jds308 wrote on Thu, 11 July 2019 15:27

Skookum Jim wrote on Thu, 11 July 2019 13:55 Had no idea Chiarelli's brother was a scout ... P. Chiarelli has to go down as worst Oiler GM in its history... and in the NHL there must be a short list of who was worse .. Just for fun, how would you rank the Oilers GM's since Sather? It would be interesting to see how the rest fall into place for people. Assuming Sather is #1 for all, I would go like this from worst to best: 5 Chia - Did lots, mostly bad, left a HUGE mess. Set the team back. 4 MacT - Lots of small moves in a short time, but not enough to really break much. Ference/Nikitin/Pouliot contracts ouch. 3 Tambo – Not sure what he actually did? I think he napped a lot. Hall/Eberle deals were good. 2 Lowe - Plenty to criticize during his tenure, but he got Pronger and made the SCF, so that’s something. ** massive gap here *** 1 Sather – Self-explanatory. Looks like they've got worse with each GM! In Chia's defense, I'll give him some credit for at least having the balls to do something. Clearly, it was the wrong course of action, but unlike MacT and Tambo who couldn't seem to really do anything, Chia did do a whole lot!

MacT did a lot! He had more trades than anyone else in the two years he ran the team. Especially in year one, when he had something like twice as many as the next nearest GM. It was constantly shuffling deck chairs to get another mediocre goalie or 6/7 defenceman!

I'm pretty much on board with your assessments:

1. Sather - so far ahead that it's not funny.

2. Lowe - Debated between Lowe and Tambellini. Tambo didn't make the team worse, Lowe usually did...but then Lowe did have that one amazing season, so he probably gets the nod. Better to have one shining moment and a whole lot of completely awful than just mostly awful. If this is an all-time NHL GMs or hockey execs, Lowe is still near the very bottom of the list though - especially since he's never really been gone, and he's never really been out of hockey operations here, weighing in on the decisions of all those GMs who've followed him.

3. Tambellini - I kind of consider this an extension of the Lowe GM-reign anyhow. They gave Tambo the position of GM because the only out in his contract with Vancouver was if he was GM, and we know that Lowe was HEAVILY involved as POHO. We even have documentary evidence of this since they filmed an ill-advised chronicles of how they rebuilt a hockey franchise back in to a new dynasty how they successfully wooed Eric Belanger to the organization!

4. MacTavish. He wins this by a whisker. Basically everything he did was bad. It started with that dreadful press conference, then every time he opened his mouth, he made the team worse. Almost the only good thing he did was give Nelson the head-coaching job, but even that he had to make in to a gong show, with the training wheels session, and then the insistence that it wasn't Nelson who was the reason the team was doing better, it was because he had traded for Klinkhammer...

When he was replaced (even though he didn't leave, and may not have even changed offices in Kingsway), you had to think that you couldn't actually have anyone perform worse at that job...and then came:

5. Chiarelli - Chia's legacy is going to always be that he made multiple trades where he sent elite talent away and only ONCE (Kessel trade) got an adequate return, and even then, it took a team completely imploding to get him there. Basically, he just got lucky that that deal wasn't Burmistrov and Siemens for Kessel. Amazingly, there still may be a team that hires him back in to management somewhere...(for what it's worth, I hope it happens!!!)

It now seems like Chiarelli is as bad as anyone could possibly be and we couldn't see worse than that...but I'm knocking on wood now just in case.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireLowe #FireBobbyNicks #FireKenHolland #FireKeithGretzky