NEWS: #SJSharks to retire Patrick Marleau’s #12 sweater on Feb 25 vs #Blackhawks. He is the first player in franchise history to have his number retired.

— NHL News (@PuckReportNHL) July 28, 2022

SOURCE: Ryan Warsofsky is joining #SJSharks coaching staff as an assistant coach. He will run D and PK

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) July 28, 2022

Two W’s today for SJ

W. Are they building a statue for Marleau?

Did you know that the Golden Knights could have drafted Nail Yakupov? Probably the biggest miss in expansion draft history. The guy was a #1 overall pick.

With Sakic promoted to President of Hockey Ops (no longer the GM), here are the top 5 GM's in the league right now IMO (in order):

1) Rob Blake (LAK)-From a first-rate HOF player to a front-office wizard, he's developed one of the best prospect pools in the league, consistently signed good players to club-friendly deals, and got them to the playoffs way ahead of schedule. Best current GM, IMO.

2) Don Waddell (CAR)-Not many GM's can trade away a Calder finalist coming off an astounding rookie year for nothing but a 3rd and prove it to be a good move. Waddell replaced Ned/Reimer/Mrazek with Andersen and Raanta, who proved themselves to be a stellar tandem (and won the Jennings trophy to boot). He got Pacioretty and Coghlan for...nothing. He's given Carolina a stellar reputation for finding late-round steals in the draft, and his first round record (Svechnikov, Jarvis, and the unproven Ryan Suzuki) isn't bad either. He's done a terrific job taking the Canes from cellar-dwellers to Cup contenders, along with Brind'amour.

3) Bill Armstrong (ARI)-I absolutely love what he's done for the Coyotes-going scorched-earth rebuild the right way, getting his hands on every draft pick possible-be it by trading away assets or taking on other teams' bad contracts-and then making good selections and trades during the draft itself, keeping good young pieces (mainly Keller and Chychrun) that will be key assets in the future, and he hasn't had a single truly lousy signing other than Dimitrj Jaskin (signed for 1 year at $3.2 million, which made no sense, and he wound up only playing 12 games). Of course, the jury's still out on whether it all pans out.

4) Steve Yzerman (DET)-A few months ago, I might've put him at #1. But barring a drastic change, nothing can justify signing Ben Chiarot for 4 X 4.75 million, and the Copp and Husso signings are pretty risky. I also found drafting Kasper over Lekkerimakki, Kemell, Savoie etc. a little interesting as well. But there's still no denying the fact that Yzerman's fingerprints are all over the Lightning and their back-to-back Cups, and his draft record in and of itself with the Wings (Seider, Raymond, Cossa, Edvinsson) is excellent. I don't think he was at his best this past offseason, but he's still a heck of a GM.

5) Julien BriseBois (TBL)-Like his predecessor as Lightning GM in Yzerman, JBB's moves this past year ($8 million for 8 years to SERGACHEV?! TWO first round picks for HAGEL?!) have put him lower on this list than he otherwise would have been, but he still has done a great job finding steals in the late rounds of the draft, has locked up the Lightning's core for years to come, and he has a terrific record with trade deadline pickups such as Goodrow, Coleman, and Paul (the jury's very much still out on Hagel). He's done a good job filling Yzerman's (enormous) shoes.

HM: Bill Zito (FLA)-Has assembled a great team, but I really think he's setting up the Panthers' future to be dismal by trading away all of their picks. He's still a good GM, don't get me wrong, but his moves haven't panned out as much as some thought they would.

(In case you're curious about who the worst GM is BTW, it has to be Chuck Fletcher (PHI). He makes Jim Nill look like Yzerman by comparison. He's so abysmally awful it's astounding he still has the job. The past year alone-Torterella hiring, Ristolainen extension, Deangelo trade, Deslauriers signing-shows how pathetically awful he is. The Flyers are going nowhere until they rebuild, and he's the last person to take them through it. Just awful.)

I wouldn't have thought of Wadell, but don't forget the Burns signing.
Tbh I'd put him slightly lower tho.
Love Armstrong #1 for me
Yzerman imo wanted to transition into contending too quickly. Bad idea.
Not a fan of Julien.
He got the team to the cups, but he overpaid like hell on all

brisebois(tbl) is number 1 for me. waddell(car), d. armstrong(stl) and guerin(min) all have done well.

worst is fletcher(phi) but i suspect ownership is pulling a lot of strings. davidson(chi) kekalainen (cbj) and dubas (tor) kinda suck too.

I feel Zito will be in the ruined team before year four as if you look at how much hes spent in his short tenure as GM man he more expensive than an NBA GM and it was all to get swept by Tampa who spent half that

As man how many 1sts has he spent in a year 5 or something and of those most were for rentals and by my guess that list is gonna get even bigger.

What makes Kekalainen bad? He’s been amazing for the most part ( Savard, Foligno, Jones return, setting the team up after going all in, getting Gaudreau ). Only bad moves from his are that Gud contract and Bjorkstrand deal

Best GMs: Yzerman, Blake, Armstrong, Fitzgerald, one Brisebois/Waddell

Worst GMs: Fletcher, Sweeney, Cheveldayoff, McCrimmon, Lamoriello

Zito doesn't belong in the top 5 considering he sold the farm for a single cup run. Davidson doesn't belong in the bottom 5 because he hasn't been in charge long enough to actually make any influential moves. For the record, I'd put Dubas in the top 10, probably.

