Throw Down who is the worst Flames GM of all time

[Sylvanfan]

Well it's being talked about in the Mangiapane trade thread a lot. So maybe we should just make a thread for it.

Fletcher is no contest as the best GM in team history. Most likely agree that Al Coates was not the worst...and after that, the opinions vary.

I think Doug Risebrough is worst. After that Button or Feaster, probably Craig since Feaster was around when they drafted Gaudreau so that saves him. Coates is mid, than for me as he did seem to get some talent, but didn't have enough time. Than it's Sutter and Tre with Tre being a bit better builder, but Sutter being able to get more consecutive playoff appearances and winning 3 series and at least 2 games every year they were in the playoffs.

Still after Fletcher it's an ugly list, and no doubt once players knew what other players were making in the early 90's and the Flames were no longer one of the top earning teams...it's been a nose dive.

[Cheese]

Risebrough hands down! He single handedly destroyed the team in one deal. Now we dont know whether ownership had anything to do with it or not, but he was awful.

[Royle9]

[Finger Cookin]

Sutter gets a lot of goodwill for the '04 run and for the Kipper trade, which is understandable given the history of playoff successes for the franchise. But the drafting when Sutter was GM was an absolute black hole of despair. Feaster gets a lot of heat for his tenure, and rightfully so -- but he arguably contributed more to the franchise's long-term health with his 3 years of drafting than Sutter did in his longer tenure with 3 times as many draft picks.

With 20 picks from 2011-2013, notables that Feaster netted us were Monahan, Jankowski, Kulak, Baertschi, Granlund, and Gaudreau. With 60 picks from 2003-2010, Sutter netted us Phaneuf, Backlund, Brodie, Bouma, and Ferland. You could give him credit for Prust and Pardy, though they mostly played their NHL careers elsewhere. Between a combined 16 picks over the 2005 and 2006 drafts, players chosen under Sutter played less than 90 combined NHL games played. That's ugly.

It all comes down to what you value. What you remember, what you've chosen to overlook, what you want to hold grudges over, and so on. Treliving being middle of the road feels about right to me. And Riser being the all-time worst also feels right. But it's all pretty subjective on who people want to rank after Fletcher.

[dustygoon]

Risebrough. No doubt. But when you think of each GM, it's easy to find diabolical decisions that each has made....some of which we as fans knew at the time didn't make sense.

[blankall]

So many bad ones......

The Flames have had glorious luck with drafting pure superstars, but then GMs ravish the team with awful moves.

Looks at things since 1989. The team was torn apart. Then the team somehow gets Brett Hull in the fold....but he's gone. Even with the horrendous handling post 1989, the team could have recovered again with Fleury and Hull both on the team. Imagine if 1995, the team had Fleury, Hull, and Niewendyk.

In the next era, the team somehow stumbles across Iginla and later Kipper....but Stillman, Savard, and later Phaneuf are gone. The team then spends Iginla's entire career spinning its wheels and wasting assets trying to find a centre for him.

Then....well we all know what happened with Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and Bennett.

This team has a horrible habit of souring relationships with superstars and telling offensively talented players they have to learn to be grinders. The problem is pervasive that it must be coming from the owners and not just a string of GMs repeating the same mistakes.

[Finger Cookin]

Originally Posted by blankall

So many bad ones......

The Flames have had glorious luck with drafting pure superstars, but then GMs ravish the team with awful moves.

Looks at things since 1989. The team was torn apart. Then the team somehow gets Brett Hull in the fold....but he's gone.

Hull was traded before the '89 cup win. And the debate has always been whether the return of Ramage and Wamsley for Hull and Bozek got us over the line for that solitary cup win, and whether that was worth sacrificing a hall of fame career for.

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

Hull was traded before the '89 cup win. And the debate has always been whether the return of Bozek, Ramage, and Wamsley got us over the line for that solitary cup win, and whether that was worth sacrificing a hall of fame career for.

It was.

[GioforPM]

Ramage was pretty key in the absence of Suter because of injury.

[SutterBrother]

Banners hang forever.

Rick Wamsley was the perfect backup for Vernon. Ramage gave us a top 4 D to put in when Suter went down. It was a near thing defeating the Habs in 6.

Losing Brett Hull was 100% worth it.

[SutterBrother]

Risebrough was a brutal GM, and the epitome of "hire from the old boys club".

