Quoting: Addison_Rae
I'm not saying he's a bad GM, I'm saying he lacks vision. You either tank or go all in, no in-between, especially for a franchise of Montreal's caliber. If you draft in the middle, you make moves for average to slightly above average players, that's all you'll get, an average team. A team that is mediocre. Sure the draft takes luck and you need to be bad at the right time to draft the right player. What you can't do is be bad for one season, draft one top draft player and say "everything is good now let's try and compete". That almost never works. If you're going to be bad, be bad, tank, draft the right players and maybe you'll be good in 3-4 years. But if you follow MB's blueprint and stay around the middle, that's all your team will ever be in the middle. Take the Leafs for example, of the 6 past draft years if they were to draft once in the top 5 (not the number one) and a bunch in the middle of the first round, would they have the team constructed today? No. That's because they had a vision to build a successful team. Sure it took some luck and really bad seasons but look at them now, near unstoppable. So if you tell me to pick a plan to build a franchise, I'll always pick the Leafs way of "resetting" rather than the Canadiens.
Yes, the leafs got lucky in their rebuild and came out as a very strong team but then there are the savers who have two first overall picks and are still awful and looking at another potential 1st overall pick.
The devils had two 1st overall picks and were supposed to be a playoff team last year but are still bottom dwellers.
The oilers had three consecutive years of first overall picks and were terrible until they got lucky and got a 4th the McDavid year. It still took them years to be a legitimate playoff team and they still have a lot of depth issues. If that had not been the McDavid year they may still not have made the playoffs.
The kings won 2 cups by being average and then turning it on in the playoffs.
Boston has done some retools while never tanking and drafted players like Pasta and McAvoy.
My point is that no strategy works every time, it takes luck, making the right deals (some of which you don’t know if it was the right deal until 5 or more years later), and maybe most importantly being able to develop players.