or all the good players snow gathered developed and signing trotz was a no brainer, that's like crediting a guy for drafting mcdavid 1st over all

It's not really his fault that his star players are leaving. It's tough to convince a player to stay in Columbus rather than going to NYC or Florida

For everything in his control, he's done a good job

In Columbus a high school quarterback is more famous than an all star hockey player. That’s why they all leave, PLD even said something like that himself.

Our worse GM built an even worse team and still managed to beat your Leafs and make it to the finals....

neat, he's still a worse GM.

Its not just 2 or 3 players its almost all of them, Bob,Panarin,Foligno,Jones,Dubois. Laine is just signed for one more year,probably the next one to go. Look he had to pay Werenski more than Jones just to keep him

But Look at Arizona, Arizona signed OEL long term before they had to trade him and Arizona still was able to sign Keller to a long term contract. Arizona is the worst place for hockey, they might even have a arena next year.

He didn’t sign those deals but as of 2022-23 they will be wasting at least 12M of cap space for 3 years! And both of them are still legitimate NHLers and has many years left on their contracts. Sure they were being paid too much but that is not the way to clear cap space as it hurts the team more than it helps them.

Goligoski is only a 1 year contract so it doesn't matter too much
He also drafted Lambos, Wallstedt, Rossi
He's a bold GM, but definitely not one of the worst

That’s because the devils sucked! Hahah! If you are a bad team, you may have to overpay to persuade players to come.

Trading Jones was a no brainer
Foligno got traded (he wanted to stay in Columbus though)
Bob and Panarin were almost impossible to keep. You can't tell me you rather play in Columbus rather than in New York or Florida
Dubois wanted out because of Torts
Too early to tell for Laine

Hen Holland is de worst
Stevie Y is de best

Strongly disagree with that.

Buffalo is way worse team wise, and place wise I could name many. Arizona has close to no pressure and has nice weather, it’s a nice place in general they just aren’t built for playing hockey.

Also the OEL contract was a no brainer for him, even if he was good back them I don’t think anyone would sign him to that. Keller is somewhat overpaid also, not as bad as OEL, but he doesn’t have the best contract out there.

Arizona is the same as what Florida was when Bob signed there. Nice weather, no pressure, no fans, and they aren’t the most recognized team, but still a nice place to go to.

Lamoriello has been one of the best GMs since the late 80s. He made the devils go from a bad team to a consistent playoff team with 3 Stanley cups, and he helped the Leafs go from one of the worst teams in the league to where they are now. His only fault was the Ilya Kovalchuk deal which is the only reason I don’t have him in the top tier. But to anyone saying he isn’t that good, just think about it. The guy is a legend

It's a gamble, no doubt, but the Wild are about to have a whole bunch of ELC players coming in. So if he was going to take that gamble, he picked just the right time to do it

Yeah, I'd say you have to win a Cup as GM to qualify as the best, for starters. Personally, I'd reserve that stratosphere for Lou and Holland. Right now they are the only two active I see as HOF builders.

Yzerman would lead the next group, since his fingerprints are all over Tampa's repeat. Sakic, sure. Zito, sample size is too small. I'd put Brisebois and Wilson in this list, and downgrade everyone else in that category to "Good". Not gonna argue too much with the Decent, Meh and Worst categories.

Holland and Waddell worst GMs rn imo

Bergevin has had 10 years to address our needs for top 6 centers and puck moving defense, and just when we might have finally secured our center position, he risked our potential 2C over what should have been relatively simple contract negotiations.
That isn't his only issue, but it's pretty damning on its own.

I will give you that Panarin was always going to New York. but they could of resign Bob if they were willing to give Panarin 12+ million. Not saying its a good deal bc look at Bob now but he could of negotiated with him a year before he went to UFA. and maybe brought down the cap hit to like 9 million a year
Keeping Torts in that position an letting him sour a situation like that falls on the GM. Laine for Dubois was just a bad trade

The habs playoff run last season was purely out of luck. If it were a normal year they would not have made the playoffs and are likely not going to make it next season. Marc bergevin was not at all the reason they made it to the finals. I have him in the worst category more because of him as a person. I may have put him in meh but then he made the worst draft pick in NHL history so that settles it.

