Move over Jim Benning, Joe Sakic is the worst GM in the NHL (long)

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

I agree completely with you.

Another issue I have is that our past tree head coaches (Bednar, Roy, Sacco) have all been rookie NHL head coaches. We need to bring in someone with some experience for once.

Paul Maurice has experience

 

[TheForsbergShow]

If you are an AV's fan I don't see how you can excuse JS for where he has taken this team especially how promising they looked when they had ROR/MD/STATS/1OVA. I am a habs fan and would kill for that C line right there.

I am not excusing him. I am just throwing in context into a couple situations that people seem to rather ignore just to create their own narrative. Everyone thinks its black and white either sign the players or not, or to trade them. Sure every team would kill to have those centers, we had it for a few years before it just wasn't feasible anymore for individual reasons like i said. ROR wants to play C and he was basically forced to play wing since we had Duchene and Stas already. It just so happend that the contracts lined up to end around the same time and it hurt us bad. As a fan it sucks, but trying to be logical about it I can see why it happend.

Even with that forward group they had, they were never contending with that D core of only Johnson and Barrie and that was obvious.

He has made some bad moves, especially early on which has hurt this team (mainly Iggy) and we are still feeling the effects of it no doubt although most should be gone this offseason. I agree with a lot of the bad things that were mentioned but at the same time almost every GM makes similar moves to sign UFAs makes a few bad trades etc .

I bet you could make a list of almost all gms and show very similar trades/signings to make them look bad. IF anything Sakic just hasn't been aggressive enough to acquire his vision of a team and it has been a painful process. So if there is anything to complain about, it should be that he is waiting too much to make real difference in the rosters makeup.

Is he one of the worst GMs currently? Sure.How can you not be when your team is last. But I think there is a very fine line between a lot of GMs in the league

 

[Dolemite]

LOL at everyone who thinks Benning is a bad GM. He inherited the team and is cleaning the mess from a bad GM.

 

[Field of Dreams]

LOL at everyone who thinks Benning is a bad GM. He inherited the team and is cleaning the mess from a bad GM.

This is like laughing at the rest of the world for thinking the earth isn't flat. It's an overwhelming consensus he has done a lousy job for a reason. Vancouver much older, less skilled, with a weak prospect pool. Even if he was taking the right direction, his execution has been nothing short of abysmal.

 

[gorangers0525]

Have any of you seen what Garth Snow did this off-season? Lol

 

[belair]

You may be right, but I was trying to be nice and withhold judgement until Wood plays in the big leagues. There is always a possibility that it doesn't work out for some reason. Most likely that move will end up in the bad category.

That move isn't even about the trade for me.

From all reports I've heard, Sakic wasn't even going to offer Kyle Wood a contract. Then he proceeds to step into the AHL and put up a PPG as a rookie defenseman. Just mind boggling when you consider their lack of quality defensive prospects.

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

I don't care how many years these guys have been around the game, and how much they know about business, and how much respect they have around the league.. there are some BAD GM's out there and Sakic is one of them.

I for the life of me can't understand why any owner of a NHL team wants to pay money to these guys. I guess it kinda starts with the owners, if you don't care then you need to be really lucky for anything to work out.

 

[bethylfan]

There is absolutely NO WAY that they're worse than Ken Holland.

 

[HabsQC]

No, no Bergevin is the worst since he traded Subban for Weber, remember ?

 

[HabsQC]

There is absolutely NO WAY that they're worse than Ken Holland.

Hmmmm How many cups have Snow, Benning and Sakic won ? How many seasons have they led their team to the playoffs, let alone in a row. Sorry DET fans, you might now have the good team you used to have, but you can't tell Holland if you look at his resume.

Now you know better than I what he has done in the past few years, but he can't possibly be worse than the GMs mentionned in this thread.

 

[Eddy Punch Clock]

LOL at everyone who thinks Benning is a bad GM. He inherited the team and is cleaning the mess from a bad GM.

The "bad GM" wasn't allowed to rebuild when he thought it was necessary. He was replaced by a puppet who's only agenda is to make the playoffs. Apart from too many NTC's (which were needed to get cap friendly hits) Gillis never signed one bad or outrageous contract. Benning signed at least three in his first year.

* Luongo deal was done within the rules at the time. The playing field changed afterwards which was, and still is, complete ********.

 

[Sleepy]

I agree with your categorization of deals, but I don't think that puts him anywhere near worst GM. Also, you sum up all the team-friendly deals in one line item. If you separate those out, they offset a lot of the bad bottom-6/bottom-pairing deals.

 

[David Bruce Banner]

Benning is worse.

