It's an interesting question, who is the worst GM?
Button did some good things, I thought (Conroy). At the end of the day, a lot of what he brought was part of the team that made it to the Finals in '04 but he also cost us the Cup because he bought out Martin St. Louis.
He was awful on coach hires (I'm 99% sure that Darryl Sutter being hired was over his head). The way he handled the Marc Savard situation was brutal as well. And Giguere for what was essentially Mika Elomo was terrible, too.
Coates brought in St. Louis, brought in Giguere, brought in Savard. He had a ton of good pieces in place that Button just flushed down the toilet.
Risebrough was strapped financially but essentially took what was a Cup-winning team and sewered them right down to nothing.
Maybe his only good move was trading Gary Leeman for Brian Skrudland, but then he let Skrudland go in the expansion draft. You could perhaps make an argument Nylander/Patrick/Zalapski for Suter/Ranheim/Drury was decent asset management. He traded Robert Svehla to Florida for next to nothing, Sergei Makarov for even less than that and the Gilmour/Leeman trade is awful even if you take Gilmour and Leeman out of it.
So I would say Risebrough is the worst. Button second worst.
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