state that, "I know something".

Probably the biggest compliment I have received on this board.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

I doubt anyone here actually has enough knowledge of GMs throughout history to do a ranking.

Dorion didn’t do anything well besides drafting but I don’t know that he hemorrhaged our future either. Certainly didn’t help it. Maybe if he’d traded Stützle or Tkachuk, an actual major piece of the rebuild, it would’ve created irreparable damage. As it stands I don’t think he put us in a position where we can’t recover, he just made Staios’ job a lot harder than it needed to be.

It's more the death by a million cuts than simply 1 or 2 egregious things he did. Some bigger, some smaller. Like Mick said, he lasted a long time compared to others that would have been let go sooner, so the path is longer. The lists vary too.

Starting off by moving Zibanejad and finishing off with the worst UFA contract ever handed out in Ottawa (Korpisalo) certainly made him have a stink on entry and exit and is an ironic capture of the type of tenure he had.

Duchene trade for a ransom as the last ditch effort only months before deciding to rebuild. Obviously did not asses his team's state at the time well.

Only extracting long term value out of Karlsson from all the rebuild sell offs after the trade trees all collapsed is pretty glaring. Luckily, the Karlsson deal did still happen or it would have been an epic disaster.

Obviously Cat and Chychrun being expensive acquisitions not working out and not being long term pieces was big.

A few reaches at the draft like Boucher, Jarventie and some others I can't recall atm hurt them. Every team does it, but that regime had a couple that were perplexing based on where the guys they did take were anticipated to go and who else was there.

Mismanaging of the money when Melnyk did open up. The Dadonov & Murray signings being at the forefront of that.

Smaller things like saddling himself with a long term Zaitsev unnecessarily or not being able to hit with a competent tender, or at least during the time he had them.

Some of the short term stuff like moving Gus for Talbot or giving Colin White a big payday came back to bite him as well.

Paying to get rid of numerous of the self inflicted mistakes above cost them assets on top of it.

Dadonov fiasco.

I feel like his inability to effectively manage the PR for the team with a few train wreck moments, as basically the only guy they were rolling out there for a while, just sort of hammered it all home as a total package of looking bad as a manager and as an organization. Although nothing he said will ever top the Nick Rutkowski quote that Senators fans should be excited by the existence of the salary cap floor that the Senators were required to spend to. While they were like 8-10 mil below that number in real salary spending.

All in all they are basically starved for assets at this point even though they may be okay with competent management. I don't think that's reasonable given where they came from and burned through and I don't know who else you would hold accountable for it.

 

[Hale The Villain]

I understand that he was definitely shit for us despite a few lucky home runs, but is he actually in that conversation? Honest question, I don’t know much about the history of GMs.

He absolutely is. Only GM clearly worse than him is the legendarily terrible Mike Milbury.

His incompetence was staggeringly obvious almost immediately after he fell ass backwards into the GM job.

Took many years for me (and others) to convince the more optimistic fans around here that he was a disaster and we'd go nowhere with him as GM.

 

[bicboi64]

He absolutely is. Only GM clearly worse than him is the legendarily terrible Mike Milbury.

His incompetence was staggeringly obvious almost immediately after he fell ass backwards into the GM job.

Took many years for me (and others) to convince the more optimistic fans around here that he was a disaster and we'd go nowhere with him as GM.

Ron Hextall and Peter Chiarelli in EDM are in the same tier as Dorion. Milbury is S tier awful, those 3 are probably in the A tier of worst GMs

 

[lang006]

Does Sweden start Ullmark next game or will they go back to Gus? I'd be fine with him getting a game in and hopefully looking sharp. That said, definitely not very interested in him playing 3 games in a row for Sweden.

 

[Hale The Villain]

Ron Hextall and Peter Chiarelli in EDM are in the same tier as Dorion. Milbury is S tier awful, those 3 are probably in the A tier of worst GMs

Dorion was definitely worse than Hextall and Chiarelli.

He's probably in the same tier as Jim Benning and Stan Bowman and in the running for worst GM of the 21st century thus far.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Ron Hextall and Peter Chiarelli in EDM are in the same tier as Dorion. Milbury is S tier awful, those 3 are probably in the A tier of worst GMs

He was terrible, but I do think those high picks in Edmonton were part of the problem and skewed some perception. The impact of the players picked wasn't really representative of their draft status. Yakupov was a total bust. Larsson wanted out after his dad passed. Hall was a stats monster more than a lead the charge A player. RNH was the exception, but he also plays behind 2 of the best 4 or 5 forwards in the world and took a while to get to where he is. Not defending his tenure, just think too much gets made of the picks considering what they actually got out of them.

