NHL: Ranking Each Team’s General Manager

Congratulations Joe Sakic, you are the worst general manager in the NHL! Let’s see how he got this low. First of all, the Colorado Avalanche are almost completely devoid of talent and skill. When Nail Yakupov has a pretty good shot at making your team, that’s not a good sign. Sven Andrighetto is an exciting player, but he shouldn’t be playing first line minutes. With the Avalanche, he has.

Secondly, Sakic seems afraid to completely rebuild despite his team needing it. The Avalanche are going to stink until they do a fire sale. Sakic has yet to trade Matt Duchene and his trade market seems to be dying off. Maybe he’s guilty of valuing his center way too highly. But whatever the reason, keeping Duchene around is just going to make things awkward.

Sakic could be the next NHL general manager to be let go. At the very least, he probably deserves to be.

Ken Holland of the Detroit Red Wings is the second longest tenured general manager in the NHL. That might not be true for much longer. For a while, Holland has evaded criticism by having a very long leash. You tend to get those when your team consistently makes the playoffs. But now that the Red Wings aren’t a perennial playoff team, Holland’s errors are starting to become incredibly obvious.

Detroit has a number of awful contracts on their team. Jimmy Howard, Justin Abdelkader, Danny DeKeyser and Darren Helm are just a few of them. Holland is to blame for those contracts. One could justify Howard’s deal because he was good when he signed it. But the final three? There’s no justifying signing those guys. In today’s “what have you done for me lately” NHL, Holland’s future isn’t looking too good.

Dale Tallon has won a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks, so it might be a bit surprising to see him this low. But this has more to do with what he has done with the Florida Panthers. Thus far, the team has made the playoffs once under him. For a while, despite not making the postseason, Tallon was doing a solid job by drafting very well. Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau come to mind.

But the past season was a farce for the Panthers. And Tallon has no one to blame for it but himself. Florida failed miserably with him in an executive position. Granted, it’s not his fault Barkov, Huberdeau and Nick Bjugstad each missed significant time with injuries. But the organization seemed to be in completely disarray and it’s hard to blame anyone but Tallon for that. He can redeem himself, as he was recently reinstated as the general manager. But so far, his moves aren’t looking good.