Not Hating Gillis Anymore (As Much Anyway)

I am not a huge fan of Mike Gillis, as can be seen by my dozens of tweets and posts about his "stupidity," and overall ignorance when signing Free Agents (see "Marco Sturm signs one year $2.5 million deal with Canucks), and his hatred of my all-time favorite Canuck, Pavel Bure. However, this summer I have realized maybe I don't hate him, as much as I thought anyway.

After the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter deals, I realized something: Other than the Roberto Luongo contract, Ryan Kesler (four years left) and the newly signed Jason Garrison (six years), have the longest contracts on the Canucks. Gillis has not fallen into the trap almost every other General Manager has, signing players to obscenely long term deals.

Now this isn't always a bad thing. Henrik Zetterberg has nine years left on a 12 year deal, with a cap hit of $6 million per season, and I think anyone can say that was a good move. However, there are always the Rick DiPietro and Brian Campbell contracts to show it can be something that can handcuff a team.

Gillis, to my amazement, has been able to put together a perennial top tier team without a few of those. Could you imagine having Kesler on a deal with eight more years instead of four coming off two off-season injuries? How about Mason Raymond on an eight year $4 million plus deal?

Maybe Gillis was scared straight by the Luongo deal, or maybe he has yet to find that player he feels is worth a decade plus contract. Either way he has avoided handcuffing this team for the long-term, and that has caused me to gain a bit more patience with the man.