Poll of the Week - Sept 15

[BigTed3]

The book may still be out on Bergevin, but he's also the only one not to have been replaced yet, so maybe that works in his favor. When you look at draft picks, trades, signings, coaching appointments, and general team management, who would you say has done the best job of running the Habs since our last Cup-winning GM was fired?

[jedimaas]

Very tough poll. I voted Bergevin simply because he's the first GM to been in "power" while this team went as far as they did on the backs of a team effort (ie no Halak/Cammaleri show). We look poised to possibly contend very soon. No other GM on that list has done that.

However, it cannot be overlooked that most of the reason MB is where he is came from his predecessors, specifically Gauthier - who, one could argue - was working under the philosophy of his old mentor Gainey.

So for me, MB is the best right now (but still an extremely small sample size) but Gauthier deserves a lot of credit for building the team that Bergevin inherited.

If i had to rank them:

- Bergevin: Small sample size but has gotten us farther than any of his predecessors. No catastrophic moves, made a few (mostly minor) mistakes but seems to have been able to admit that & correct them.

- Gauthier: Had a complete meltdown towards the end (that poor chicken) but overall made some fantastic moves, many we are just seeing now. Still, made a few costly blunders.

- A Savard: Meh. Did very little (good or bad) was more of a stop-gap. He was neither horrible, nor fantastic.

- Gainey: One of my all-time favourite players was not a great GM. A few decent moves (Rivet trade) but the Gomez deal is one of the top 5 worst moves we've made in the last 1/2 century. Not to mention Niiniimaa.

- Houle: Possibly the worst GM we've ever had. People look at the Roy trade - and it was horrible - but i think the Turgeon deal was even worse. Blunder after blunder took us from one of the best teams in the NHL to a team so bad it took us nearly 10 years just to recover.

[Guest]

Very tough poll. I voted Bergevin simply because he's the first GM to been in "power" while this team went as far as they did on the backs of a team effort (ie no Halak/Cammaleri show). We look poised to possibly contend very soon. No other GM on that list has done that.

However, it cannot be overlooked that most of the reason MB is where he is came from his predecessors, specifically Gauthier - who, one could argue - was working under the philosophy of his old mentor Gainey.

So for me, MB is the best right now (but still an extremely small sample size) but Gauthier deserves a lot of credit for building the team that Bergevin inherited.

If i had to rank them:

- Bergevin: Small sample size but has gotten us farther than any of his predecessors. No catastrophic moves, made a few (mostly minor) mistakes but seems to have been able to admit that & correct them.

- Gauthier: Had a complete meltdown towards the end (that poor chicken) but overall made some fantastic moves, many we are just seeing now. Still, made a few costly blunders.

- A Savard: Meh. Did very little (good or bad) was more of a stop-gap. He was neither horrible, nor fantastic.

- Gainey: One of my all-time favourite players was not a great GM. A few decent moves (Rivet trade) but the Gomez deal is one of the top 5 worst moves we've made in the last 1/2 century. Not to mention Niiniimaa.

- Houle: Possibly the worst GM we've ever had. People look at the Roy trade - and it was horrible - but i think the Turgeon deal was even worse. Blunder after blunder took us from one of the best teams in the NHL to a team so bad it took us nearly 10 years just to recover.

Pretty much feel the same way. Good breakdown.

[habsisme]

Very tough poll. I voted Bergevin simply because he's the first GM to been in "power" while this team went as far as they did on the backs of a team effort (ie no Halak/Cammaleri show). We look poised to possibly contend very soon. No other GM on that list has done that.

However, it cannot be overlooked that most of the reason MB is where he is came from his predecessors, specifically Gauthier - who, one could argue - was working under the philosophy of his old mentor Gainey.

So for me, MB is the best right now (but still an extremely small sample size) but Gauthier deserves a lot of credit for building the team that Bergevin inherited.

If i had to rank them:

- Bergevin: Small sample size but has gotten us farther than any of his predecessors. No catastrophic moves, made a few (mostly minor) mistakes but seems to have been able to admit that & correct them.

