Ken Holland drafted Zadina over Hughes, Bouchard and Dobson. Passed on Chychrun to dump the Datsyuk zombie contract. Then proceeded to draft Dennis Cholowski after he swapped first round picks with new Coyotes GM Chayka.

Holland once waived Kyle Quincey. Then traded a 1st to get him back. Yzerman used that pick to draft Vasilevskiy. Holland once lowballed UFA Marian Hossa saying "I have to earmark 3 million for Jiri Hudler."

Hossa signed with Chicago who offered a million more.
He went on to win 3 Cups with Chicago. Hudler went to play in Russia. Kenny boy signed Jason "I stink" Williams. Good times. 👍

He also drafted Evgeny Svechnikov over Sebastian Aho. 👍

Yeah, I was covering just his tenure with the Oilers and didn't even talk about drafting but yeah, his problems run so deep. So many mistakes. I don't know how the Oilers managed to hire the two worst GMs in hockey, it doesn't make sense to me.

The only "to be fair" from this is that Zadina was a higher touted prospect than guys like Hughes, Bouchard, and Dobson. Other than that, my goodness he has had a terrible past decade.

Red Wings biggest need that draft was D. Kenny was all about drafting Evan Bouchard. He thought Quinn Hughes was too small. Zadina slipped to #6 and Kenny just had to draft the shiny toy. I still recall him grinning like a butcher's dog. I wanted to neck punch him.

I'll admit I forgot that they needed a D at the time. Bro was really only decent before the salary cap. How has he not figured things out by now.

Holland literally took over a Stanley Cup champion Red Wings team in the summer of 1997. He did a good job of caretaking in the pre-cap era spending the Ilitch money. But his salary cap record as GM has been horrible. It started out ok. Winning a Cup in 2008 and almost winning another one in 2009. But it was a steady decline after that.

Tbf almost every team passed on aho. And as good as that draft was there were only like 3 or 4 teams that picked a better player than aho. Thats like saying every team passed on point the year before and kaprizov that year and kuch in 2011.
Not really a fair thing to hold against him.

A Ken Holland apologist. Nothing new.

Lmao. Holland is an easy bottom 3 gm in the league. But if youre talking about a gm doing a bad job then you are saying someone else wouldve done better. Issue is nobody did better by aho. Whoever you wouldve wanted instead of KH didnt either pick aho. So blaming that on ken isnt fair. Theres plenty of other examples that i doubt you need that one.