 

[bicboi64]

He was terrible, but I do think those high picks in Edmonton were part of the problem and skewed some perception. The impact of the players picked wasn't really representative of their draft status. Yakupov was a total bust. Larsson wanted out after his dad passed. Hall was a stats monster more than a lead the charge A player. RNH was the exception, but he also plays behind 2 of the best 4 or 5 forwards in the world and took a while to get to where he is. Not defending his tenure, just think too much gets made of the picks considering what they actually got out of them.

These moves were pretty horrendous considering how many assets and capspace the Oil had to start their rebuild around McDavid:

• Hall for Larsson
• Traded a 1st in the 2015 draft for Griffin Reinhart
• Eberle for Strome
• Strome for Spooner
• Lucic contract
• Koskinen contract

Like this was asset management that is pathetically comical.

 

[Micklebot]

Dorion was definitely worse than Hextall and Chiarelli.

He's probably in the same tier as Jim Benning and Stan Bowman and in the running for worst GM of the 21st century thus far.

There's a lot of context that needs to be considered but is very difficult to quantify when it comes to evaluating a GM. How big an influence does the owner have, what are the budgetary constraints both in terms of roster budget and staff, is the market one that automatically puts you at an advantage or disadvantage due to weather, taxes, nightlife ect. Most of theses factors, if not all, worked against Dorion. That's not to say he's absolved of all the decisions he's made, just that these are the factors that need to be taken into account.

 

[HoweHullOrr]

I don't think he was actually in the running for worst GM of all time, it's just that he lasted a long time while being bad. Most GMs worse than him would have gotten fired much quicker so you have a laundry list of bad moves for him while worse GMs are less memorable.

Now, he may be up there for most damage done, though the few home runs he did hit offsets that a bit, even if you want to attribute them to luck.

I doubt anyone here actually has enough knowledge of GMs throughout history to do a ranking.

Dorion didn’t do anything well besides drafting but I don’t know that he hemorrhaged our future either. Certainly didn’t help it. Maybe if he’d traded Stützle or Tkachuk, an actual major piece of the rebuild, it would’ve created irreparable damage. As it stands I don’t think he put us in a position where we can’t recover, he just made Staios’ job a lot harder than it needed to be.

Jim Benning could be a candidate. I think he was GM from about 2014 to around 2021. I’m too lazy to do extensive research though on this subject.

 

[PlayOn]

It's more the death by a million cuts than simply 1 or 2 egregious things he did. Some bigger, some smaller. Like Mick said, he lasted a long time compared to others that would have been let go sooner, so the path is longer. The lists vary too.

Starting off by moving Zibanejad and finishing off with the worst UFA contract ever handed out in Ottawa (Korpisalo) certainly made him have a stink on entry and exit and is an ironic capture of the type of tenure he had.

Duchene trade for a ransom as the last ditch effort only months before deciding to rebuild. Obviously did not asses his team's state at the time well.

Only extracting long term value out of Karlsson from all the rebuild sell offs after the trade trees all collapsed is pretty glaring. Luckily, the Karlsson deal did still happen or it would have been an epic disaster.

Obviously Cat and Chychrun being expensive acquisitions not working out and not being long term pieces was big.

A few reaches at the draft like Boucher, Jarventie and some others I can't recall atm hurt them. Every team does it, but that regime had a couple that were perplexing based on where the guys they did take were anticipated to go and who else was there.

Mismanaging of the money when Melnyk did open up. The Dadonov & Murray signings being at the forefront of that.

Smaller things like saddling himself with a long term Zaitsev unnecessarily or not being able to hit with a competent tender, or at least during the time he had them.

Some of the short term stuff like moving Gus for Talbot or giving Colin White a big payday came back to bite him as well.

Paying to get rid of numerous of the self inflicted mistakes above cost them assets on top of it.

Dadonov fiasco.

I feel like his inability to effectively manage the PR for the team with a few train wreck moments, as basically the only guy they were rolling out there for a while, just sort of hammered it all home as a total package of looking bad as a manager and as an organization. Although nothing he said will ever top the Nick Rutkowski quote that Senators fans should be excited by the existence of the salary cap floor that the Senators were required to spend to. While they were like 8-10 mil below that number in real salary spending.

All in all they are basically starved for assets at this point even though they may be okay with competent management. I don't think that's reasonable given where they came from and burned through and I don't know who else you would hold accountable for it.

Not every transaction is weighted equally though.

