It is my unpopular opinion that Gillis had no real options when it came to handling the Luongo situation. Luongo went to the media first when he decided he wanted to be traded and handcuffed his GM. He signed a long ass contract, that would have been fine if he didn't get so rattled by the perception of him in the media, and he felt he needed to leave after the 2011 thing. Because of the lockout there was a moratorium on trading him at a time that would have been ideal, and when the lockout was resolved, the goalie market was not favourable, added to the fact that Lu would only agree to be traded to a very few specific teams and that those teams knew he wanted out. It really hurt Gillis' ability to move an elite goalie for a decent return. Schneider was also doing very well and couldn't play backup any longer, so the clock was ticking. It was a perfect shitstorm that would have been hell for any GM, but people like to throw blame on the guy in charge instead of recognizing that in such an impossible situation, he still netted us Markstrom (who still has potential) Matthias and Bo Horvat. Not so bad in retrospect.
He made a couple of 'errors' as a GM that people don't understand either. When he traded for Keith Ballard, KB was a top 2 dman in FLA, great move, but KB reacted poorly to going from so much ice time to being a 3rd pairing guy and was scratched a number of times because of it.
People think he gave away Grabner for nothing and Grabner turned out to be a scoring machine in NY so they blame him for that. In fact, Grabner couldn't make the cut at training camp numerous years and even after being traded couldn't make a shitty Panthers team. He washed out. It was only after he failed so hard that he began to take shit seriously and NY (another bad team in desperate need of talent) on a whim took a chance and he flourished. Where's Grabner now?
Gillis gets a lot of blame for how things worked out but I honestly couldn't expect anyone in his position to do a better job. Tough decisions, tough circumstances, and we still got out okay.
That said, I love Benning and his focus on stockpiling prospects makes me very excited for our future.