Management Discussion | Just Have a Plan

[MS]

Teams don't rebuild from bottom 5 prospect pool + cap maxed + not even close to playoffs?

I gotta disagree with you there MS.

Having a couple of early 20s superstars and a bunch of just turning 30 bad contracts isn't enough.

Teams don’t tank/rebuild when they have a quality core of mid-20s players like this team has. Ever. There isn’t a single case in NHL history that I can see.

Teams tank when they’re at the end of a competitive cycle and have zero prime-age (22-28 or so) players and zero hope of competing. Chicago and Montreal were in that position. SJ is in that position and should be selling everything. Nashville will be in that position in a year or two. We are not in that position. And no owner ever would sign off on blowing up a team from the position we are in.

And I’ll keep repeating that we actually have one of the lower amounts committed to 30+ players long-term in the league. Fan perspective is very skewed here.

 

[Hoglander]

I don't get the impression that they learned anything from their mistakes, they will make the exact same ones again. As soon as they make cap space, they'll fill it up again. Instead of building up assets, they will discard them for age-gappers. I've no doubt that the meddling child-beater is making them continue along the same path, and Rutherford is trying to take one for the team here, but it just makes them all look like no-plan idiots that are about to embark on the same sort of re-tool failure that they've been trying for years.

This team is going to suck for at least the rest of this decade, and probably beyond. New owners is the only solution, and until then we are just wasting our time as fans.

 

[RayMartyniukTotems]

Hello Canucks fans I come in Peace...How about dealing Horvat,Q Hughes and Pearson to New Jersey for Bratt,Holtz,N Foote,McLeod,Nemec,Mukhamadullin,Bahl,Daws and New Jersey's first rounders in 2023 and 2025

 

[arttk]

If you took any team in the NHL and gave them .879 goaltending they are going to suck.

Look what happened to Seattle last year. Turns out they actually weren’t that bad when not getting historically terrible goaltending.

We’d be somewhere around the playoff bubble right now if Demko was playing at the level of 2020-22. Or we were getting what Markstrom provided 2018-2020.

There are obviously some major issues here but the tantrum fans are having is actually blowing my mind.

Demko returning worries me. Might ruin our tank.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

If you took any team in the NHL and gave them .879 goaltending they are going to suck.

Look what happened to Seattle last year. Turns out they actually weren’t that bad when not getting historically terrible goaltending.

We’d be somewhere around the playoff bubble right now if Demko was playing at the level of 2020-22. Or we were getting what Markstrom provided 2018-2020.

There are obviously some major issues here but the tantrum fans are having is actually blowing my mind.

Seattle isn't even getting very good goal-tending.

Their main goalies Grubauer and Jones are both under 0.900 save %'s too.

 

[Warh1ppy]

Another year with Myers or buyout with retention I vote buyout every time.


Buying out OEL needs to happen you can’t have a guy like that on your hockey team. That guy is like water on wood- rot.

If you could retain that $2.4 million and trade him you do it.

Buying him out to eat $2.4 million in dead cap through 2031 is insanity.

Be logical

 

[MS]

Seattle isn't even getting very good goal-tending.

Their main goalies Grubauer and Jones are both under 0.900 save %'s too.

It’s gone from ‘worst in the NHL by a mile’ to just ‘kind of bad’.

Last year they were .024 worse than the league average, this year they are .008 worse. It’s a pretty big difference.

 

[quat]

So they are really doing what JB are doing and trying to get other teams failed projects... unbelievable. Its clear this is what blueberry boy wants

Dont want picks because it could be 4-5 years.. getting picks is better because atleast you get cap space to weaponize and can use those picks to get actual decent players via trade instead of failed prospects

Where is the chipmunk??? Why is jr doing the talking

Whenever you hear a GM talking about how picks won't be producing results for years, you know you're speaking to someone who's flushing your team down the toilet. It's trotted out as an excuse for selling the future to support what is most often a futile effort to cover up a poorly built team.

Before someone gets excited to point out you can't build a team entirely through the draft, I'll point out that this is just another important arrow in the quiver and you have to always be adding to your annual picks until the time is right to spend your top picks to support a club that's got a chance at a cup.

