I was thinking of updating my old article about Pierre Dorion’s trade track record, but it turns out CapFriendly conveniently already tracks that. Looking through his moves since my exploration in 2018, my impression is largely the same: Dorion does reasonably well when dumping players for assets, but his efforts to acquire talent to help the team win is awful (ie the amateur scouting is pretty good, while the pro scouting is not, which is nothing new for the org). Where my tracking cuts off in that article was prior to the summer trades of 2018, and it’s hard not to be slapped in the face with how much acquiring Matt Duchene cost versus how little they’ve received in moving him (it’s already down to Lassi Thomson for Duchene), or how there’s no hope of equal value from the Mark Stone trade (even if Erik Brannstrom and Egor Sokolov achieve their potential), or cluelessly acquiring Derek Stepan, and on and on. There are also baffling decisions like giving up a pick for Josh Brown‘s signing rights–a player who won’t be in the NHL in a few years. Ultimately, all Dorion has to do is make his owner happy, but as a fan I don’t know how there can be any trust left in him from the fanbase at this point (apparently there still is).
Speaking of bad deals, Travis Yost has a good article looking at why defensemen who don’t perform well get rewarded with contracts/ice time. Yost’s basic argument is that reputation plays a big role in how this happens, and I would add that size and physicality also matters.
While I think a buyout for Colin White was inevitable (due to how they work for a player his age), his shoulder injury makes that decision even simpler. I, along with others at the time, thought the contract he was given was ridiculous and that it serves as an example of how much Dorion struggles to project pro talent (I seem to be one of the few who understood how limited White‘s abilities were–we can see Nichols and Dom Luszczyszyn both fumbling with their estimations at the time–an impression I gained by watching him in the AHL , cf). With that said, he’s still a useful NHL player and it will be interesting to see how much impact his absence has.
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I won’t dwell on this much, but I came across a good (and succinct) video about Pierre McGuire and his past as a coach. For some fans there’s not much new here–McGuire is an old school guy who, when given an opportunity, was unable to thrive in his era. I don’t think he has much (if any) useful insight to offer the org, but I also don’t think his involvement is going to cause additional damage (Dorion is quite capable of that on his own).
This article is written by Peter Levi
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eyeonthesens 
[…] this is Dorion spending money to escape yet another error in judgement (something many, including me, foresaw when it happened). There was no reason, other than marketing, to sign White to the […]