Lets look at Gillis and his shortcomings

[canuckbeliever]

Over the past few weeks it seems Alain Vigneault has become the scapegoat for everything that is bad in Vancouver. Your kid goes missing? It must have been AV who snatched him. NDP loses the election. Well AV must have created a conspiracy to make them lose. While it is fine and dandy to blame AV for Vancouvers professional hockey teams failures it is important to keep in mind he is not the only one to blame for 2 straight first round knockouts and not getting past the second round for 4 of the past 5 seasons.

There is this other guy. His name is Micheal D Gillis and he has essentially escaped blame within this market. Personal friends of Gillis such as Tony Gallagher have taken every opportunity to downplay any blame he may face and wasted air space on the radio defending him as well. Majority of the Gillis defending is unjustified. He has failed as a GM and let the Canucks down. In the next section I examine the 3 most important components of being a GM which are making trades, signing free agents and drafting.

Trades

Mike Gillis has never been shrewd at making deals. In fact he has made a lot of horrendous deals during his time period. Noteable ones include choosing the wrong pony between Mason Raymond and Micheal Grabner and subsequently dealing Grabner Steve Bernier and a first round pick for Victor Oreskovic and the infamous Ballard. Grabner has lit the lamp the past 3 seasons while Ballard has been a 4.2 million dollar #6 defencemen.

Other major bone headed moves include the David Booth trade where Gillis picked an injury plagued winger for 2 expiring contracts in Marco Sturm and Mikael Samuelsson. Yeah both players on there final year of their contracts but at the same respect they were also not costing the Canucks 4+ mill for 5 seasons (3 more at this point).

The last of the major bone headed trades was swapping Cody Hodgson and Alex Sulzer for Zack Kassian and Marc Andre Gragniani. While Hodgson has been racking up points Kassian has been extremely inconsistent and consistently immature. To make the deal worse, Sulzer is still on the Sabers while Gragniani is playing somewhere in Europe.

Moreover, other failed experiments include the Steve Bernier trade where Gillis thought he was getting the next winger for the Twins though that was not the case.

Additionally, this trade deadlines Derek Roy disaster also did not pan out. The Canucks gave up a 2nd round pick and there second best defensive prospect for an undersized rental center. This center did squat during the rest of the regular season and more of nothing during the playoffs.

Other minor blunders include trading Lukas Krajicek for Shane O'Brien. Krajicek continued to contribute a decent amount of points while Shane was more known for his visits to the Roxy than playing hockey. Another blemish was trading Mathieu Schneider 17 games into the 2009-2010 season. Mathieu did nothing with the Canucks but then became a heavily used dman in Phoenix once he was sent there. Last of the minor blemishes which is a very big minor blemish if there is one was trading 2 fourth round picks and Taylor Ellington for Sammy Pahlsson. Pahlsson failed to become the third line center the Canucks needed and did not re-sign either.

Free Agent Signings

Mike Gillis has never been good at signing free agents. Rather he has a history of throwing money where money should not be thrown. So here is a list of NOTEABLE terrible signings

2008-09 Mats Sundin (10 mill 1 yr)- Perhaps the most bone headed signing that Gillis ever did. The initial offer was 10 mill per for 2 seasons. If Sundin had accepted that deal the Canucks would have been UNABLE to sign the Sedin twins or would have had to trade a few important guys to cleverly make it work. In the end Sundin was unable to live to the hype surrounding him as he scored below his average pace in Toronto. Oh and the Canucks also only got half a year out of him because he did not make his mind up right away.

2008-09 Pavol Demitra (2 yrs 4+ mill per)- Demitra was known for his injury problems prior to coming to Vancouver. These problems continued with the Canucks. Demitra only played 69 games in his first season and 28 in his second. Terrible, terrible signing.

2008-09 Steve Bernier (2.5 mill per for 3 seasons)- This signing was bad simply because of the way it went down. The Canucks traded for Bernier from Buffalo in the off season and then proceeded not to sign him. The STL blues then sent an inflated offer sheet to Bernier and in the end Gillis had to pay a mill more than he wanted to and at least 1 more season than he had imagined.

2009-2010 Mathieu Schneider- 3 simple words. A failed experiment.

2010-2011 Manny Malhotra (2.5 mill per for 3 seasons) - This one is controversial because Many exceeded in his first year but then had an eye injury which has hampered him for the past 2 but I include it simply because at the time when the deal was made many questioned it. The Canucks were paying 2.5 mill a year for a guy who had 1 solid season as a third line center. The year before he was on a professional tryout with the Canucks as no one wanted him. Suddenly 1 years body of work landed him a 3 year contract.