- Gauthier: Had a complete meltdown towards the end (that poor chicken) but overall made some fantastic moves, many we are just seeing now. Still, made a few costly blunders.

- A Savard: Meh. Did very little (good or bad) was more of a stop-gap. He was neither horrible, nor fantastic.

- Gainey: One of my all-time favourite players was not a great GM. A few decent moves (Rivet trade) but the Gomez deal is one of the top 5 worst moves we've made in the last 1/2 century. Not to mention Niiniimaa.

- Houle: Possibly the worst GM we've ever had. People look at the Roy trade - and it was horrible - but i think the Turgeon deal was even worse. Blunder after blunder took us from one of the best teams in the NHL to a team so bad it took us nearly 10 years just to recover.

I think I'd agree with most of that. The only interesting thing I have to add is Gainey really had my support early on but man that guy screwed stuff up! He did draft Price though and given who else was in the running for that pick, we definitely made the right choice. I hated when Gauthier was made GM but he actually did a good job. Even the "meltdown" was really just the trade for Kaberle which was totally crazy, and then trading Cammie in the middle of a game (I liked the trade though - still do, but less now)

[31Careyprice]

Under Marc Bergevin, every year the habs are stronger, younger, better and looking like a contender. I Cannot say the same for the rest on that list.

[powerplay2009]

I am really only old enough to comment on Gainey on, and I think it's Bergevin. Although Gauthier is actually a close 2nd, but his last couple months were brutal.

[roy_133]

Under Marc Bergevin, every year the habs are stronger, younger, better and looking like a contender. I Cannot say the same for the rest on that list.

Well as with any GM it's hard to gauge how much of that was his doing vs what others before him did. I mean, Bergevin inherited Price, Subban, Pacioretty, Markov, Plekanec, Gallagher, Eller, Bournival, Emelin, Tinordi and Beaulieu off this year's likely roster alone. That's very likely the core of the team and at least the 5 most important players on the roster.

So far more good than bad from Bergevin but he's been the GM for under 150 games, not ready to assess. Also he hasn't made a definitive move to really put his mark on this team. Gainey's first couple of years people were on here freaking out about how much better our current roster and prospect pool looked.

As for Gainey, like I said, at the start people were giving him universal praise but he definitely sprinkled in some horrid moves. Even before Gomez he hired a coach with absolutely 0 experience coaching after firing perhaps one of the best coaches in hockey. It does seem like we did draft better under Gainey, even though Timmins is still our head scout, I'm not sure how many parts of the rest of the scouting staff has changed, how much input Gainey himself had or how much of it was just luck but since the 2007 draft we haven't really had any great drafts. 2012 could turn out to be but we did have the 3rd pick.

Gauthier had balls man, the Price - Halak decision was outstanding but the last 5 or so months was a tire fire.

I guess I'll go with Gainey just because only him and Houle have enough of a body for work for me to actually judge and Houle was probably the worst GM in team history.

[Noob616]

I'll go with Bergevin after this past summer. Not so much about the actual decisions made/results, but I feel like Bergevin has displayed the best strategy and looks to be the best going forward. That, and the fact that he's clearly demonstrated learning on the job and gotten away from what I assume were some strong principles about the game. I really believe he's learned from mistakes made in the first couple years. I don't think we'd have signed Prust or Moen if they were in the same situations this year, and I don't envision another Doug Murray experiment.

Trading fan favourite Gorges to sign "soft" Gilbert is a huge departure from last year's Murray and Parros moves. Trading away clutch Briere for "lazy" Parenteau is more of the same. Even before that, trading away a big strong PWF in Cole for a soft perimeter sniper in Ryder was a great trade. I just like the logic behind most of the moves and I think Bergevin has the post lockout NHL figured out better than our past GM's.

Can see Roy's argument for Gainey as well, the 2007 draft under Gainey was massive. The McDonagh trade was awful, but it's pretty rare that you can trade a guy that good and still get a better defenseman out of the same draft. That's without even talking about Pacioretty, and even Yannick Weber provided some value. As mentioned, hard to say how much is Timmins vs. GM's though.

