Quote:
Originally Posted by H2SO4(aq)
Everyone likes to pretend that Sutter was an excellent GM. The truth is, he got lucky on trading for Kiprusoff for a second and basically rode the success of that move his entire tenure. He had made a handful of questionable trades prior to the Phaneuf, Jokinen debacles.
- Ference + Kobasew for Stuart + Primeau
- Reinprect + Sauve for Mike Leclerc + B. Boucher
- C. Clark + 7th for 6th + 7th
His trading was never overly impressive minus the Kiprusoff deal. His drafting was generally suspect but and he didnt survive as GM long enough to see some of his picks real start to pan out (brodie, backlund). That being said he did not get very good value out of his high picks and/or he traded the pick away before the draft.
His greatest strength as GM was signing (seemingly) good deals. However, he accomplished this by handing every vet under the sun a NTC/NMC.
He also seemed enamoured with signing old veteran nhlers. Some worked (Nolan) others didnt (Hulse, Marchment, Friesen), and some were just ok (Amonte, Bertuzzi).
I really think Sutter gets too much credit as a gm who was excellent and then slowly lost his mind, when in reality, he was never very good, just got lucky with a peaking team at the right time and then slowly let the whole thing collapse.
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In addition to Kipper the original Tanguay trade and Cammalleri trade was pretty good and so was getting Bourque from the Hawks. I think he made some pretty solid personnel moves over his tenure and had a decent eye for professional talent. That said his eye for junior talent wasn't nearly as good as he seemed to focus overly on size/grit over pure skill and he totally missed on most of his 1st round draft picks and never left himself with any 2nd round picks so his drafts consisted of a total miss on his first pick and no picks until the 3rd round or later. As much as he helped get an AHL team and focus on scouting he never used that scouting effectively and made them focus too narrowly on measured variables like size.\
Bottom line is the reason this thread exists is because both GM's started off great and self destructed over time. They are both comparable for their rise and fall.