And the Winner......

And the winner of the biggest head-scratcher of a personnel move is.....The New York Islanders! So let me get this straight...they hire Neil Smith along with Ted Nolan to revamp the team, and undo the damage that Mike Milbury did in the better part of a decade he was running the team. They sign some free agents, and are actually having a pretty good offseason.

Then they fire Smith, their new GM, after 41 days on the job. Fair enough, people make hiring mistakes and it's better to correct them immediately rather than let the team go in a direction you don't want it to go.

But then, his replacement as General Manager: Their backup freaking goalie, Garth Snow. Who has no personnel experience. What, is he going to acquire forwards based on how many times they've scored on him? If the Detroit Red Wings have been silently grooming Steve Yzerman for a front office job for ten years and he's still going to get his feet wet before being given a ton of responsibility, how do they expect Garth Snow to step in and rebuild a team? How do they expect a guy to go from rooming with Rick DiPietro to negotiating a new contract for him?

On another note, how did that conversation go?

Charles Wang: "Hey Garth, it's the Wanger. You know, I've been thinking, this backup goalie thing isn't really working out so well for you."

Snow: "I wouldn't go that far."

Wang: "I would. You were like 4 and 15 last year."

Snow: "They took away my gigantic shoulder pads."

Wang: "Anyway, we were thinking. Rather than being our backup goalie, how would you like to be our GM?"

I mean seriously. I hope Ted Nolan was nice to him for the first month of his tenure because Snow just went from being his backup goalie to his boss. Additionally, his goalie's salary will still count against the cap for the next two years apparently.

And as EJ Hradek points out in the article I linked above, Snow will need a mentor. His idea of whom that could be should strike fear in the hearts of all Islanders fans:

In learning the job, Snow will have to lean on someone. That someone likely will
be Milbury, who's the only guy in the building with any GM experience.

Yikes.