What is the single worst decision your team ever made?

[Arthur Morgan]

Oilers:

This is gold

 

[ponder719]

Im not going to get into anything not directly hockey related for the Flyers, I don’t think that’s entirely fair to hypothesize about, but including Peter Forsberg in the Lindros trade is way up there, if there was a way to keep him out of it. If not, signing John Vanbiesbrouck over Curtis Joseph in 1998. Beezer was half-cooked, Joseph was in his prime, and I don’t know where I read it, but I’ve seen comments from Cujo that he was so ready to sign he had gotten his kids some Flyers gear already, before Clarke pulled the rug out.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

trading Rask for Raycroft, then trading for Toskala, then Bernier, taking Biggs and moving up to select Percy, Kessel trade....

 

[HanSolo]

Anaheim: Modern era: Re-hiring Randy Carlyle HM: Promoting Dallas Eakins to replace him

Overall: Trading Selanne for dogshit.

Vegas: I don't even know where to start. The easiest answer would seem to be Suzuki in a package for Pacioretty. But I'll think I'll go with the wider way they set fire to their prospect pipeline to the point that there is no cushion there for a rebuild when it's that time. But I guess for a single decision, trading Montreal Suzuki instead of Glass. But that's just as much Vegas' own dogshit player development decisions in Glass' case.

 

[BlueSeal]

Mike Keenan.

 

[MadLuke]

I think some are hard to be called error has they involved hard to get hindsight or were made by many others franchise (draft pick, prospect involved in trade), etc...

Montreal Demers-Savard for Houle and not much if any relevant experience for the role Tremblay.

We can overrate how terrible it was, teams lost most of their ability to impact prospect development has it become more common to be pure junior (for which nhl club lost 100% of their influence)-nhl without relevant AHL sting for the best one, increase in salary, disparition of micky mouse organisation to take advantage off and so on would have made it hard to sustain excellence.

And it show with how much it never got reversed.

But still what the organization got back for Roy-Keane-Recchi-Damphousse-Turgeon was really bad.

Before Tremblay

Blake
Ruel
Bowman
Berry
Lemaire
Perron
Burns
Demers

They were all trained has coach by Montreal in their juniors-ahl filiale or assistant coach in the nhl or already experienced.

Going from having the Montreal Junior Canadiens and a very solid AHL franchise to the modern era was hard.

 

[Mandar]

When the Rangers signed Billy Tibbets in the 2002-03 season.

 

[EdJovanovski]

Trading Kravtsov

 

[the]

Marc Bergevin

 

[Dreakon13]

Since I started following them at least...

Sabres: Brass going after Drury to re-sign instead of Briere in the summer of '07. Drury was out the door, Briere wanted to be here and was really disrespected in the process. Losing both of them decimated the center spine of a potentially elite team... and they spent so many years trying to fill those two top-6 center spots with basically no success. It wasted whatever years were left of any remaining valuable players on the team and really started the downward spiral that the Sabres haven't been able to climb out of for over a decade.

 

[abo9]

For the Habs, IMO, it was the off-season where the Habs decided to not resign Koivu, and to replace him by trading McDonaugh+ for Gomez.

Habs made many playoff runs since then, and I believe if they had McDonaugh, one of those runs results in a cup.

I guess the McDonagh for Gomez trade was bad, but worst move in team history?

I think its pretty easy to establish that something happened in the 90's that was worst... since the team hasnt "recovered" since.

 

[Hennessy]

Colorado:
Signing Brad May.
Signing Brad Stuart.
Signing any Brads. Even you, Richardson!

Seriously though, it's gotta be one of the drafts.

 

[StreetHawk]

Hiring Jim Benning

Selling the team to Aquilini.

 

[tucker3434]

Ripple effect aside, capping ROR at Duchene’s cap hit wasn’t great. We hitched ourselves to the wrong horse.