Doing what Benning did for his entire tenure, and what our present clown show is continuing to do is productive of nothing but more failure.

 

[quat]

In the end it was a fairly average tank and rebuild given how well some of the picks turned out.

Teams don’t do a second tank/rebuild from the position we’re in with the players we have. It’s actually ridiculous to be haranguing management about it when there isn’t a single owner in the NHL that would be signing off on it.

Being crappy isn't tanking. Tanking is something done with intention. What they've done is failing really well. We're seeing more of the same with new Management. I'd like to add, that trading Miller and not resigning Boeser is not tanking/

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Who's letting Aquilini "off the hook"? We all know he is the primary problem. I've said that.

That doesn't mean JR/Allvin haven't done a bad job, even given the mandate they've been stuck with (and willingly accepted).

Hey man, ultimately, Aqua can do what he wants with the team. He bought it. It's his plaything. If you want to carry water for guys who carry water for Aqua, be my guest.

Who said anything about not criticizing management as well? I've said and continue to say the Jims and their lackeys are symptoms and FA is the disease. I think we are in agreement here, are we not? Something I'm missing?

 

[MS]

Being crappy isn't tanking. Tanking is something done with intention. What they've done is failing really well. We're seeing more of the same with new Management. I'd like to add, that trading Miller and not resigning Boeser is not tanking/

90% of the value of a tank is getting top-10 draft picks. We had 6 of those.

Whether it was intended or not, it was a tank and the result was a total rebuild and a totally new core.

 

[Bobby Digital]

More retool on the fly BS. This management group is basically Benning 2x. This team is going to be irrelevant for so long.

 

[arttk]

Being crappy isn't tanking. Tanking is something done with intention. What they've done is failing really well. We're seeing more of the same with new Management. I'd like to add, that trading Miller and not resigning Boeser is not tanking/

True, I don’t think Benning retooled either. He just did stuff and ended up creating one of the worst team in Canucks history and got a bunch of high picks and f***ed up half of that as well. Every year was yeah baby we are going to make the playoffs and then it turns to meaningful games in march and then he disappears.
There was no retool, no rebuild, just random stupid shit.

 

[lawrence]

Hello Canucks fans I come in Peace...How about dealing Horvat,Q Hughes and Pearson to New Jersey for Bratt,Holtz,N Foote,McLeod,Nemec,Mukhamadullin,Bahl,Daws and New Jersey's first rounders in 2023 and 2025

what's the best you can do for Horvat.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

True, I don’t think Benning retooled either. He just did stuff and ended up creating one of the worst team in Canucks history and got a bunch of high picks and f***ed up half of that as well. Every year was yeah baby we are going to make the playoffs and then it turns to meaningful games in march and then he disappears.
There was no retool, no rebuild, just random stupid shit.

You could argue that his first season was a mildly successful retool by bringing in a new coach, Miller, Vrbata, Bonino, etc. and making the playoffs after a disappointing year. He immediately undid all of that quickly though.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

Teams don’t tank/rebuild when they have a quality core of mid-20s players like this team has. Ever. There isn’t a single case in NHL history that I can see.

Teams tank when they’re at the end of a competitive cycle and have zero prime-age (22-28 or so) players and zero hope of competing. Chicago and Montreal were in that position. SJ is in that position and should be selling everything. Nashville will be in that position in a year or two. We are not in that position. And no owner ever would sign off on blowing up a team from the position we are in.

And I’ll keep repeating that we actually have one of the lower amounts committed to 30+ players long-term in the league. Fan perspective is very skewed here.

Who are we counting in this core of mid-20s players? Cause from everything that seems to be going on they will be trading at least one of them...

 

[arttk]

You could argue that his first season was a mildly successful retool by bringing in a new coach, Miller, Vrbata, Bonino, etc. and making the playoffs after a disappointing year. He immediately undid all of that quickly though.

True, yeah I guess trading away Kes and Garrison are big enough moves to constitute as a retool

Who are we counting in this core of mid-20s players? Cause from everything that seems to be going on they will be trading at least one of them...

When Jr said they might do something unpopular to get a center and RHD, I get a sense that they might want to pull the trigger on Quinn.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

90% of the value of a tank is getting top-10 draft picks. We had 6 of those.