I would put Yzerman, Brisebois, Waddell, and Blake in the upper tier of GMs. One or two subpar moves doesn’t erase your entire body of work (like for Yzerman I think the Copp and Husso bets are fine, the only terrible contract is Chiarot, it’s okay for JBB to overpay Sergachev a bit and I think the Hagel deal, while not a huge W, was fine, etc.) Zito I’m not sure is quite there. I would have had him close last year, but after overpaying for Chiarot and selling literally the entire farm for one playoff run where they barely made it to the 2nd round only to get swept, to now being in cap trouble with significantly worse depth (I think the guys he signed for the bottom six have upside, but their established players are far fewer, and their D is a weakness now), I think he’s a tier below, and will have his work cut out for him to get the Cats over the hump. Bill Armstrong has done very little yet except have one great draft (this year) and one mediocre draft (Guenther was one of 9 consensus top prospects so all he had to do at 9 was pick the guy that was left, the other picks were kinda meh at best). I don’t remember specifically but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wasn’t part of the Mitch Miller fiasco + L draft of 2020. I think you can’t really judge a GM until he makes a few serious trades (his only one so far is the OEL deal, which was a W imo, although that retention is long enough that it could be annoying, look at the Leafs still paying Kessel this year) and has a team that should make the playoffs. Like I could’ve done Bill Armstrong’s job so far in my spare time from doing my real job lmao, there hasn’t been a difficult decision to make yet.

Fletcher is the worst by far. Davidson is new but I think it’s fair to already say he sucks too, he has easy mode on like Bill Armstrong and managed to mess it up. Francis should get a massive stain on his record for last year’s horrendous showing, although he did do well this summer bringing in Bjorkstrand and Burakovsky and having a great draft.

I don’t think Dubas sucks, he’s just extremely overrated. He’s an average GM at best. Great at drafting, but he’s made a ton of questionable moves over the last 4 seasons that old hockey men would get killed for.

Trading Kadri for Barrie and Kerfoot
Choosing to expose Jared Mccann
Trading a 1st for Nick Foligno
Trading Marchment for Malgin
Move down in the draft to get rid of Mrazek and then giving up assets for Matt Murray

Best GM was Joe Sakic, but now it’s probably Steve Yzerman. He hasn’t done much in Detriot yet, but he built Tampa into a dynasty. The fact that he got Kuch, Point, Palat, etc (and Johnson and Gourde as undrafted UFAs) all without first round picks is insane, and even Vasi was a late first round pick. Next on my list would probably be guys like Waddell or Zito. Blake, Guerin, Fitzgerald, Kenkelienen, both Armstrongs, Bresbois are also very good.

Overrated?!?!?!?! Are you out of your mind? Maybe on cap friendly but any other site has 90% of people calling for his head. I agree he’s an average GM, but he’s underrated if anything.

I’m going based on social media. Dubas gets the benefit of the doubt a lot compared to other GMs.

i think a lot of those decisions can be rationalized:

-Kadri for Barrie/Kerfoot made a ton of sense at the time; especially since Kadri was coming off another playoff suspension and they needed a RHD. Kadri's explosion this season and Barrie being dogwater were entirely unexpected.
-Keeping Holl made sense over keeping McCann. Again, need for RHD. Same reason why he hasn't been sent to Arizona yet.
-If it wasn't Toronto spending that 1st it would've been someone else. Personally wish it was someone else. Also didn't help that Folingo played like 10 games. 100% would agree this was a blunder.
-Also a blunder if Malgin comes back and does **** all.
-Not the biggest fan of gambling everyone on Murray rebounding, but Murray's month-by-month splits last season look better than Campbell's outside of November. 4.8 x 2 for Murray over 5 x 5 for Campbell is a better option, but honestly at what point do you just send a bunch of stuff to Anaheim/Winnipeg and get Gibson/Hellebuyck? I feel like locking down the goaltending position instead of rolling the dice on it a better move, and I wouldn't be shocked if this costs him his job.

I don't think Dubas is overrated-he's rated where he should be. In fact, despite being an average GM, he might actually be underrated in the sense the 95% of fans make him out to be the second coming of Button/Chiarelli.

Not that I love the move, but Murray came with assets attached, they didn't give anything up for him, other than too much cap space.

At the time Barrie was traded to the leafs he was already declining and a #4 D at best. He was also one of the worst defensive impacts in the league over a 3 year sample size. Barrie is not what the leafs needed and they gave up a very good 2C on a great contract. Trading Kadri wasn’t the problem, Dubas thinking Barrie on with 1 year left was the answer was a terrible move.

Keeping Holl (a good #5 D) over a good 2nd line winger with elite finishing ability made no sense considering Torontos biggest problem in playoff games was finishing.

I think Dubas is in the 14-18 range among GM. Besides a group of boomer leafs fans, I don’t see many fans making him out to be the future Chiarelli

Yeah my bad I thought he had given up the 3rd rd pick. Still too much of a gamble IMO. It made more sense to bet on Mrazek and keep the 1st

IDK about that, check out the ACGM's, the mere mention of Dubas sends a lot of Leaf fans into raging fury. Not that the group you mentioned doesn't exist, but I think there are a lot of Leafs fans who hate him and aren't boomers...

I think hes a guy whose learning and climbing the ranks and there is nothing wrong with that. No GM comes in and dominates from day 1. Its a live and learn business.

Meanwhile you got those awful guys like Chiarelli and Benning who thank **** are gone who made moves that make 0 sense for their team and often made it a long term nightmare (i.e. OEL trade looked good but now the realization hits in that they are stuck with that awful deal and lost extra cap space)

I have absolutely zero faith in Mrazek, so even though I'm really not a fan of Murray either, if it had to go one way or the other, I'd prefer it the way it went.

Edit: I suppose that's dependent on what the pick swap would've meant, but seeing as I can't possibly know that...

Wasn't really fond of Mrazek after seeing him a time zone out of the net multiple times.