Yesterday it was shocking to announce that the Toronto Maple Leafs hired former longtime New Jersey Devils General Manager Lou Lamoriello as their new GM. Lamoriello had been the GM of the Devils since 1987, before stepping down this past May but remained team president before leaving to go to the Leafs.
Lamoriello is a hall of fame GM for building the Devils into a Cup contender for most of his 28 years on the job. They missed the playoffs only six times since he's been there (although four times have occurred in his last five seasons there) and have won the Stanley Cup three times while losing twice more in 2001 and 2012.
Lamoriello is a living legend if you will and his time in New Jersey should be celebrated minus the fact if you are like myself, you hated the Devils and their stupid Neutral Zone Trap which helped really ruin the game of hockey. Nevertheless, the Leafs are doing something teams especially a big market like Toronto tend to do and that's reach for the past.
Of course Buffalo teams were really good at that but thankfully under the Pegula ownership, both Bills and Sabres are no longer doing that (http://buffalosportsbeat.blogspot.com/2015/06/im-glad-sabres-no-longer-reaching-in.html). I am mush more happy we have a young more progressive GM in Tim Murray then the old guard who has great ideas from about 20-25 years ago but does not have a clue in this day in age.
Now Lamoriello is not a part of the Leafs organization ever, but his past success is still reaching for past success with another team I might add. It is said that he drafted current Leafs President Brendan Shanahan so they have a good relationship. He was successful with the Devils in the past, the key word is WAS. Lamoriello was very successful, maybe most successful GM prior to the 2004-05 lockout with all three of his Cups in his first 17 years as GM. Post 04-05 Lockout was not as successful. While the Devils won four division titles in the first five years post 04-05 lockout (ironically same amount of division titles in his first 17 years), the Devils failed to make it out of the second round each year with three times losing in the first round.
The last five years of his tenure saw the Devils miss the playoffs four times with one notable exception being that they made it all the way to the Cup Finals in 2012, where they lost to the Los Angeles Kings. One of the biggest reasons for the decline was that Martin Brodeur was not the elite goalie (while still pretty good) as he was before the lockout. His numbers steadily declined as his save percentage kept going down each year and his playoff numbers and performances (minus the 2012 run to the finals) were bad, really bad as he was a shell of his former self.
Other reasons include Lamoriello's ability to be penny pinching, which worked for some time when they had really great talent on the blue line along with a hall of fame goalie in his prime. All that starts to catch up as they lost talented players such as Brian Gionta, Scott Gomez, and Zach Parise as he let them walk and trading away other key veterans (such as Jamie Langenbrunner) or letting them walk in free agency.
Losing Parise was especially tough as he failed to get a deal done before he became an unrestricted free agent after the 2011-12 run to the finals. Actually, Parise was an unrestricted free agent in 2011, but signed a one-year deal to remain after he missed most of the season with a knee injury, but Lamoriello failed to lock him up long term and he's been doing great in Minnesota while New Jersey struggles to be competitive.
He did trade for Ilya Kovalcyuk in 2010 and managed to sign him to a 15-year, $100 million deal that saw him fight with the NHL which was eventually solved, but not without the NHL fining them and taking away a first round pick for circumventing the salary cap originally. Kovalchuk's deal hurt the Devils' cap space as in 2010-11, that along with injures forced them to dress as few as 15 players at one point in a game and management came under intense scrutiny for that.
Kovalchuk was very productive in New Jersey and I don't blame Lamoriello one bit for signing him because they were terrible offensively minus Parise during these years. Kovalchuk suddenly "retired" from the NHL in 2013 and went back to Russia to play in the KHL. That hurt the Devils even more. Kovalchuk might have cost them a chance at re-signing Parise or maybe they thought they would lose him, whatever.