Immediately fleeced by his former boss (and in the first moments following the trade everyone KNEW he had been fleeced as the best two players at the time were Gilmour and Macoun), and then somehow still retained his job.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

Hull was traded before the '89 cup win. And the debate has always been whether the return of Bozek, Ramage, and Wamsley got us over the line for that solitary cup win, and whether that was worth sacrificing a hall of fame career for.

Given the economics of the league in the 90s, the Flames wouldn’t have been able to keep Hull anyway. He would have been sold off along with MacInnis, Suter, Niewendyk, etc.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

Hull was traded before the '89 cup win. And the debate has always been whether the return of Bozek, Ramage, and Wamsley got us over the line for that solitary cup win, and whether that was worth sacrificing a hall of fame career for.

Wamsley played one game in the 89 playoffs, and he was bad. Ramage had a good run, but by 1989, Hull was already putting up ppg performances in the playoffs for the Blues and in 1990, he had 13 goals and 21 points in 12 games.

Bozek was not part of the return from Hull, he was part of the package that went with Hull to the Blues from Calgary.

I mean theoretically you're right...you never know if was the exact chemistry that gave the Flames their cup, and Ramage for Hull might upset things. But in a vacuum it was a bad move, and the team had largely soured things with Hull before he left.

[undercoverbrother]

Who brought in Gary Leeman ??


Cuz that guy sucked

[FlamesAddiction]

I was technically around when Risebrough was GM, but too young to be really dialed in. Plus, it was a time before the internet and I lived outside of the Calgary media market. I was pretty much deaf to anything going on from a management side, so it's hard for me to judge what was really going on.

I just know it was in the pre-cap era when players were holding out all the time and small market Canadian teams were struggling economically and were having trouble keeping players. The rules were also different as you could renegotiate contracts and trade players for cash for example. The former gave players leverage in some situations (Gilmour for example). It's easy to look back at the Gilmour trade as terrible, but he also put the Flames in a bad situation and it's hard to know what else was being offered at the time combined with the pressure to win as the Flames were is a window that was closing. I'd be curious to know from people who lived in the Calgary media market at that time if there were other rumoured potential trades that could have been taken instead.

If parity existed back then and Risebrough had the tools to compete on something closer to a level playing field with the big market teams, I bet different decisions would have been made.

Probably some recency bias, but Treliving has to be up there for me. He had all the tools to compete and still made some bad decisions that set the team back. Craig Button as well for how he dealt with the Savard/Gilbert situation (which even he now admits as wrong), and for buying out St. Louis who was on the cheapest possible contract at the time. I know no one ever thought St. Louis would go on to do what he did, but he was a good player down the stretch the previous season and there was some optimism around him going into the offseason, comparable to Klapka right now you could say. No one is expecting 100 points from him, but there were all the reasons in the world to see what's there at least. Instead he bought him out and brought in Dwayne Hay, Blake Sloan or whoever it was. I remember thinking at the time that he must have not paid any attention to the Flames before being hired. Imagine that 2004 team with Savard and St. Louis on it?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Cheese

Risebrough hands down! He single handedly destroyed the team in one deal. Now we dont know whether ownership had anything to do with it or not, but he was awful.

This is only hearsay, but I think his hands were tied by off-ice dramas.

[the-rasta-masta]

It's got to be Button for me. The Savard trade was a head scratcher the minute it was made, and was worse when Gilbert was fired almost immediately afterwards. It made no sense given the coach/player relationship was the reason Savard was traded. (Savard was traded Nov 15 and Gilbert fired Dec 3).

You then compound that with trading Giguere so that they could protect Fred Brathwaite in an expansion draft, and buying out Martin St Louis' contract. I was young and wasn't really able to provide my own opinion on a player's skill and potential at the time, but I know my Dad was livid when they let St Louis go.

Signing Turek to a large contract after a 20 game stint was also shortsighted but not the worst. Turek ended up restructuring his contract a few years later to help the team out.

[Hells Bells]

They've all been brutal outside of Fletcher, and to a lesser extent Coates.

Sutter and Treliving had moments but were below average as a whole.

The rest is just a steaming pile of hot garbage, Risebrough is easily the worst though.

[Paulie Walnuts]

It feels like each GM outside of Fletcher caused some serious damage to the team, and its sad that Treliving is the one that had probably the most success as we reached the 2nd round twice under his watch.

[The Cobra]

Originally Posted by troutman

This is only hearsay, but I think his hands were tied by off-ice dramas.

I agree he had to trade Gilmour.

But he wasn't forced to trade him for that return.