Worse GM: Milbury or Chiarelli

[PenguinHunter]

Don't forget the DiPietro deal!

I feel bad for that goalie DiPietro kid that is coming up in the Vancouver system.

[lucafen4]

Uhhhh. Andrew Raycroft!?!

That's pretty much implied with Rask - it was Rask FOR Raycroft

[tweetdrivr]

Let’s not forget some of Chiarelli’s Bruins trades too...
Versteeg for Bochenski
Soderberg for Toivanen (??)
Mark Stuart and Blake Wheeler for Rich Peverly and Valabik (??)
Seguin, Peverly, and Button for Erickson, Smith, Fraser, and Morrow

So many bad trades

[Axeman33]

Let’s not forget some of Chiarelli’s Bruins trades too...
Versteeg for Bochenski
Soderberg for Toivanen (??)
Mark Stuart and Blake Wheeler for Rich Peverly and Valabik (??)
Seguin, Peverly, and Button for Erickson, Smith, Fraser, and Morrow

So many bad trades

Trading Soderberg's rights wasn't a big deal because the Bruins weren't going to re-sign him when he became a UFA. Instead they watched Colorado overpay for him. No biggie there.

And it's easy to look back now and think the Wheeler deal was a bad one but at the time it really wasn't that bad. Wheeler was an inconsistent player for the B's and Peverley became a huge part of the Bruins Cup winning team. Sure, hindsight is 20/20 but at the time, this trade was actually considered a win for the Bruins if you go back and read the reports when the deal happened. I might even put this one down as one of the smarter trades he's made, seeing as this probably pushed them to win the Cup.

At least that's my opinion those two deals.

[tweetdrivr]

Hindsight is 20/20. Was the Schultz trade bad? Was the Hall trade bad? Was the Eberle trade bad? Was the Seguin trade bad? In every single one of those trades I listed in that previous post Chiarelli swapped long term solid upside NHL players for fringe NHL/career minor league talent. We all thought Marc Bergevin’s off season moves were going to result in a mess in Montreal but they’ve been a pleasant surprise. Hindsight tells us Marc Bergevin is a little better at his job (evaluating the way the game is currently played and how players will play it) than we thought and emphasizes that Chiarelli is indeed not. He is by far the worst GM of these two.

[Axeman33]

The difference though, in the Wheeler trade, it was a tilting point in bringing the Cup to the Bruins. In that case, it worked. That's why I didn't consider it a bad trade like you did. You have your opinion on it, I have mine.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending Chiarelli and thinking he is a good GM. That's not the case at all. That being said, every NHL GM makes good trades and bad ones. EVERY NHL GM!!! Some work, some don't. That Wheeler trade worked out for both parties. It helped the Bruins win the Cup and I think most Bruins fans back when that trade happened would do it over and over again if it meant they'd win the Stanley Cup. Wheeler got a fresh start somewhere else. It still took him a few years after that trade before he became the player we know today though.

I don't know you, or have a clue how old you are, but I am old enough to remember being in my 30s during the Milbury years in NY. Those were not great years for Islander fans, much like Chiarelli wasn't great for the Oilers. I'm guessing you aren't old enough to appreciate how bad Milbury was at the time.

[tweetdrivr]

I’m 47. I remember the Islanders under Milburry. I remember absolutely losing it when David Volek scored in OT of game 7 in ‘93. We all hated the Pens back then. I remember Hunter running Turgeon after the goal the previous round. I’ve beem around for a while. Milbury was an idiot no doubt but Milbury was terrible at evaluating players and favored the grand gesture (DiPietro at #1, the Yashin Contract) over solid player evaluation. Chiarelli was terrible at evaluating players AND the game. The Lucic contract is the perfect example. Too much money and too much term for an aging player whose role the game had already left behind. I don’t see the Wheeler trade as being crucial to the cup win. How could they have brought the player along instead of trading him away? How nice would it be for Marchand or Pasternak to have him to play with now? We’ll never know because he was traded away because the GM was unable to see how he’d play the game or help realize his potential to be an asset to the organization. You can always hindsight any GMs moves. But I think Chiarelli’s record shows that no other GM has been as bad as he has at evaluting the game and where it was going while developing, evaluating AND retaining players who would be effective long term assets to the team. It’s almost like he was trying to make his teams demonstrably worse.