Whether it was intended or not, it was a tank and the result was a total rebuild and a totally new core.

I've seen you say the post you quoted before, and that we never really rebuilt. Which I agree with. The tank result was a matter of half-assing a lot of things very poorly. Typically, during a tank or rebuild, whatever you will call it, you accumulate draft capital as well which we never did. We sure did spend a lot of draft capital though. Then we spent heavy on win-now moves in free agency under the guise of mentorship or whatever.

They/one/whoever can claim they are buying a duck, want to be a duck owner, make a pond, but it you end up with a chicken who's head is painted green everyone will know it's just a chicken.

 

[MS]

True, I don’t think Benning retooled either. He just did stuff and ended up creating one of the worst team in Canucks history and got a bunch of high picks and f***ed up half of that as well. Every year was yeah baby we are going to make the playoffs and then it turns to meaningful games in march and then he disappears.
There was no retool, no rebuild, just random stupid shit.

Again, the intent wasn't to tank and rebuild but the effect was.

- we finished at the bottom of the league for 5 years.
- we had 6 top-10 selections in the draft.
- the only players remaining from the 2015 playoff team at the start of 19-20 (the year we sort-of made the playoffs next) were Edler, Tanev, and Horvat (a rookie in 2015). Basically the entire roster was turned over in 4 years.

That wasn't a re-tool, in terms of how it turned out. A bunch of stupid contracts signed during the unintentional tank just forced them to bleed veterans in 2020 at a point where they should have been augmenting the young core they'd created to move forward.

Who are we counting in this core of mid-20s players? Cause from everything that seems to be going on they will be trading at least one of them...

Pettersson, Hughes, Demko, Kuzmenko, Horvat. Miller is late 20s.

As I've said, I wouldn't be trading any of them. I'd be far more aggressive in terms of moving cap than they've been and signing both Kuzmenko and Horvat.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

It’s gone from ‘worst in the NHL by a mile’ to just ‘kind of bad’.

Last year they were .024 worse than the league average, this year they are .008 worse. It’s a pretty big difference.

They are on pace for 30 less goals this year, they were 9th worst in Goals against. This year they are right in the middle at 16th worst.

Amusingly both they and the Canucks had the worst PKs in the league last year (along with Anahiem) and this year they again have the worst PK in the league with the Canucks.

 

[hookshott]

Look at the buyout structure and penalties associated with the obvious targets.

Now look at that same number for retention.

Buyouts add extra years of dead cap vs retention that may help turn those targets in to viable trade assets.

If we buyout Miller, we'd be paying a minimum of $1.5 million until 2037. OEL, $2.4 million through 2031. If you retain $2.4 million in OEL or $1.5 million on Miller, every team in the league is asking about them and you save at+ years of dead cap

So true. Do it Jim!

 

[gringo]

If you could retain that $2.4 million and trade him you do it.

Buying him out to eat $2.4 million in dead cap through 2031 is insanity.

Be logical

Is there a team that wants flamingOEL even at that price? That’s illogical. No one invites cancer into their locker room. except Jim Benning and Weisbrod.

 

[God]

Seattle had two parts of their inaugral season. One was when their goaltending was atrocious. The other was when it started getting better. I wanna say that was in late February/early March but I don't remember.

 

[me2]

So they are really doing what JB are doing and trying to get other teams failed projects... unbelievable. Its clear this is what blueberry boy wants

Dont want picks because it could be 4-5 years.. getting picks is better because atleast you get cap space to weaponize and can use those picks to get actual decent players via trade instead of failed prospects

Where is the chipmunk??? Why is jr doing the talking

He's not rebuilding, he wants to be better, he's also going for 1st overall.

He wants to run out the clock on bad contracts and buyout contracts.

He wants to create more cap but sign random non-core UFAs.

He wants to build around the core together and trade core pieces.

He pretty much promised everything to everyone, people can hear the bits they want

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Demko returning worries me. Might ruin our tank.

Our tank was ruined the minute we signed the Boeser and Miller contracts. Though it seems they are trying their best, the team constructed is underperforming right now and they are mid-gauntlet. The weaker opponents are coming.