Toronto Maple Leafs: Ranking All 32 NHL General Managers
By Jeff Borsuk
The 11th Ranked GM – Stan Bowman (Chicago Blackhawks)
The GM for the 2022 Beijing Games U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team has a full time job in the NHL. It’s one he’s held for 12 years. Stan Bowman became the general manager of Blackhawks in 2009. Stan is the son of legendary coach and current Senior Advisor for the Hawks, Scotty Bowman.
The Good – There is a lot of good on Bowman’s resume but nothing can beat the three Stanley Cups he’s captured. While there were a lot of moves that were needed in order to make the necessary tweaks to help the club ascend to the peak of the league, it did help that there were stars already on the roster when Bowman joined the Hawks. They included Jonathan Towes, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook. Incredibly, Bowman managed to keep all four of those players in Chicago until Seabrook retired due to injury.
Somehow Bowman managed to convince the Oilers to take on the remainder of Keith’s contract this week. He even got compensated for it by receiving a 24 year old defender in Caleb Jones as well as a third round pick in this year’s draft.
The Bad – There have been a lot of transactions made during Bowman’s tenure. Many of them are good but there is no defending the trade he made in October of 2014 to ship out Nick Leddy. Bowman knew what he had with the dynamic defenseman but decided to move him for cap management’s sake.
Bowman traded Leddy along with Kent Simpson (who played only one career games in the NHL) to the Islanders for T.J. Brennan, Anders Nilsson and Ville Pokka. It was a meager return for a stud player. To make things worse, Leddy will be in the final year of the contract he signed with the Islanders. His contract carries a very reasonable $5.5M AAV.
The Ugly – If you’re thinking that the Leddy deal was ugly, well it does get worse. Bowman was behind the trade that sent Artemi Panarin to the Blue Jackets for a fifth round draft pick in 2018, goaltender Anton Forsberg and Brandon Saad.
In Forsberg’s six years in the NHL, he has played in a total of 56 games. He has collected 15 wins in that time. Saad was more useful. He had the best two seasons of his career immediately following the trade to Chicago. He collected 53 points both years. While that’s decent, it’s nothing compared to what the Bread Man was able to do.
Before being moved to Columbus, the lowest point total Panarin had was 74 points. Until this past year, playing in a shortened season, it was still his lowest. In 2020, Panarin finished third in Hart trophy voting when he registered 95 points in just 69 games. It wouldn’t be surprising if Bowman has nightmares about this terrible trade.