I think it's pretty fair for fans to just be annoyed or frustrated about the fact that we are just running back the same team with some sparkly adds. This is a team that has had years to develop and coalesce into a good squad, and we just haven't seen it happen even to the degree that they make the playoffs fair & square, something that half the teams in the league do every year.
Petey having a star year or a few big jumps elsewhere on the roster could be the catalyst to become a surefire playoff team, but after this time it seems to stretch credulity that we as fans should have faith that it IS going to happen.
I agree that we shouldn't be condemning the Rutherford era based on their work so far, but as a progress report I don't think that we can give them too much glowing praise, ever within the confines of the results of the questionable (dogshit) team building strategies that defined the Benning reign of error. Just hoping they prove me wrong as always, but pessimism has been the most successful mindset for Canucks fans for over 50 years, so pencil me in for another pessimistic outlook this year
Yeah, I don't think the current management has done much to deserve praise, but to say that "this is just the same as Benning" is stupefyingly blind. Investing in player development is smart and will pay dividends down the road, and those who dismiss its importance are as short-sighted as Benning was.
The rest, we'll have to see how it unfolds before we can judge, and they've been transparent with a timeline we can judge them by.
So this 2 years thing. Does that mean not this season but next? Considering we’re at 10 months already or is 23/24 building towards that contender status as well? Because if so it looks like a passive approach that is unlikely to yield these results.
Because if the idea is to just bide their time for 2 years….lol
It really seems like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. No one, literally NO ONE, has said that we're okay with just biding our time. How you get "bide their time" from "take two years to execute the strategy that they've clearly laid out" is intentionally obtuse.
Really. He got my point. They’ve got a 4th rounder as surplus. This is the same type of surplus folks like POM were on about after getting 6ths for Nik Jensen.
Yes it’s a surplus in picks. Is it moving the needle? No. 4th round picks are like what 5% at a 100 game nhl player. It’s not value.
You keep wanting it to not be compared to Benning but it doesn’t feel different to those who aren’t here to cheer.
Mikheyev. Good signing maybe. So was Vrbata.
Dermott seems like a Pouliot move.
3 years to Brock….seems like 3 years to Sven.
Acquires proven grinder in Lazar…see Dorsett.
Early lindenning was all about serving two masters. That’s what a lot of folks are seeing now. It’s obviously a retool on the fly. Exactly what the last regime was tasked with.
Your feelings don't change reality, though. Just because you WANT to "feel different" isn't a management strategy the team should follow. You listed some things that you think are similar, but then you conveniently pretend that Benning did the Eriksson, Beagle, Roussel, Ferland, Gudbranson, Poolman, Dickinson, OEL, etc, moves, which was where the damage was done.
Rutherford / Alvin have done NONE of this yet you keep pushing this narrative that there's been no change in management so that we can agree to use your artificially short timeframe to evaluate their leadership.
While I understand this sentiment, the issue is the mismatch between management's plan and their actions: their plan that doesn't really give them time, but they haven't shown any urgency in response to their approach. They decided they were better off pressing forward rather than taking a step back to re-tool, which is fine, but then prioritized holding onto futures that are not going to help them in the window they have chosen and in doing so are effectively punting a season as a bubble playoff team while key players on big contracts continue to get older.
The next few years look like a cycle of bad money coming off the books being offset by raises on value contracts and likely age related decline for expensive players. They can make marginal improvements by reallocating money, but that's more likely to be shuffling deck chairs than making substantive improvements to the team.
One way to get around that would have been to trade picks to dump bad contracts this offseason and try to take advantage of the value contracts still on the books over the next 2-3 seasons, but they decided not to.
The other way to get around that is to bring in undervalued talent that can make an impact in the short-term, but that is going to be near impossible with a barren prospect pipeline and no high picks. And nothing on the pro scouting side so far suggests they have a competitive advantage in identifying undervalued talent - they've paid market rates for everything so far and no one looks like they are going to play above their contract value. I can see a realistic path to a handful of years where they win a division or two and are consistently in the 5-10 range in the league, but its harder to see one where they have a legitimate shot at the cup.
The only way this is a different story is if they trade Horvat and/or Kuzmenko for a haul at the deadline, but they are likely going to be in the race and I find it hard to believe they would.
These are legitimate concerns with their moves, I think it was a fair debate about whether we should just admit that there's too much dead weight from Benning to make use of this core's window, and we should accept the truth and clear the decks with a proper rebuild.
But management made the call that they think they can undo the damage with enough time to make use of this core, and given that there are no guarantees that any rebuild would land us pieces like Demko, Hughes and Petersson and a full rebuild MIGHT lead to them wanting to go elsewhere or be too old to make use of their best when we're ready. Okay, fair enough, they said that two years would be how long it would take to get it done (just looking at legacy contracts you could see two years leading to a lot of change) so I would buy into them planning with how we'll look in two year's time as the plan.
But with that, there are things they've done that put me on edge. Choosing Miller over Horvat given their respective ages I think makes it harder to make this work; I cringed a lot about Mikheyev because we are already deep on wings and his signing obliterated some needed cap space. My only hope is that there is a plan to move on from other wingers to compensate (Garland, for example) but that'll be a gamble that it can be done, but a fair one for them to take, and that they'll be able to either sign Horvat at a favourable rate or make use of Horvat as more valuable trade chip than Miller was.
