Forbes NHL General Manager Rankings
by Hawerchuk on Dec 27, 2010 9:00 AM EST
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PrintI don't know how I missed this story in December's Forbes Magazine (lazy? stupid? eye not on ball? you pick), but it's right up my alley. Forbes comes up with a ridiculous way to rank GMs, dollars per point, which gives them the following list:
| Rk | GM | $/point |
| 1 | David Poile, Nashville Predators | $397,778 |
| 2 | Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks | $420,037 |
| 3 | Ken Holland, Detroit Red Wings | $428,675 |
| 4 | Darcy Regier, Buffalo Sabres | $438,889 |
| 5 | Don Waddell, Atlanta Thrashers | $444,076 |
| 6 | Ray Shero, Pittsburgh Penguins | $444,963 |
| 7 | George McPhee, Washington Capitals | $448,380 |
| 8 | Jim Rutherford, Carolina Hurricanes | $455,224 |
| 9 | Garth Snow, New York Islanders | $455,627 |
| 10 | Brian Burke, Toronto Maple Leafs | $480,215 |
That's just weak. Does anyone honestly believe that Don Waddell is a better GM than Ray Shero? Let's look at Waddell's drafting record:
| Year | Pick | |
| 1999 | 1 | Patrick Stefan |
| 2000 | 2 | Dany Heatley |
| 2001 | 3 | Ilya Kovalchuk |
| 2002 | 2 | Kari Lehtonen |
| 2003 | 8 | Braydon Coburn |
| 2004 | 10 | Boris Valabik |
| 2005 | 16 | Alex Bourret |
| 2006 | 12 | Bryan Little |
| 2007 | No Pick | Traded for Keith Tkachuk |
| 2008 | 3 | Zach Bogosian |
| 2009 | 4 | Evander Kane |
Here's the thing: if Brian Burke's trade for Phil Kessel is an absolute disaster, what do we call Waddell failing to capitalize on more than double the haul that the Bruins got? Top 5 GM? Really?
Let's rank these GMs by value-added instead:
| Rk | GM | Marg Point/Marg $ |
| 1 | David Poile, Nashville Predators | 1.94 |
| 2 | Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks | 1.87 |
| 3 | Ken Holland, Detroit Red Wings | 1.85 |
| 4 | Darcy Regier, Buffalo Sabres | 1.70 |
| 6 | Ray Shero, Pittsburgh Penguins | 1.68 |
| 7 | George McPhee, Washington Capitals | 1.59 |
| 8 | Jim Rutherford, Carolina Hurricanes | 1.56 |
| 5 | Don Waddell, Atlanta Thrashers | 1.52 |
| 10 | Brian Burke, Toronto Maple Leafs | 1.45 |
| 9 | Garth Snow, New York Islanders | 1.37 |
That looks a bit more like it. Remember, a team that signed 23 minor-league players wouldn't finish with zero points - they'd be somewhere between 45 and 52. And a team spending exactly to league-average would get roughly 1.45 points per million spent. So the first metric gives a general manager too much credit for what anybody would accomplish.
But I still have problems with the second metric. Forbes starts counting in 2005-06, but Waddell had six years to build his team before that, Ray Shero benefits from someone else's drafting and David Poile had an exceptional run at drafting defensemen. Brian Burke, on the other hand, took over a disaster in Toronto mid-season - not that things have been great since then, but he's still paying for someone else's mistakes.
The unfortunate thing is that it takes something like seven years to evaluate a GM's performance, and we're still only five years into the cap era. There are a lot of holdover benefits from the previous system (want Lidstrom/Zetterberg/Datsyuk at a huge discount, anyone?) It's not clear to me that there's even one GM who understands how to build a consistent winner in a capped system without having to finish at the bottom of the league for a few seasons.
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Waddell’s draft picks don’t look so bad. With the exception of 2005 and the lack of a pick in 2007, every pick had at least a marginal (cough, cough, Valabik) NHL career, and some (granted, top five picks where it’s more difficult to totally f*** up) are or were stars. (I can’t remember what exactly surrounded the Stefan pick in 1999 other than that it seemed defensible at the time, and the Sedins weren’t sure things, nor was the package deal aspect of drafting one of them without the other.) Where Waddell becomes totally and utterly incompetent is roster management/movement, e.g. Coburn for Zhitnik, a bunch of picks for Tkachuk when his team was nowhere near where a team acquiring Tkachuk in 2007 should have been, etc. Without being in Atlanta or following the Thrashers much, when I think Waddell, I tend to think “terrible GM,” but I don’t think his draft picks are the most damning evidence.
I guess you forgot that Atlanta traded up (Vancouver had the #1) to get Patrick Stefan. They even promised Burke they wouldn’t take one of the Sedins.
Mea culpa. I knew I would be corrected somehow by someone with regard to Waddell’s record of suck.
by Velvet Canuck on Dec 27, 2010 5:55 PM EST up reply actions
Interesting to see Garth Snow so high up there; I’m of the mind that his period with the Islanders will constantly be overshadowed by the DiPietro contract and the various Charles Wang controversies.
Does he call it Luongo underwear?
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Dec 27, 2010 1:45 PM EST reply actions
Part of that money is Yashin's too.
If you take that out he’d move up the rankings. To be fair you’d have to do the same for any other teams paying guys signed by previous GMs that aren’t playing anymore.
Curiosity
Out of curiosity, where is Glen Sather on the list if it included all 30 clubs?
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I don’t think any of us would even rank Don Waddell that high, so I think Forbes’ metric is a little off.
In contrast, I think most of us would surely rank our new GM, Rick Dudley, in the top 5. He’s done more for our franchise with less resources than any year in Thrashers history.
by ThrashersRecaps on Dec 27, 2010 3:52 PM EST reply actions
It’s not clear to me that there’s even one GM who understands how to build a consistent winner in a capped system without having to finish at the bottom of the league for a few seasons.
It seems like it’ll take quite a few years to test this proposition. (Maybe Lou Lamoriello is showing some signs this season? Although this year’s Devils team seems like it should be better.) This statement brings up the question of how often a team needs two or three franchise players to emerge (Lidstrom/Datsyuk/Zetterberg), and how often it needs to be able to fill out its ranks with steady NHL’ers (Dan Clearly)?
Anyway, another thing your statement brought to my mind is Mike Gillis signing a bunch of older, undrafted players (Eddie Lack in goal, Lee Sweatt, Chris Tanev, recently Darren Archibald, and there’s a bunch more). I can’t find any links now, but he’s often been quoted as comparing such signings as equivalents to second or third round picks (which Vancouver is notoriously short on, having traded those away at the deadline). I’m sure he’s not the only one mining such options. I’m not sure if his quotations are his honest and studied opinion, or maybe the kind of thing GM’s need to say to reporters. But it might be one way to at least get the steady NHL’er type player.
How does one build a consistent winner in the cap era.
You need to have talent at a discount. The only way for a team that is drafting late to do that is to consistently find gems with later draft picks. That’s tough. I guess alternatively you could make lopsided trades of veteran talent for high draft picks. Again tough to do.
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