[BigTed3]

Rejean Houle: A fairly disastrous tenure as GM. A lot of wasted draft picks, albeit 1998 was a great year, with Markov, Beauchemin, Ryder, and Ribeiro. Houle dealt away the likes of Turgeon, Bure, Tucker, Recchi, and Damphousse for almost no significant long-term return. Clear to say that he's the worst of the list.

Andre Savard: Average drafts for Savard, best pick being Tomas Plekanec. No real notable trades, and a fairly unimpressive tenure in general. Didn't really harm us too much but the team was just generally stagnant.

Bob Gainey:The drafting under Gainey was pretty decent, a big step up over his predecessors. That being said, there were a handful of misses as well. Gainey's tenure is, however, more poignantly defined by the Gomez trade and by his somewhat strangely-timed firing of Guy Carbonneau. It seemed like Gainey was taking over behind the bench every 2nd or 3rd year and that the team lacked an overall vision. The Kovalev and Pacioretty acquisitions were golden, but offset by the Gomez and Niinimaa trades, as well as the general lack of cohesion in the room that led to the departures of the likes of Ribeiro, Theodore, Grabovski, and Latendresse. And of course, the decision to completely dismantle the core of the team and re-build via UFA's is something that rarely works out well in hockey in general. Again, while we had some success in the short-term from this, it wasn't overly sustainable, and there really was no long-term plan set out by Gainey, despite his relatively long tenure here.

Pierre Gauthier:Gauthier went down in flames at the end, but I think a lot of his tenure was greatly under-appreciated due to the way he handled the public and the press. However, his actual hockey IQ was, in my view, higher than any other GM we've had since our last cup. He only had two drafts to work with, but Gallagher was a steal and Beaulieu was a smart choice as well. Others may still pan out. He sold high on Halak to get a very useful player in Eller, and used great judgment to keep Price around despite public pressure to do otherwise. That single decision may be what best sets us up to make a run at a Cup. The Bournival deal was another under-valued trade at the time, and when Markov went down, PG managed to fleece the Isles for James Wisniewski, who filled the void perfectly in exchange for a mid-2nd round pick. He then turned the over-priced Wisniewski into a pick that would become Charles Hudon, not to mention dealing a declining Hal Gill for a 2nd round pick and more! The two trades PG obviously gets more flack for were the Spacek one and the Cammalleri one. I've said this before, but to me, the Spacek deal was not a big mistake. Yes, we took on more years of term, but Spacek was not a useful piece here and Kaberle had been a very highly-sought after commodity just a few months before we traded for him. While there was some risk there, there was also the potential for upside and I truly believe the issue with him was poor utilization from the coaching staff rather than his being completely washed up. The Cammalleri deal was the one move I fault Gauthier on, in part because the return for a 30-40 goal scorer should have been at least a first round pick and in part because he clearly rushed the trade and didn't assess all of his possibilities. But in the end, we turned the 2nd rounder into Fucale, whom many scouts had listed as a first rounder anyways.

Marc Bergevin: I think it's still a bit early to judge Bergevin, although in general, I agree with the consensus that he's improving from year to year. The Moen, DD, Bouillon, Murray, etc. signings were awful, and I remain unhappy with his choice of coach because of the criteria he used to make the hire and his failure to see how poor our possession metrics are under him. But his trades have been spot on most of the time, and his drafting has remained pretty decent. That being said, I think Bergevin is getting way too much credit for the success of this team last year, when you look at the core (Price, Subban, Markov, Plekanec, Pacioretty, Eller, Gallagher, the pick that turned into Galchenyuk, etc.) as having been in place for him upon his arrival. The players MB actually brought in (Bouillon, Prust, Murray, Parros, Briere, and so on) are ones who made much smaller contributions to the team's success. So while I do believe Bergevin has a long-term vision for this team, something we didn't really see with his predecessors, I think credit for the team's current success goes more to Gauthier, Gainey, and Trevor Timmins. I think when all is said and done, we may look back at Bergevin as being the best of the lot, but at present, I think PG was the most effective GM we've had to date.

[HabsRuleForever]

Rejean Houle should not even be considered as a GM.