Weighing in, my issue with MG today is making trades/signings that have handcuffed the team in making further adjustments. All the NTCs and overpays are certainly an issue. I would say the Booth trade was a wash talent wise, but it was a huge failure because of Booth's contract and failure to live up to it. Samuelsson was a free agent after that season I believe. Opportunity cost is huge, you can see how valuable expiring contracts are in the NBA, a trend we haven't yet seen in the NHL simply because you have more room to work with, but I think is undervalued.
The Ballard trade was simply a misjudgment in talent, which is worrisome unto itself. He's made some good acquisitions, with Ehrhoff, Higgins and Torres coming to mind immediately. I actually liked the Sundin signing. He actually helped the Canucks tremendously in the series vs. Chicago, and the Sundin/Kesler/Demitra line actually led to what I thought was the point in Kesler's career where he became a consistent offensive threat.
Ultimately, I find that the Luongo and Schneider issue is the tipping point. It was just so poorly managed and the situation was fairly predictable in that you end up alienating both of them. I actually think ownership is hurting the team too, they should stick to the business side and we've seen too many situations in sports where large scale ownership involvement (as opposed to giving your GM autonomy) in talent evaluations leads to poor decisions. That's their right I suppose, but so long as they're rejecting trades that their GM want to do, this team will likely be mediocre.