I feel a bit bad for Button. I still think he’s the worst, but I think the circumstances surrounding his time as GM make him look a lot worse than he actually was.
From a prospect standpoint, he inherited next to nothing. Look at the 1997, 1998, 1999 drafts. Those are the players making up most of the Flames prospect base when he took over. When Blair Betts has the most points / games played out of 3 drafts…. yikes. Buttons drafts weren’t great either, but he at least found some NHL players who had decent careers. It hasn’t been brought up that often in these rankings, but the players/prospects that GMs inherit have a big impact on how we perceive them. I guarantee we’d look at Treliving a lot differently if he inherited Fata and Saprykin instead of Gaudreau and Monahan.
From a financial resource standpoint, there is a good chance the 2000-2002 Flames had the lowest budget in the league. I remember an interview with Giguere where he mentioned that the Flames were so broke in that era that they didn’t have an AHL goaltending coach.
This said, most of his moves as GM were still awful. And he deserves to be last.
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