He should've gone first in my opinion. He offered almost nothing to the team positively and saddled them with that Loluongo contract.
I don't think anything he has done has made the team better, he's just the beneficiary of a good core from Nonis and Burke.
Not sure how many Canucks fans blame AV...? The ones I spoke to say it's Gillis.
I'll be honest. That is the biggest pile of shit I have ever heard. There's a lot of blame to go around Gillis for things, but there's just much praise for him as well. What has he done to make the team better? Well let's see.
- Signed and locked up our top 4 defense to long and below-market values contracts.
- Signed the Sedins to hilariously below market value contracts.
- Signed Alex Burrows to a even more hilariously below market value contracts.
- Signed Ryan Kesler to a below market value contract.
- Acquired and signed Chris Higgins and Max Lapierre, both of them who would late become core pieces of the team.
- Acquired pieces in 2010 that became a huge part of our cup run that year, including Malhotra, Hamhuis and Torres.
- Signs good prospects off of the free agent market/undrafted market: Tanev, Lack, Eriksson, McEneny
- Hired Laurence Gilman
- Traded garbage for Christian Ehrhoff
- Traded garbage for David Booth
Our best two defenseman from last season (Hamhuis/Garrison) are both entirely products of Gillis and came to Vancouver for very good value.
He's ensured that there exists a culture of taking hometown discounts to stay and help the team acquire more talent.
His draft record hasn't been great in his early years, but they've improved much more recently and his FA prospect finds have generally turned out into really good finds.
You can't even blame him for the Luongo contract considering that deal made absolute sense at the time. Hell, we had a top NHL goaltender making 5.3 million dollars a year against the cap, that is an incredible steal. And you want to talk about Luongo's albatross contract while completely ignoring the other similar contracts going on at the time? Hell. fucking Jonathan Quick got the exact same contract Luongo had and no one is bitching to LA about that.
I think for anything who believes Mike Gillis has been nothing but bad for this team is out of their fucking mind. He's made plenty of gaffes, most of which you can't really even blame him for. How was he going to predict that Keith Ballard, someone who was a consistent top-4 defenseman for his entire career, would've bombed in Vancouver? How would he know that David Booth would've gone on to acquire the wrath of the gods in his two season in Vancouver and refuse to stay healthy? At the time, those trades were absolutely good trades that anyone would've made. You cant' go ahead and blame the GM with 20/20 hindsight when things don't work out for unforseen reasons.
You want to talk about inheriting a good core from Nonis and Burke, but completely disregard that 2/3s of our top six defense is entirely the product of Mike Gillis.