2011-2012 Marco Sturm (3+ mill for 1 season)- TERRIBLE TERRIBLE ATTEMPT AT AN EXPERIMENT

2012-2013: Nothing

In the grand scheme of things Gillis has tremendously improved at signing players but even then 1 noteable bad signing a year is 1 too many especially considering the fact he gets fleeced on the majority of his deals.

Drafting

The day that Mike Gillis was hired there was this expected change which would occur in drafting. The Canucks had a terrible record at drafting and it was expected that would change. The first casualty should have been Ron Delorme who is the head of the scouting department. However, unfortunately 5 years later that still has not occurred. I personally think it might be due to the fact that Delorme and Gillis played hockey together back in the day in university but I maybe wrong. This article/post is getting quite lengthy so I will leave it off with this. I will present you notable Canucks picks where a better player has been drafted within 5 picks. Oh and just so people don't say well this player was missed by a lot of other teams I will limit it to the first 3 rounds where talent can be more easily evaluated. Also I have left it to the first 3 years of the Gillis era as it is tough to evaluate guys who got drafted in the past 2 years.

2008

#10 (Canucks) Cody Hodgson

#15 (Ottawa) Erik Karlsson

#41 (Canucks)- Yann Suave

#42 (Ottawa)- Patrick Wericoch

#43 (Anahiem)- Justin Schultz

Note* Canucks did not have a third round pick

2009

#22 (Canucks)- Jordan Schroeder

#24 (Capitals)- Marcus Johansson

#53 (Canucks)- Anton Rodin

#55 (Capitals)- Dmitri Orlov

#83 (Canucks)- Kevin Connauton

#85 (Capitals)- Cody Eakin

2010

Canucks did not have a first round pick or second round pick or third round pick.

The first 3 years of Gillis drafting shows he has missed on guys. Perhaps the worst part in all of this has been the amount of players he has missed in his own backyard in the WHL. The Canucks have virtually ignored the WHL and that causes major issues especially when you miss on guys such as Brendan Gallagher or Brendan Dhillion.

Overall this post was quite lengthy and took me about 2 hours to do (including research). However, it needed to be done considering the lack of attention the failings of Gillis are getting. I could have included more factors to present an even heavier emphasis on the terrible job Mike has done but as I said the post is LONG so I limited to core factors. Hope you guys enjoy. As always thoughts are welcome.

[DeNiro]

Hindsight is 20/20 with drafting. If GMs knew Karlsson would go on to become a point a game Norris winner, he would have been drafted 2nd or 3rd overall that year.

As for the other ones, same thing. Schroeder was highly ranked in the year he was drafted, and was a great pick for a team building around speed and skill. It's only now that the teams philosophy has changed that he doesn't seem to fit onto the team. He's still a great player though, and I think he will surprise alot of people next year, much like Hodgson did.

And I agree about trades. Gillis has made nothing but poor ones lately. The only good trades he made that panned out was the Ehrhoff trade, and the Higgins and Lapierre trades. He really needs to make a good deal on the Luongo trade, but I'm afraid his stubborness may prevent that.

[logic]

Name one GM who has drafted, signed, and traded completely perfect.

[Plum]

Gillis had made our prospect pool from D to B. Stop complaining our prospects aren't going to become superstars in a week and we got booth for cheap.

[snucks]

Without a coach and the same old manager what hope does that give fans for next season ? Could it be that they have banked on the huge numbers of die hard Canucks fans returning, no matter what. I think they need to not feline foot around with this but hire a new GM and coach now, maybe get some better scouts. There is more house cleaning needed. The players know what is needed. They have kept quiet so far, but they know what went wrong. Don't forget by this time in their hockey careers they have seen plenty and had lots of coaches and managers. Right now things don't look too optimistic for the Canucks.

[Master Mind]

AV didn't do a good enough job anyway. Whether it was his fault, or the players for tuning him out, we'll never know.

As for MG, he has made a lot of stupid moves, and has let people go that he should have kept. Though he did make a lot of good trades early on, like Ehrhoff, Higgins, and Lapierre.

I disagree in that I think he's made some really good free agent signings. Hamhuis, Tanev, Malhotra, Garrison to name a few. And Sundin had a very positive influence on the Sedins and Kesler, so that was a good signing. Though there were some bad ones, but those players are no longer with us.

