Top GM Replacements
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Zaddy
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- Feb 8, 2013
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Well if Chia (and the rest of the braintrust) insisted on a move, it's not like KG could prevent the move from happening. Chia was the executive, not KG. I mean you're already seeing him shipping out Chia's guys in Spooner and Talbot, and adding Gagner so he could send down Puljujärvi. This will likely continue up until the TD (and the draft if the Oilers still haven't added another GM).
Either way I'm not basing this of his recent moves or his tenure with the Oilers as a whole. He has done some good things in the past too and his drafts have generally been quite good. Not saying he's a genius or anything, but I think he's probably one of the more competent guys if you look around the league. I'm curious to see what he can do in the next couple of weeks up until the trade deadline.
I don't understand why he gets the praise for drafts? There are other people in place to handle that. Head of scouting and all the amateur scouts below him.
Zaddy
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Zaddy
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I'm not saying he has to be, I'm just saying I wouldn't mind keeping him around. But anyway, being able to identify talent is a major part of being a GM, and Keith Gretzky seems at least above-average at doing so. It's not a guarantee that some outsider coming here will do a better job. Case in point Peter Chiarelli.
From the names being speculated I have a really hard time getting excited for any of them. None of them seems like a slam dunk choice or someone you can trust will build this team the right way.
Like what has McCrimmon done? 3 years as an AGM with an expansion franchise that already has made a lot of weird moves. They're successful currently but how much does he have to do with that? No one can know for sure.
Hextall? Probably not coming here and it sounds like he is batshit crazy with how he runs his organization, planting mules and whatnot. I do like his drafting though but he seems like a real wildcard. Don't think he's someone the OBC would be willing to hire anyway so.
Lombardi? Built a great team in LA, then subsequently destroyed it. Very Chia like. Has he learned from his mistakes and would do it better a 2nd time around? Who knows...
Mark Hunter? Overhyped. Hailed as some talent assessment guru yet his drafts with the Leafs are not very inspiring and pretty questionable if anything.
So yeah...not really excited about any of those names. Not sure if any of them would be an upgrade on Gretzky.
I’m with you on coach & GM.
I’m a big Knoblauch fan, wanted him on the staff 4 years ago.
Zaddy
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So case in point from what I was talking about earlier about how just because Oilers hire an outsider as a GM it won't necessarily mean that he will be any better than someone like Gretzky.
Case in point: Paul Fenton. Guy was basically David Poile's right-hand man in Nashville for 20 years and as such obviously a lot of people believed he was a big part of the success that franchise has had and how well-run it has been. Then he gets hired as Minnesota's GM for this season and what has he done so far? Traded Nino for Rask and now Coyle for Donato and a 5th rounder, two clear downgrades in talent and the exact type of deals Chia did here this season and was raked over the coals for (and justly so).
At the same time Fenton has his team outside a playoff spot in probably one of the easiest seasons ever to make the playoffs in the WC. Not only that but his team has lost 5 straight and has 1 win in their last 10 games and most recently got shutout 0-4 to the fricking Ducks of all teams, and all this with the season on the line.
So again, people really seem to overrate GM's or executives as a whole around the league. The vast majority of them are very interchangeable and season-to-season success has little to do with them (just look at 2017 with Chia and Dorion nominated for GM Of The Year, lol). Not many GM's are able to keep a good track record over time. The only ones I'd trust would be Poile and Yzerman. Everyone else is pretty much the same.
So no matter who gets hired by the Oilers, I wouldn't have very high expectations that much is going to change or that whoever is hired is any better than Gretzky. Especially so if we keep Green, Howson, MacT and the rest of the pro scouts on staff.
Case in point: Paul Fenton. Guy was basically David Poile's right-hand man in Nashville for 20 years and as such obviously a lot of people believed he was a big part of the success that franchise has had and how well-run it has been. Then he gets hired as Minnesota's GM for this season and what has he done so far? Traded Nino for Rask and now Coyle for Donato and a 5th rounder, two clear downgrades in talent and the exact type of deals Chia did here this season and was raked over the coals for (and justly so).