How on earth is Ken Holland on the “decent” category?? Does nobody know what he has done to turn around this hated franchise, based on the bad winters, fans, media, taxes etc? Well I can tell you what he did haha! He traded one of our worst contracts (Milan Lucic), and then bought out the guy he traded for (James Neal) to save money, so he could get good players. He got a good backup/starter in Mike Smith, signed Tyson Barrie, Cody Ceci, Zach Hyman, Derek Ryan, and never rushed any prospects! Yes, some of the years were too much, but that’s what you have to do when you want a good player to play for a hated team. When he lost Adam Larsson, he traded for Duncan Keith which was a good trade! He traded a struggling Ethan Bear for a good third liner Warren Foegele, and resigned him! He drafted Philip Broberg, Raphael Lavoie, Dylan Holloway, Carter Savoie, Xavier Bourgault etc. He has been an amazing GM for us, and he should at least be in the “Great GM” category.

Couple of takes:

No idea why Sweeney is so high
NJD makes a lot of good moves, not sure why they need to be here other than that their team is bad
LA commited to their rebuild and now they're about to move out of it, gj Blake
Holland has to be worse than Treliving and Guerin

1) It's been reported by the Wild's Athletic beat-writer Michael Russo that there's a gentleman's agreement between Guerin and Goligoski to extend the contract providing things work out well for all evolved after January for a much smaller price point of around $2-2.5M. It was done this way so that it would avoid a higher AAV cap hit that would of come with a longer contract term once the Parise/Suter buyouts go up after this season. So instead of having a AAV cap hit of say around $3.5-4M per on a 2-3 contract term length, Goligoski gets more upfront this year then what would of been allowed within the variable threshold of player contracts as dictated by the rules if the CBA.

Now, it's not illegal to do it this way as nothing is written into the the contract that implicitly states this is the case. It's just strictly a gentleman's agreement between the two. It's still within the rules, but it's a pretty interesting loophole to say the least. But it does make that overpay far more understandable.

And even then, it's for one year, when the Wild have the cap space to do it. No harm, no foul.

2) You can argue the double buyout was stupid all you want. But try looking at it from the Wild's perspective before you mouth off.

Neither player was playing up to those $7.6M cap hits anymore and that cap space would of been useless whether they were on the roster or not. For the next FOUR YEARS. The chances of either player playing out the remainder of those contracts was extremely unlikely and the potential danger of them retiring before they were up meant the team would of been hit with a Cap Recapture Penalty that would hit and devastate the team far worse then the buyouts ever would.

The buyout for both was $4.6M this year, $12.3M next year, $14.7M for years 3 and 4, and finally $1.6M for the final 5-8 years. The team saved roughly $10M this off-season because of the buyouts. It's not an easy pill to swallow but it's manageable.

If the team had been hit with the Cap Recapture instead, they're hit with a $7.6M dead cap hit every year until the Recapture is paid off. What people don't understand is that while both Parise and Suter had cap hits of $7.6M, that was just their AAV, they were due to make much... much less in actual based player salary. They were set to make $6M this year, $2M next year, and $1M for the final 2 years. What this means is that in layman's terms is that the Cap Recapture total that would have to be payed back by the team gets larger the longer they play and the closer to the final year of their contracts but retire before they're up.

What it basically boils down to is it is more or less cheaper to buyout both now and gain far more cost and cap space certainty now rather than leaving it to chance and fate. By buying out both now, Guerin can now plan accordingly for a known dead cap that he can work around by various means and ways vs the uncertainty of getting hit with a Recapture at the worst possible moment or time in the next 4 years.

For example, while the team is competing for a cup in the next few seasons if all was going well and it was business as usual.

Lou deserves to be cemented into top tier.
Guerin taking the hard route there
Fitzy is one of more underrated GMs

(yes, I am a Devils fan)

Probably a little biased but considering how difficult it is to find players who want to come to Winnipeg, I think he deserves to be in the great gm spot his only flaw is not getting rid of Paul Maurice