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Originally Posted by GioforPM
well, there have been plenty of ex players who became GMs, with varying degrees of success. There's your Yzermans but there are also your Milburys.
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Yeah, Milbury is also from an era gone by.
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Originally Posted by Bingo
True and the first three are actually ex star players in those markets.
Maybe I need to ease up on my Oiler irritation.
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It's certainly not automatically a good thing. In some cases though, I think to Shanahan specifically, he put a face on Toronto's scorched Earth approach. Now, their tear down went as well as you can possibly hope for - they ripped it down, and won the lottery like a year later - but it does show that managing with a very targeted goal can work out.
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Originally Posted by Vinny01
Funny how you are defining recent success for some of these guys. If they were Flames GM’s would these not be mediocre results of first round exits and non-playoff years outside of Yzerman and a lesser extent Yzerman.
Shanahan has been with the Leafs as long as Treliving has been here and they have won less. They made the playoffs in 17-19, and in 21 so 4 of those 7 years and lost in the first round every year. In the same timeframe the Flames made it 4 times in 7 years and won a single round.
Pretty much the same except Shanahan took over a team that had picked top 10 in 3 of the previous 6 years and Treliving only 1 top 10 pick when he joined.
Is holding the top job mean he is good at it?
Pretty quick to crown Blake as well.
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Toronto is a better managed team than Calgary. As you can see while they're still at the top of the league, while the Flames are rudderless.
I'm not crowning anyone - but these are examples of well run teams. The Flames are an example of a poorly run team. Sakic, Yzerman, Shanahan, and Blake are all executing a plan - and they're at a few different stages of those plans.
Shanahan helped build the foundation that has given Toronto a real window at competing. Sakic has as well.
Yzerman built a winner in Tampa, and he's starting from scratch in Detroit - as is Blake in LA.
They also placate the fans. "What do you mean we're sucking on purpose?! oh wait, we're sucking on purpose because *insert former star* believes that he can build a winner through the draft, well I trust *insert former star*"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
Sakic gets a lot of praise for a couple of things that he lucked into.
First is he signed MacKinnon to a fair market long term contract and he exploded into the top 5 player he had potential to be but had not really shown. He was paid fairly in the same ballpark as guys like Monahan, and Schiefele who signed in the same summer
Second was the Duchene trade which resulted in acquiring Bowen Byram in addition to Girard and and bunch of other stuff. Ottawa was coming off a game 7 OT ECF when they made the deal and I don’t think many thought they would hit the tank like the did. Very similar fortune occurred for the Sens when they moved Karlsson and resulted in Stutzle falling in their lap but you do not hear the same praise heaped on Dorian.
Maybe the team going from historically bad one year to a legit contender over the next 3 is why he gets so much love? He has made some nice moves but if this team tops out at the second round with a top 5 player will that be a success?
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Yeah, Sakic made some calculated moves and they paid off. That's what being a good manager is about. It feels like you're arguing that if it's not a sure thing, you shouldn't do it. Nothing in sports is a sure thing. You have to manage and put your team in a spot for good things to happen. Yep, the lottery has some luck to it - but you also have to manage your team to put yourself in a position to have good odds at winning the lottery. It's just like winning the Stanley Cup - there's no guarantee you're going to win it. "Success" can't be measured exclusively in Stanley Cups, at least not from the Flames perspective as they need to learn how to walk before they can run.