The way he handled the goalie situation is the worst though. He should be gone for messing that up so badly.

[S.Gill]

Name one GM who has drafted, signed, and traded completely perfect.

[TIGER SINGH]

let's take a look at how there's a point in pointless threads

[canuckbeliever]

AV didn't do a good enough job anyway. Whether it was his fault, or the players for tuning him out, we'll never know.

As for MG, he has made a lot of stupid moves, and has let people go that he should have kept. Though he did make a lot of good trades early on, like Ehrhoff, Higgins, and Lapierre.

I disagree in that I think he's made some really good free agent signings. Hamhuis, Tanev, Malhotra, Garrison to name a few. And Sundin had a very positive influence on the Sedins and Kesler, so that was a good signing. Though there were some bad ones, but those players are no longer with us.

The way he handled the goalie situation is the worst though. He should be gone for messing that up so badly.

[canuckbeliever]

Name one GM who has drafted, signed, and traded completely perfect.

[shazzam]

MG has done alot of great things that makes this team a better organization. Perhaps he can focus on that and leave the GM duties to someone else.

[oldnews]

Redundant. Thread is redundant. Hopelessly redundant.

[smithers joe]

i disagree with much of your post....granted ballard didn't turn out like gillis planned for sure and every gm makes wrong choices at time but you have every thing he has done as wrong

i like booth and we were all happy when he plucked florida's favorite player from there....i still think if booth can stay healthy he will change your mind on him.

hodgson wanted out and the team needed to get tougher..don't write kassian off yet.

mathew schneider was well past his prime but was brought in for his experience to help the D...but he bocked at the amount of ice time he was getting.

marco sturm was a reclamation project that didn't work

pahlsson was a good gamble that wasn't as effective as he had been a couple of years earlier.

grabner wasn't as good defensively as raymond....he was a one trick pony that couldn't make it in florida either...i'm glad he is doing well now, but didn't fit the canucks back then.

i like roy a lot...i'ld love to be able to keep him but the cap says no.....he built ggod chemistry with higgins but when kesler came back, he got higgins as his winger....trying him with kesler didn;t work but who has been able to fit with kesler successfully?

sundin helped this team and kesler in particular...

true demitra didn't do enough and was injured a lot.

you can find drafting errors on every team...maybe better scouts would have helped.....

gillis made some poor decisions but a lot of your suggestions are just putting every thing he's done down without much thought behind them......

the jury is still out on booth, kassian, schroeder, corrado, jensen and kesler......

at what point in failing to find suitable linemates for kesler, do you question kesler?

gillis hasn't done that bad a job.....many of those moves, i would have done too.....

[Grapefruits]

Is this another "AV isn't to blame, it was all Gillis" thread? Because if it is, I can't be bothered to read it.

[SpinDrive]

2012-2013: Nothing

[canuckbeliever]

Is this another "AV isn't to blame, it was all Gillis" thread? Because if it is, I can't be bothered to read it.

[oldnews]

Ridiculious.

Free agents....ever heard of Dan Hamhius, Jason Garrison, Chris Tanev....Eddie Lack...?

The whole look-who-was-drafted-after-the-guy-we-selected thing is also hopelessly weak and easy.

Waste of time.

You're putting yourself in a class with yete and Pasific Coluseum.

[PowerAids]

That was one I wanted to mention but simply didn't because the article was quite long. Another is the fact that the Canucks can't land big guys or what I have dubbed as bridesmaid syndrome. In the last year alone they have been unable to get Justin Schultz, Shea Weber, Shane Doan and Ryane Clowe. In each one of these cases the Canucks were considered a contender.

[oldnews]

You really should stick with pumping Botchford's tires.

That was equally credible, but way more entertaining.

This one...a couple readable lines....and then straight downhill....again.

[TOMapleLaughs]

Now take another look at Burke's and Nonis's shortcomings. Such as watching the Sedins underdevelop for a decade, wasting the prime WCE years, not getting anything done in the playoffs, losing to an ultra-weak Minnesota team, not signing any significant free agent help at all, the ultra-shameful Bertuzzi incident, keeping Cloutier around, brutal drafting, Rucinsky, Sopel, Brad freakin' May.

I mean, let's take a look at the 40yrs of fail in this franchise before knocking the only extended period of success we ever had. M'kay?

2 hours? Good God what a waste of time.