At the same time Fenton has his team outside a playoff spot in probably one of the easiest seasons ever to make the playoffs in the WC. Not only that but his team has lost 5 straight and has 1 win in their last 10 games and most recently got shutout 0-4 to the fricking Ducks of all teams, and all this with the season on the line.
So again, people really seem to overrate GM's or executives as a whole around the league. The vast majority of them are very interchangeable and season-to-season success has little to do with them (just look at 2017 with Chia and Dorion nominated for GM Of The Year, lol). Not many GM's are able to keep a good track record over time. The only ones I'd trust would be Poile and Yzerman. Everyone else is pretty much the same.
So no matter who gets hired by the Oilers, I wouldn't have very high expectations that much is going to change or that whoever is hired is any better than Gretzky. Especially so if we keep Green, Howson, MacT and the rest of the pro scouts on staff.
nuck
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- Aug 18, 2005
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Green is the reason why Bakersfield has the home grown players it does. He does almost exclusively amateur scouting himself and has no historical connection to Howson and MacT except they watched his Junior club succeed. He became DPP in 2015 which was the first year in recent memory they picked anyone decent outside of the first round. Just because he was Reinhart's Junior GM doesn't mean he Svengalied Chia into trading for him any more than he pushed Chia into the Hall trade. We can't blame Keith Gretzky for Chia's parting gifts of Spooner and Manning either. Everyone in the organization has the taint of the decade of darkness on them, but not everyone had a hand in it.
If Chia had made no trades at all the club would be in better shape by far. All they need to do is hire someone who doesn't make trades that any message board fan can see don't make sense. I believe he was hired with an agenda to turn the club around asap which is what caused the Hall deal. I can't believe any of the hated OBC actually pushed him into that particular move. The guy that traded Seguin and Wheeler for two bags of bag of pucks did what he did. McCrimmon or Hunter or Futa won't do that. They don't have to be geniuses, they just don't have to be boneheads.
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Are you really saying the director of player personal for the oilers, who used to be the former gm for Reinhart, didn’t have a strong voice in the Reinhart trade?
No thanks on Bob Green, how many oil King’s have become prominent NHLers from those memorial cup days other than pysyk anyway? Which doesn’t say that much.
Also he admitted to not watching Reinhart play a whole year in ahl before the trade. And repeatedly mentioned the 6’4 size. No thanks. I’m over the days where we pass on talent for grit and size. I’ll take NHL players.
HARD PASS. Bob Green and that kinda mentality within the organization needs to go.
nuck
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But you hit it right on the nose, Green was not doing any pro scouting in 2015, that would have been Morey Gare, so he wouldn't have seen Reinhart play since the Memorial Cup. Maybe Todd Nelson or Gerry Fleming could have given good intel, because they coached against him in the AHL Maybe any of Chia's old Bruins contacts gave him input.First hand input by guys who saw him play as a pro against other pros. DPPs aren't involved in making pro trades, that's the GM and his assistant.
If Green hadn't see the guy play for a year, how much real influence could he have had? Chia "Bob we need to add a young defenseman but Daryl won't wait for us to develop one. I am thinking of trading our top 2 picks for Griffin Reinhart. Bob " Well I have actually never seen him play as a pro and we have just finished our draft list but he was a good Junior so hell yeah!" Chia "Kaching lets do this!"
Chiarelli was just hired by the worst organization in the NHL Do you see him trusting his future to the staff he had just inherited, or do you see Green sticking his neck out to say you gotta get this guy when he doesn't watch the pro league Reinhart plays in. I am sure Green said he was a character kid or something like that but the whole OBC watched Reinhart take them to the Memorial Cup so that deal happens whether Green is with the club or not. They also drafted Ewanyk and Moroz and traded for Brossoit, and that's all before Green was hired. That's what happens when your Junior club and pro team have the same home rink. You covet what you see every day.