- Kesler for Bonino, 21st overall, and Sbisa (not a cap dump, he was targeted in trade...)
- Garrison (top 4 d-man at time) for late 2nd
- That late 2nd for Linden Vey
- 3rd for Dorsett
- 3rd for Andrey Pedan
- Gustav Forsling for Adam Clendening
- Kassian + 5th for Prust
- Bonino, 2nd, and Clendening for Sutter and 3rd
- Lack for 3rd
- Shinkaruk for Granlund
- McCann, 33rd overall, and 4th for Gudbranson and 5th
- 5th for Larsen


- Sbisa signed for 3 years, $3.6M per year (as an RFA)
- Miller signed for 3 years, $6M per year with an almost full NTC
- Dorsett signed for 4 years, $2.65M per year
- Sutter signed for 5 years, $4.375M per year
- Eriksson signed for 6 years, $6M per year with NTC/NMC and is buyout-proof


- Let Hamhuis, Vrbata, Richardson, Matthias walk for nothing as UFAs

Not all these moves are bad, some of them are meh, some remain to be seen. The bolded ones out and out stink, though. There's a lot of things he does poorly from his pro scouting to cap management to hemorrhaging picks every time he sneezes. I'm not wild about some of his off ice business decisions either. But things always look worse when you are the manager of a bad team. If the Canucks had managed to draft Mathews or Laine, I think Benning would somehow look better.

Be that as it may... I'd say Sakic and Snow and maybe even Nill deserve to be mentioned in the same breathe as Jimbo. Poor to lackluster all of them.

 

[ORLY]

I agree with you OP. Sakic is my favourite player of all time, and I defended his moves. Now I see the truth.

- The core and great goaltending during stretches made the team look better than they actually are. Landy, MacK and Duchene are excellent players when supported. Barrie and Varly too. EJ meh, but everyone else has been crap. These players covered for Sakic's incompetence.

Ever think Roy left because he was fed up with the BS. Everyone says "Roy had a final say" but how do you know that? Sakic is the man with the codes, just because Roy is Roy, doesn't mean he has final say.

What convinced me that Sakic sucks?:

On the avs board we used to blast Roy from all angles for playing "awful, bad, terrible" Nick 'Olden. Myself and others were pissed that Roy gave him the most minutes and we were serious. "It's the coaches fault, Holden sucks, he should be on the bottom pair". Well guess what? He went to an actual team where he can play his game without looking stupid for the failures of the plugs around him. And he's actually been great this year for New York. Which makes sense because any player will look bad playing D with Iginla, Grigorenko, Soderberg, the rotating fourth line guys, and all the other craptastic deadweight on this "pig wearing lipstick" team. How do you not build around Duchene, Mack, Landy, and Barrie? They've brought in so many mediocre players instead of one impactful one.

I was always somewhat of a skeptic even in our great season a few years ago. I wanted to be proven wrong though. Now I'm just an angry skeptic. If we didn't have that outlier year this team looks so much better right now. Or not, because Sakic.

 

[Baby Punisher]

Sakic's problem is that he still thinks like a player and not an executive.

 

[The Drop]

This is like laughing at the rest of the world for thinking the earth isn't flat. It's an overwhelming consensus he has done a lousy job for a reason. Vancouver much older, less skilled, with a weak prospect pool. Even if he was taking the right direction, his execution has been nothing short of abysmal.

Well said

 

[SillyRabbit]

Lol @ anyone who thinks that Benning isn't far and away the worst GM in the NHL.

It's not just his mile long resume of horrible decisions, it's his beliefs and practices that make him so incompetent.

He's literally the opposite of what a progressive, forward thinking GM should be in today's NHL.

 

[El Travo]

Team sucks and Sakic has been meh. No doubt about it.

Can we not have Wild fans pretend to know anything about the team, though? It's like watching a plumber try to tell an electrician how to wire a house. You really don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Makar Goes Fast]

one year later, i wonder if the opinion on Sakic has changed and if so by how much.

 

[GOilers88]

This is like laughing at the rest of the world for thinking the earth isn't flat. It's an overwhelming consensus he has done a lousy job for a reason. Vancouver much older, less skilled, with a weak prospect pool. Even if he was taking the right direction, his execution has been nothing short of abysmal.

Funny how wrong that is.

 

[GOilers88]

Lol @ anyone who thinks that Benning isn't far and away the worst GM in the NHL.

It's not just his mile long resume of horrible decisions, it's his beliefs and practices that make him so incompetent.

He's literally the opposite of what a progressive, forward thinking GM should be in today's NHL.

Like Chayka, right?

 

[Cousin Eddie]

A lot of incorrect things in OP. Some moves listed were before Sakic became GM. He was part of management and all but he wasn't GM until September 2014.

Sakic has made two bad trades as GM. He traded Kyle Wood and Conor Bleackley for Mikkel Boedker (however Boedker was Colorado's leading scorer for the time he was there while Bleackley will never be an NHL'er and Wood is a long shot). And he traded a 3rd rounder for Eric Gelinas.

 

[Jacob]

Sakic's problem is that he still thinks like a player and not an executive.

I just don't think he has the personality to be a GM. He seems like too nice of a guy. It'd be easy to call his bluff. Add in his lack of FO experience, he was destined to fail.

 

[Dempsey]

I don't even think Benning is that bad of a GM, and I'm a non-Canucks fan living in Vancouver. He's made some poor trades plus the Eriksson signing, but he's made some good trades and appears to have drafted well. Overall I think it's a net positive. I could be wrong though, we'll see

 

[stampedingviking]

I don't even think Benning is that bad of a GM, and I'm a non-Canucks fan living in Vancouver. He's made some poor trades plus the Eriksson signing, but he's made some good trades and appears to have drafted well. Overall I think it's a net positive. I could be wrong though, we'll see

Wait for the so-called Canucks fans to bombard you with posts about Benning being the worst GM ever.