NHL: Ranking Each Team’s General Manager

There are 31 general managers in the NHL. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Here’s how they stack up against each other. 

The NHL is full of general managers. There are 31 of them. Not all of them are excellent at what they do. But to be fair, it’s a job no one would wish on even their worst enemy. Being a general manager is tough. You have to make very difficult decisions and most people will judge your success based on how many times you win the Stanley Cup. That’s something only one team each year can win.

There are good general managers and bad ones. But all of them are flawed. Which ones are better than the others? How do you judge front offices moves? In this power ranking, I will attempt to do that.

The criteria are as follows. First of all, how many good moves has each NHL general manager made? Also, how many bad ones have they made and how do their good moves and bad moves compare? Secondly, success is important. That includes winning in the regular season and postseason. The Stanley Cup playoffs are cruel and heartless, so I gave a little bit more value to the regular season.

But most of all, the big question was “how much does this GM help his team win”. Being an NHL general manager is a huge responsibility. There’s a lot involved in it, including getting the right pieces for your coach. The best GMs are those that work the best with their coaching staff and organization.

Each general manager has been put in a specific tier, depending on their experience and how good they are. The first tier includes those who can’t be fairly judged yet, for one reason or another. After that, the tiers increase depending on how good a general manager is. The difference between the bad general managers and the good ones is small, so this was a hard list to put out. But I attempted to explain my logic behind each ranking.