Couldnt disagree more.
The "7 years" in your argument is one you guys use a lot, first off it was 7 years ago and the mandate by owners was to win, and he took them from a bottom 8 finish to winning the Pacific and snagging Brock at 23rd. I won't bother chronicling every move but any one who bothered to look would have seen the mess he inherited in literally every facet of being a GM. He made some good moves, shitty moves and moves that we're made directly because of the mess the previous GM made.
The only thread I've seen positive comments across all nuck fans was getting and signing Garland but there was still so many idiotic rants like how he didn't have a contract already done at the time of the trade to some truly troll worthy to the point other fanbases were laughing at them.
The anti crowd goes out of their way to jump on false rumours, go out of their way to shift praise on any good move he makes.
Most fanbases would look at just the massive amount of cap he created while improving the team and be like wow this is a huge win, instead we here OEL is an anchor 4 years from now which is only a million more for Edler and the cap will have gone up by then.
Questioning the moves are fine but to actively cheer for your team to lose games, trades, drafts, jumping on false rumours, just so your proven right about a guy is just sad .
Sad, but also something you're wrongly accusing the vast majority of people who critique Benning. We want the team to do well, that's why it's frustrating to see him damage the team repeatedly and predictably.
Not chronicling each individual move then is an easy way to avoid the fact that the vast majority of his decisions have been bad. Benning DOES get credit for when he does good things, and it's grossly inaccurate to say it's "just Garland"...BS. Boeser, Hughes, Petersson, the Burrows and Hansen trades, decent value signing for Horvat, Demko, even DiPietro, even the controversy around the Miller trade was a question of whether we were ready to make good on his value which is an honest hockey debate but one where people celebrated how good it turned out, getting Pearson for Gudbranson was LOUDLY celebrated, Dickinson I think has been well received, his AHL signings I think have been widely positive this year...to say it's "just Garland" is dishonest.
But year after year he has spent to the cap, been a net loser of draft picks and prospects (curious behaviour if he's not going all in), HE HIMSELF says they're trying to get into the playoffs and trades away future assets to do that year after year, and when he fails, his defenders somehow incredulously try to argue that he wasn't trying to do what he says he was trying to do and what his behaviour indicated he was trying to do.
Right, that's Gillis's fault...all those NTC's Gillis left...except that Benning was the one who gave NTC's to the likes of Beagle and Eriksson and Sutter, all while paying above market prices for poor performers with stupid term contracts.
It's Gilli's fault that we had a weak prospect pool...well, yes, Gillis traded away picks when competing for the Stanley Cup, Benning traded away draft picks while bottoming out in the league.
It's Gillis's fault for the cap overhang of a Hall of Famer Luongo...how does that compare to Benning's cap overhang of Eriksson, Roussel, Beagle, Spooner, Baertschi...and how many of those ones are going into the Hall of Fame exactly?
The vast, vast majority of Benning critics celebrate his successes...if we don't do it enough for your liking it's because Benning fails sooo much more than he succeeds.
