When do we question Lou Lamoriello's legacy as a general manager?

[OysterForever]

He should have retired 10 years ago

I agree but more like 20

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

I always have. He had a top-3 all time goalie on his team, and he manufactured a career out of it.

Brodeur did that. not Lou.

to me, the legacy of lou’s extremely successful first act was inheriting a really good core and then knowing which pieces were indispensable, which pieces needed to be upgraded, and which valuable pieces he could afford to lose to gain in other areas. of course he also had great scouts, led by conte, and knew well enough to listen to them.

the goaltending is a great example of this. he inherited four highly regarded young goalies (sean burke, kirk mclean, chris terreri, craig billington), all future starters in the league, two of them future vezina finalists. knowing sean burke is ready to join the team after the olympics, he immediately trades one for veteran help, mclean and greg adams for patrik sundstrom. he also acquires a PMD (tom kurvers) for a third round pick. that first devils team of his made the playoffs for the first time ever and came within a game of the finals. both acquisitions made huge contributions: sundstrom led the team in playoff scoring, kurvers led the D with 15 pts. burke was a revelation, going almost undefeated in the stretch run after the olympics before starring in the playoffs, and was getting dryden comparisons and was labeled the best young goalie in the game.

flash forward to the 1990 draft. burke and billington are both 23 year old former top 25 picks. terreei is ok the cusp of a leap that would see him get vezina votes in 1992 and 1993. but lou knows, if i want to be a great, not just good, team, i don’t have the cornerstone goaltending i need longterm. so in that draft, he takes three goalies, brodeur, dunham, and schwab. he also significantly passes up trevor kidd, one of the top two or three goalie prospects to enter the draft in the previous decade. i don’t give him credit for knowing that brodeur (who iirc was a reach at 20?) was going to be better than kidd, or knowing that kidd was overrated, but i do give him credit for listening to his staff.

you can say the same about how he parlayed muller, verbeek, kurvers, burke, and weinrich (which around the turn of the decade looked like a solid B+ core) into richer, claude lemieux, niedermayer, and holik. you can pick apart each individual move say he got lucky or it was a lateral move, but you have to look at the big picture. that cup winning devils core was built by good process.