Trading the pick that became Filip Forsberg for Varly, letting Varly walk after we acquired Grubauer. Then Grubauer walks and we paid for Kuemper. Then Kuemper walks and having to get Georgiev. We’ve used a lot of assets to get mostly good, but never elite goaltending. Better than having terrible goaltending I guess but it sure would’ve been easier and cheaper to just pick a guy and stick with him.

 

[ninetyeight]

Lou was the reason.. mortgaged the future to bring in the likes of Michael Ryder and Damien Brunner

I agree. Lou is one of the most important people in turning the Devils into a contender in the 90s, but the last three years or so of his time here were one of the biggest reasons for the lack of success in the last 10 years or so. Lou is an oldschool guy who refuses to tank/rebuild. Unfortunately modern Stanley Cups are won with drafting and especially with high draft picks. Refusing to rebuild only lead the team being a mediocre bubble team that kept missing the playoffs, but couldn't draft good enough assets. Ray Shero also needs to take a bit of the blame. I stood by with all his moves while they happened, but in retrospective he also tried to fast track the rebuild and some of the acquisitions like Subban and Gusev turned out to be bad investments.

Unfortunately for the Devils the decade of drafting in 2005-2015 was also one of the weakest in NHL history (Elite Prospects - Players drafted by New Jersey Devils). This combined with trying to stay competitive when your roster is aging out and your top players are bolting to Russia (Kovalchuk) and Minnesota (Parise) resulted the terrible decade (2012-2022), which I hope is finally over.

You could argue that letting Parise go without nothing and the whole Kovalchuk affair was a mistake, but they did make the cup finals. All in all no major mistakes for the Devils, but tons of small mistakes / bad decisions and bad drafting in the same time period resulted a terrible decade of hockey.

 

[JTToilinginToronto]

The hiring of Mike Milbury wasn't that good of a decision I would say.

 

[StrangeVision]

 

[Hierso]

Im not going to get into anything not directly hockey related for the Flyers, I don’t think that’s entirely fair to hypothesize about, but including Peter Forsberg in the Lindros trade is way up there, if there was a way to keep him out of it. If not, signing John Vanbiesbrouck over Curtis Joseph in 1998. Beezer was half-cooked, Joseph was in his prime, and I don’t know where I read it, but I’ve seen comments from Cujo that he was so ready to sign he had gotten his kids some Flyers gear already, before Clarke pulled the rug out.

2017 draft is also something that stings pretty badly. Heiskanen, Makar & Pettersson as 3,4 & 5th picks.

 

[RebuildinVan]

Mike Keenan.

If it wasnt for Benning he'd be #1 on the Canucks list. Still, Keenan is in the conversation for multiple teams

 

[Mandar]

The hiring of Mike Milbury wasn't that good of a decision I would say.

John Spano was probably worse, but not by much

 

[KingsHockey24]

Erik Cernak.

 

[Colezuki]

Montreal it remains and always will be Patrick roy
On the other side a more recent one was mcdonagh for Gomez

 

[Machinehead]

Trading most of the team at the '94 deadline and in parts of '95 to get tougher.

They could have built a dynasty around Messier, Leetch, Zubov, Amonte, Weight, Gartner, and Kovalev, knowing Gretzky wanted to come here.

Everyone on that list but Leetch was by '98, mostly for bottom sixers and hitting.

 

[shaner82]

Trading away Tukka Rask.

 

[53or8]

Since there are so many blunders in the Vancouver Canucks history. I'll just go with the 3 most recent. The above poster got it right with the Jim Benning hiring, but these are some of Benning's most moronic moves in recent times.

1. Trading for Ekman-Larsson at a point where the team should of been rebuilding. Now the Canucks have one of the worst contracts in the league and a player who is shell of his former self. While the Yotes deepen their prospect pool with Dylan Guenther.

2. Treating Chris Tanev like trash and leaving him hang while Jim Benning actively pursued Ekman-Larsson a year before. Then only to come back at the last minute when the Larsson talks fell through. The Canucks D has been in shambles ever since and Tanev should of retired a Canuck.

3. Drafting Olli Juolevi over Matthew Tkachuck. Enough said.

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