Emotionally in 2018
Joined: Nov. 2016
Posts: 9,290
Likes: 3,387
Now that Peter Chiarelli is gone, this is actually a pretty tough question. Holland just took over in Edmonton so it's tough to give it to him, given he's been decent with them to this point. Benning will probably be a popular choice, but I love the young talent he's accumulated, even with the bad contracts and a few questionable trades. So I won't say he's the worst. I can't totally blame Dorion for what's happening in Ottawa, since Melnyk's cheapness is forcing his hand a lot.
I'll go with Stan Bowman in Chicago. I saw this offseason as a chance to really give the Hawks the foreground for long term success, and instead he made a lot of questionable moves. He had the chance to have a future defense of Byram, Jokiharju, Boqvist, Beaudin, Gustafsson and Mitchell/Krys, but opted to go with Dach and Nylander instead. The trade for Olli Maatta is meh, although I am a fan of Calvin de Haan.
He's worked so hard to free up cap space so this team could add depth. And with it, he's added no substantial pieces to this team. Even though it makes sense why he opted to sign Lehner this year, I still feel that there were other areas that these team needed help besides having a total of $11M invested in two questionable goalies. The year before, he freed up money to sign Kunitz, Manning and Ward. Wastes of money.
Time will tell if he made the right call with a lot of these moves, but I don't like them right now. The offseason hasn't been terrible for Chicago, but I saw an opportunity for them to be clear winners, and they flopped. This is on top of all the prior moves he's made that have turned out poorly for the Hawks. To me, he's the worst GM in hockey right now.