[newfcollins]

I voted Chiarelli. He made those moves all by himself. I feel like although Milbury made some awful moves, he was forced to do some of them by owner Charles Wang. Wang is the guy who chose a back-up goalie to be the GM, hired Neil Smith as GM and fired him 40 days later,

According to this New York Times article:

Mike Milbury, a former general manager of the Islanders, recalled that Wang wanted to get rid of the team’s scouts (to rely on the league’s central scouting system) and try out sumo wrestlers as goaltenders.

“He assumed that nobody could put a goal past a sumo wrestler,” Milbury said in a telephone interview from Boston.

Wang’s penchant for some peculiar long-term contracts might forever cling to him.

In 2001, he signed Alexei Yashin to a 10-year, $87.5 million contract. But Yashin was not the superstar Wang hoped for, and Wang paid him nearly $18 million to buy out the remaining four years of the deal.

Milbury said he wished he had balked at the deal, “but it was his money.” Soon after, Wang gave Michael Peca a five-year deal; Milbury said he managed to talk Wang out of giving Peca 10 years, too.

Five years later, Wang wielded his checkbook to give goaltender Rick DiPietro what was then the longest contract in N.H.L. history: $67.5 million over 15 years. At the time, Wang said that “this is not a big deal,” and that it was no different than some other major commitments in his business career.

[Axeman33]

At the end of the day, both were terrible. Google "Mike Milbury Worst Moves" and there's plenty of pages that pop up. You can do the same for Chiarelli. I don't know how one can differentiate between the two to say one is worse than the other LOL!

And yes, Wang probably had some say in signing "some" of the contracts but it's hard to say how much influence in some of the head scratching trades Milbury made.

Both were a disaster for their respective franchises.

[LordoftheRinks]

I have to give the (negative) edge to Milbury... not only a horrible horrible GM, but every time he opens his mouth as hockey analyst he continues to reinforce his state of idiocracy.

[The Guvnah]

Recency bias is the only thing making this close. Chiarelli won a Cup at least. It's like Milbury had an aversion to good players.

[forsbergfan]

Chiarelli was really bad, and has left the Oilers in a horrible position, but it's hard to compare to Milbury, who did the same thing (at best) for many more years. Chia traded Hall for Larsson - well, Milbury got a whole lot less for Luongo. I think that just the 1999 and 2000 drafts are enough to give this one to Mad Mike. Trades away the rights to Spezza, gets absolutely nothing for Lou then drafts DiPietro (who there were plenty of question marks at the time) over Heatley and Gaborik.
To put this into perspective, the best thing that happened to the Oilers since Chiarelli took over was drafting McDavid. Now, obviously that had nothing to do with Chia, since any bonehead would have made that pick. Well.....any bonehead besides for Milbury, who would have found a way to trade the pick for virtually nothing. Yes, he was that bad!
And I don't buy the whole Charles Wang thing. Wang might have told him to give Yashin that crazy extension, but did Wang force him to trade Spezza in order to acquire him in the first place. Did Wang force Milbury to totally destroy potential franchise goalie Tommy Salo's confidence in arbitration (I don't even think Wang owned the team yet).

[butch]

Chiarelli was really bad, and has left the Oilers in a horrible position, but it's hard to compare to Milbury, who did the same thing (at best) for many more years. Chia traded Hall for Larsson - well, Milbury got a whole lot less for Luongo. I think that just the 1999 and 2000 drafts are enough to give this one to Mad Mike. Trades away the rights to Spezza, gets absolutely nothing for Lou then drafts DiPietro (who there were plenty of question marks at the time) over Heatley and Gaborik.
To put this into perspective, the best thing that happened to the Oilers since Chiarelli took over was drafting McDavid. Now, obviously that had nothing to do with Chia, since any bonehead would have made that pick. Well.....any bonehead besides for Milbury, who would have found a way to trade the pick for virtually nothing. Yes, he was that bad!
And I don't buy the whole Charles Wang thing. Wang might have told him to give Yashin that crazy extension, but did Wang force him to trade Spezza in order to acquire him in the first place. Did Wang force Milbury to totally destroy potential franchise goalie Tommy Salo's confidence in arbitration (I don't even think Wang owned the team yet).

prior to wang opening up the purse strings on the payroll to a more reasonable number (40/45 mil) milbury was forced to do some weird things while managing the team under the milstein/gluckstern ownership . I think teams like the rangers , wings had payrolls into the 70,80 million dollar range (prior to sal cap era obviously) while Milbury was given 17/20 million as his budget . I had read somewhere that Bettman had to step in to prevent Palffy going to the rangers for a cash offer of 10 million ; shady shit like that etc...