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Originally Posted by kyuss275
Drafting has never been more important than it has in the last 10 years.
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True. Fletcher didn't need to depend on drafting; for years, he was virtually the only GM looking for talent in the NCAA, and could sign whoever he wanted as a free agent. But he certainly didn't develop the skills to scout college hockey by playing pro.
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Back in Fletcher days GM's could afford to make a bad trade in the summer and be able to make another trade by October to help correct the mistake.
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Debatable. In any case, Fletcher didn't have to bail himself out of bad trades, because he seldom made any. Usually, when a GM made a bad trade in the summer, the trade he made to try to fix it would also be bad, because he was a bad trader.
Remember the Igor Kravchuk fiasco? Button made one bad move, claiming Krapshoot off waivers with a $2.5m salary. Within a year, he had to put Phil Housley on waivers to get the team back under budget, because nobody would take Krapshoot off his hands at any price. The 'fix' made a bad move even worse.
You couldn't ask for two guys with better hockey pedigrees than Mike Milbury and Doug Risebrough – but as GMs on Long Island and in Calgary, both of them were bad jokes. Having talent doesn't give you an eye for talent, and having no talent doesn't make you blind.
There's an old saying: You don't have to be a hen to know when an egg is rotten. I could add to that by pointing out that some hens will spend weeks trying to hatch a rotten egg.
The real problem with the Calgary Flames is not that they hired a fat little lawyer as GM. (If being overweight disqualified you from hockey management, Ken Hitchcock would be working at Burger King.) The real problem is that the owners have never had any idea how to hire a GM. Consider:
In 1991, Cliff Fletcher bolted to the Maple Leafs. The team promoted Doug Risebrough from within the organization, even though he had only one year's experience as an assistant GM and was doing a second full-time job as coach.
In 1995, the team fired Risebrough and promoted Al Coates from within the organization. At first he was designated interim GM; after a few months, they got tired of pretending to look for a proper GM and took 'interim' off his title.
In 2003, the team fired Craig Button and promoted Darryl Sutter from within the organization.
In 2010, Darryl Sutter 'resigned'. The team promoted Jay Feaster from within the organization.
The only time the Flames have ever looked outside the organization for a general manager was when they hired Craig Button, and they made a hash of that. (I have heard that they offered one of the lowest salaries in the league for a GM. Nobody with previous experience at the job was willing to apply.) Four out of five times, they have promoted from within. Now, I find it very hard to believe that four out of five of the best hockey minds not employed as NHL GMs just happened to be working for the Calgary Flames. Frankly, the owners just couldn't be arsed to do the job properly.
If they do hire Shanahan as an operations guy, and the only thing he does for them is to conduct a proper search for a new GM, he will have done something that the whole organization has never accomplished in 33 years.