I think taking Kotkaniemi over Tkachuk and Drysdale over Sanderson, for example, would’ve inflicted more damage than Colin White’s contract, the Murray/Korpisalo/Dadonov free agency signings, the Gus trade, Zaitsev and more combined. We got out of most of those things, not without a cost, but certainly not at crazy ones either.

It’s a bad list and Dorion was a bad GM. The sheer volume of moves is asinine. I think this ranking thing is hyperbole because you’d really have to dig into every GM to make this list and because there is so much information we don’t and will likely never have re: ownership dynamics and staffing etc.

Friedman once said a GM told him that the number one factor of accepting a job somewhere as a GM and the most important thing is who your owner is. In the Pierre Dorion assesssment of it all, I don’t think that can be forgotten. It’s not a defense of him, just context missing.

I think it could have been worse. My hope was really that Dorion could build a) a decent core and b) not get Buffalo’d with players asking out. He did that, I think had he stayed much longer he would’ve lost control and we would have been really screwed. That’s about all my feelings on the guy, I have no ringing endorsements on him and I’m glad he’s gone.

 

[Hale The Villain]

There's a lot of context that needs to be considered but is very difficult to quantify when it comes to evaluating a GM. How big an influence does the owner have, what are the budgetary constraints both in terms of roster budget and staff, is the market one that automatically puts you at an advantage or disadvantage due to weather, taxes, nightlife ect. Most of theses factors, if not all, worked against Dorion. That's not to say he's absolved of all the decisions he's made, just that these are the factors that need to be taken into account.

Dorion wasted an insane amount of money, so the argument that he was disadvantaged by Melnyk's internal budget falls flat.

Bill Armstrong was dealing with the same kind of money issues, only more severe, as the GM of the now defunct Arizona Coyotes, yet he managed his spending significantly better than Dorion did during the rebuild. He managed to add a treasure trove of picks by taking on bad short-term contracts, while Dorion instead decided to spend tens of millions, not to mention actually giving up assets, to add guys like Murray, Gudbranson, Stepan, Namestnikov, Sanford, Tierney, Hainsey, Boedker, etc...

And given his awful track record of pro-scouting, we should count our lucky stars that Melnyk kept the purse strings tight and that we aren't a desirable UFA destination, as I can only imagine how many terrible contracts and buyout cap hits we'd be saddled with right now if Dorion got to spend money in UFA willynilly.

I've been hearing these arguments for almost a decade now and they are all discredited. Dorion wasn't playing GM on easy mode like a GM of a desirable low tax U.S team, but most of the mistakes he made were self-imposed, not imposed upon him by external factors.

 

[Loach]

Dorion is Dorioning down on his radio segments. Him and EM where two peas in a pod. The guy was a garbage GM.

 

[Hale The Villain]

Not every transaction is weighted equally though.

I think taking Kotkaniemi over Tkachuk and Drysdale over Sanderson, for example, would’ve inflicted more damage than Colin White’s contract, the Murray/Korpisalo/Dadonov free agency signings, the Gus trade, Zaitsev and more combined. We got out of most of those things, not without a cost, but certainly not at crazy ones either.

It’s a bad list and Dorion was a bad GM. The sheer volume of moves is asinine. I think this ranking thing is hyperbole because you’d really have to dig into every GM to make this list and because there is so much information we don’t and will likely never have re: ownership dynamics and staffing etc.

Friedman once said a GM told him that the number one factor of accepting a job somewhere as a GM and the most important thing is who your owner is. In the Pierre Dorion assesssment of it all, I don’t think that can be forgotten. It’s not a defense of him, just context missing.

I think it could have been worse. My hope was really that Dorion could build a) a decent core and b) not get Buffalo’d with players asking out. He did that, I think had he stayed much longer he would’ve lost control and we would have been really screwed. That’s about all my feelings on the guy, I have no ringing endorsements on him and I’m glad he’s gone.

Tkachuk was considered the consensus pick over Kotkaniemi or even HF darling Zadina. Sanderson was a smart pick though.

Also drafting is mostly on the scouts, not the GM. Maybe Dorion had a bigger hand at the draft table than other GMs due to formerly being the head of the scouts, but we don't know what picks he personally fought for and which he didn't.

Good rule of thumb is to judge GM quality mostly for what they are mainly responsible for - trades, signings and the hiring of staff.

Even if we grant the premise that Dorion was responsible for the team's selections in the 1st round, his record is a mixed bag at best. Can't forget about Boucher, Thomson, JBD and Bowers, all of whom were misses and several of them were massive reaches that left everyone scratching their heads.