IMO there are three “phases” to GMing. There’s “Teardown”, “Build”, and “Fine-tune”.
Teardown constitutes removing old players and big money and bringing in assets. Grier has basically nailed that part with the Burns, Meier, Karlsson, and Hertl trades, I think. Obviously the Burns trade didn’t bring back any value but I think that was a unique scenario where he just wasn’t valuable at all—I think we forgot just how bad he was in 2021-2022, I know I was ready to punt him off the team for free myself and he was one of my favorite players; clearly Grier felt the same. We got significant assets out of the Meier, Karlsson, and Hertl trades. Teardown, complete.
Build is the next phase, which includes drafting and acquiring the players who will form the new core and frankly requires some luck in the form of lottery balls. We’re currently in the middle of this phase and have a little ways to go, but the skeleton of this team is starting to take shape. Celebrini and Smith are two excellent pieces and we’ll be drafting another foundational piece next June as well. The B-tier core pieces like Eklund, Zetterlund, Musty, Mukhamadullin, etc. are starting to come into focus and the C-tier future depth like Thrun, Bystedt, Edstrom, Halttunen, Thompson, and even Cagnoni are waiting to fill in the gaps. We still have a ways to go, particularly on defense and in goal, but we’re well on our way.
Fine-tuning is last, and arguably the most critical part to winning a Stanley Cup. Coincidentally, it was the aspect of GMing that Doug Wilson was horrible at. Once the core is in place, you have to be attuned to their needs on a year to year basis and be able to go out and find the right players to support them in the way they need. This could be as much as trading for a Timo Meier when your Hughes/Hischier/Bratt/Nemec/Hughes core is in place and needs size. It could just be finding just the right depth center to tweak your matchups to be perfect or the right depth defenseman to provide some physicality. It’s a combination of identifying the right player and then being able to go get them at a reasonable cost. Wilson failed at this over and over and over again.
It’s the last step that I’ll judge Grier on the most. He did the first part, which is typically the easiest but also he had a particularly difficult deck to clear and so deserves some credit. He’s done well so far on the second step, though most of that can be attributed to lottery balls. He’ll need to strike the right notes next season to improve the team while also maintaining a focus on the draft and hopefully grabbing a guy who can complete our defensive core. And once the team is up and running, he’ll need to make the right trades to fill in the gaps.
I think the position “tentatively optimistic” is how I feel about Grier so far. He’ll done well up until this point, but I have no idea how he’ll perform when the real GMing challenge appears.