As far as the Oil Kings pro results go, Greens job was to make a great Junior club, not groom pros. Players need to peak early because they have a three year shelf life, perimeter players like Michael St Croix can dominate, and smart players that are a half a step too slow to ever succeed as a pro become Junior scoring champions. A different way of scouting and building.
Thinking that green didn’t have that much of a say after watching every one of his games for four years is laughable. He had more knowledge on him than any scout could’ve. It’s clear that he didn’t have the skill necessary to warrant that high of a pick in the first place. Not only would a DPP have a lot of say in a trade, he knew the player the most and was probably the driving force in the trade. To think Tod Nelson had more say for what coaching against him two games a season is beyond me. I guess we should rely on our coaches to be our number one pro scouts in that case, cause they coached against them?
nuck
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What I was getting at is, if you haven't seen a player play in his single pro season, your opinion of him isn't worth shit. Nobody cares about how guys performed years ago in Junior except for really general stuff like, he's a leader, he's a team guy, or he's not a team guy. No NHL general Manager is going to give any weight to a former Junior GM or Junior coach saying a guy has NHL skills if those people never followed that guy play in the AHL. Junior to to AHL/NHL is where 80% of prospects get weeded out. If you don't have positive reports about his AHL play, you don't trade for him. That's why Chia talks to Gare who scouted the AHL and any other people in his circle who would have seen GR play, and yes if your AHL coach says "we feasted on the guy" or "he killed us" that means more than props from his Junior days. Guys like Green and Laxdal know a ton about their former Oil Kings work ethic and attitude and that's good info to have on a guy you are looking at, but for a major pro acquisition the deciding factor is how did the guy do playing against pros and Green had no knowledge of that.
Every 1st round prospect looks good to every head scout, especially the players that are ranked high by all the different scouting sources but if you do a redraft at age 21 the original selection order goes out the window and its what did he actually do after he graduated Junior. I wasn't there for Chia's discussions before making the Reinhart trade so I obviously don't know who he relied on most, but he is a veteran GM so you would assume his due diligence went further than relying on some guy's Junior GM as to whether you blow your top two picks on a trade. I don't know Bob Green personally but I know enough about scouts to understand that they spend their whole years following guys and trying to predict their future and what they want is to be at the draft table, not talking their GM out of keeping picks.
DudeWhereIsMakar
Bergevin sent me an offer sheet
Del Preston
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- Mar 8, 2013
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GM candidates the Oilers should interview according to TSN:
- Kelly McCrimmon
- Ron Hextall
- Tom Fitzgerald
- Chris Pronger
- Bill Guerin
- Mark Hunter
- Craig Button (LOL)
- Al Murray
- Kelly McCrimmon
- Ron Hextall
- Tom Fitzgerald
- Chris Pronger
- Bill Guerin
- Mark Hunter
- Craig Button (LOL)
- Al Murray
Todd from Leduc
Connor “The Next Great One” McDavid
I really hope we don’t bring in Dave Cameron or Mark Crawford, I know a lot of fans are pushing for those guys but I think with all due respect the game has passed them by.
Hitch is a good example, that experiment has pretty much ruined our season, I feel like if we fired Chia earlier Todd would have had us challenging for the Pacific. I’m still hoping we can squeeze into a wildcard despite Hitch, Gulletsan has more of a presence and that might be enough of a push but the boys are going to have to go on one hell of a run.
Hitch is a good example, that experiment has pretty much ruined our season, I feel like if we fired Chia earlier Todd would have had us challenging for the Pacific. I’m still hoping we can squeeze into a wildcard despite Hitch, Gulletsan has more of a presence and that might be enough of a push but the boys are going to have to go on one hell of a run.
KeithIsActuallyBad
You thrust your pelvis, huh!
Like we need more excuses to dislike Pronger.
I haven't taken the time to go through this entire thread but has Don Maloneys name come up? He should be considered a candidate at the very least.
Either this was a shot at us or the TSN analysts are somehow even dumber than I thought was humanly possible.
McIce Whole
Registered User
This would be f***ing hilarious. Fitting since we have been the running joke of the league for the past decade
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