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NHL General Manager Lineage

The winningest active GM is now the most proficient mentor in the inter-connected world of NHL executives.

By Derek Zona
A man alone and a man with a large clan.
A man alone and a man with a large clan.
Bruce Bennett

When I last looked at NHL General Manager lineage, I found the largest influence came from a surprising source:

One of the fascinating aspects of the old boys' club in the NHL is the inter-connectedness of everyone involved. In an effort to figure out the relationships between everyone involved, I put together an NHL General Manager family tree. Only four of the current 30 General Managers aren't connected in some historical way to other General Managers. The biggest surprise? Baz Bastien's "genetic" heritage.

Bastien's influence is still widespread in the NHL.

*Click to enlarge the chart below. Get the full-sized chart here.

Gm_lineage

  • Baz Bastien continues to have the most descendants with 5, but Glen Sather now has 5 as well thanks to the addition of Jarmo Kekäläinen, and he's still a current General Manager, so the Sather tree has 6 total members.
  • 4 General Managers have no association with previous executives and haven't seen any proteges promoted to GM.
  • Bob Pulford and Phil Esposito both have 3 active descendants in their trees and the Pulford influence extends into the Ferguson tree.

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