Nonis was a terrible GM. His only good draft was 2004, which is hard to credit to Nonis because he had JUST taken over from Burke. Similar to how it's hard to credit Gillis with the 2008 draft as he had JUST taken over from Nonis (not that we got anyone good out of that draft aside from Cody Hodgson who, as has been reported, was picked by Gillis overruling our scouts who wanted to go with Beach). The Luongo trade was nice, but it wouldn't have happened if Florida ownership did not insist on not taking back salary (Luongo was set to be dealt for Joe Thornton prior to that).RoyalDude wrote:
C'mon Blobbybelly...with his track record at trading and drafting/developing prospects ya don't expect eyebags Gillis to actually make a good trade for the long term benefit of this organization do ya? His eye for talent leaves a lot to be desired. But hey, I can't win against the Gillis apologists around here. With the young up and coming talented whipper snapper teams surrounding us in our division, ie the Oilers, Avalanche and Wild ya just know that the Flames and Canucks, whom both share the same MGMT philosophies are in a transitional phase, ie their time at the top is coming to a close but Gillis has zero talent for the future, take note of the fact that the Canucks, at end of season, were the only team in the NHL whom did not have a player on their roster whom they had drafted from the last 5 draft classes.
Hell, Nonis kicks Gillis ass in drafting at only 3 years when compared to Gillis 5. Shite, can you imagine if Bourdon was still with us? Gillis should be thankful for Nonis drafting and acquiring Schneider and Luongo. Just those two Nonis players make Nonis a mere fucking GM'ing geniuse right up their with Jake fucking Milford.
In 2005 we passed up on Anze Kopitar (huge mistake), and only have Mason Raymond to show from it.
In 2006 we have nothing to show from it, and the only decent player drafted was Grabner (who in 2010 was put on waivers by Florida).
In 2007 we have nothing to show from it, and we passed up on David Perron (huge mistake) for a guy who right now is playing in the German tier 3 league.
Nonis took a team that was a division champion and turned it into a team that missed the playoffs 2 out of 3 seasons. We had no direction, no offense, and had to rely on Luongo to win us games. Gillis has taken pieces that he inherited and supplemented them with quality pieces necessary to take this team to the next step. He's not completely done his job yet as we still have holes that he needs to address (and hasn't addressed), but we're certainly in a better position under Gillis than we were under Nonis.