I can't blame Lamoriello for these moves, maybe should have done a better job with Parise so he made some moves out of desperation. He's signed old, past-their-prime players such as Shanahan, Brian Rolston, Bobby Holik, Petr Sykora, and Henrik Tallinder during his final decade there. To help make up for the loss of both Parise and Kovalchuk in 2013, Lamoriello decided to trade a top-10 pick for goalie Cory Schneider.
Schneider is very good and has been very good for New Jersey. But they thought they can get back to the old glory days of finding an elite goalie to make up for a loss of offense, which does not happen in this day of age. You don't need a big time, big money goalie you need elite forwards. Schneider is in a seven-year deal with a $6 million a year cap hit. That's a recipe for disaster. I like Schneider a lot, he's one of my favorite goalies, but he's in no man's land with no elite players in front of him which won't lead to a ton of success.
That's just Lamoriello reaching for the past of defense and elite goaltending, which is not that game anymore. Lamoriello gets credit and rightfully so for winning, but he gets too much credit like many who are successful for a long period of time for developing a "culture of winning" and "building a winner." If you know me you know that I think that whole culture of winning is a crock. Well it's not but only if you get great players and win. Then and only then do you build a culture of winning. It's not something you go into a locker room or front office and just say you're going to do it and make up some phony things that lead to building a winning culture.
Perfect example a few years ago, the Kansas City Chiefs hired Scott Pioli from the New England Patriots to run their team. He was from a winning culture known as "the Patriot way." He tried to establish that same culture in Kansas City by doing such small and petty BS things like make sure trash is picked up by placing a candy bar wrapper and see if anyone cleans it up and throw a fit if no one does. If you think I am kidding, go Google it. How did that work out? He and his cronies were fired in less than four years with one of the worst teams in the NFL. What about that winning culture? It turned out they couldn't bring Tom Brady with them.
So how did Lamoriello build a winning culture? It wasn't because he placed trash and made sure people picked it up or cleaned the bathrooms. It was because he found great players, especially in the draft. He obviously hit on Brodeur and Patrik Elias in late first and second rounds, drafting Shanahan 2nd overall, and even signing or trading for star players that were drafted at the top of the draft for other teams like Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer.
Some of Lou's bizarre tactics such as firing coaches just before the regular season and even appointing himself as head coach, signing cheap veterans, and letting players go worked because they kept come of their best players and just fit the pieces around them. He kept the great players like Brodeur, Stevens, Niedermayer, and Elias while letting other replaceable players go. It's as simple as that.
Great players build a winning culture and the GMs, scouts, and coaches get ridiculous amounts of credit for star players. Chicago was terrible for a long, long time maybe because the culture in the locker room or bathroom or wherever was awful. People must not have been picking up their candy bar wrappers and now maybe finally someone has taken the initiative to clean up the mess. That or they were so bad and got a lot of great players like Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews at the top of the draft but believe whatever you want. The reason I laugh and take shots at takes like these is because it's total nonsense and BS.
Speaking of being terrible and finishing at the top of the draft for great players, the Devils really should have done that last season. Last season, they really should have went after McEichel by bottoming out. Instead, they finished with the sixth-worst record in the NHL and were 24 points behind the Sabres for 30th, yet finished 21 points out of the playoffs. That's even worse than the Flyers did (http://buffalosportsbeat.blogspot.com/2015/07/flyers-are-in-terrible-cap-situation.html) as both organizations are going nowhere fast.
People hate bottoming out but that's what you have to do if you want to get great players to contend and win the Stanley Cup, unless you're lucky and can get a big time free agent, but those days are no more. I for one am glad the Sabres decided to take the bottoming out role and getting Jack Eichel instead of middling it for years and years to come.
I am no way saying that Lamoriello doesn't deserve the credit for what he's done overall. However, it should be noted the last 5-10 years did not go too well and I don't expect him to come in a build a winner in Toronto. I like the way Toronto is doing their rebuild and if they want to be successful, hopefully they don't go the role of Lamoriello and how he build the Devils in recent years. He was successful, but I'm glad the Sabres are not reaching for the past in their organization or off other successful organizations.
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