Management Thread | 5th Youngest Team in the League Edition

[Orr4Norris]

1. When you've bungled your cap management so badly that you're in cap hell with your stars on ELCs and you're relying on the generosity of ownership to buy out huge contracts to get you out of your problems, it isn't ownership's fault when they say no. You screwed up.

2. The math doesn't work - buying out Sutter might clear enough space for one of Toffoli/Tanev, but not both.

Could they not have traded JR, signed a league min backup instead of Holtby, and not traded for Schmidt in order to afford both Tanev/Toffoli? It always seem to me like they just decided not to re-sign Tanev. Maybe because of injury history? They certainly could’ve afforded his cap hit. Obviously that ended up being a horrible call.

 

[biturbo19]

Could they not have traded JR, signed a league min backup instead of Holtby, and not traded for Schmidt in order to afford both Tanev/Toffoli? It always seem to me like they just decided not to re-sign Tanev. Maybe because of injury history? They certainly could’ve afforded his cap hit. Obviously that ended up being a horrible call.

Tanev i get...but why are people even still sour over losing Toffoli?


Like he's older Boeser. I don't want that contract on the books. He's not a good player. He's not dynamic, he doesn't drive anything. He's a 1-dimensional goal scorer who goes completely missing otherwise.



Tanev i'd take back in a heartbeat. That was a mistake letting him go. We've been looking for a replacement ever since. But Toffoli can go kick rocks in Calgary for all i care.

 

[CanucksSayEh]

Toffoli should have been chosen over Pearson. Even with Kuzmenko we desperately lack goals from the wing.

 

[racerjoe]

Tanev i get...but why are people even still sour over losing Toffoli?


Like he's older Boeser. I don't want that contract on the books. He's not a good player. He's not dynamic, he doesn't drive anything. He's a 1-dimensional goal scorer who goes completely missing otherwise.



Tanev i'd take back in a heartbeat. That was a mistake letting him go. We've been looking for a replacement ever since. But Toffoli can go kick rocks in Calgary for all i care.

I didn't want to sign Toffoli at the time as I thought he would be too expensive... but that contract he signed should have been a no brainer to re-sign here.

 

[credulous]

weren't tanev and toffoli let go because benning anticipated trading for oel? i remember schmidt being the emergency backup plan when oel fell through

 

[VanJack]

Everybody focuses on the hopeless salary cap vice the Canucks were left in by the Benning regime.

But the current braintrust were ones who re-signed Boeser and Miller to big ticket contracts. And if the rumor mill is to believed--they tried to trade both of them. And for all we know, they're still trying.

Does this sound like a management group with 'a plan"?

 

[CanucksSayEh]

Everybody focuses on the hopeless salary cap vice the Canucks were left in by the Benning regime.

But the current braintrust were ones who re-signed Boeser and Miller to big ticket contracts. And if the rumor mill is to believed--they tried to trade both of them. And for all we know, they're still trying.

Does this sound like a management group with 'a plan"?

The rumor mill is not to be believed.

Boeser was an RFA, one year removed from being the teams leading scorer. Yea it doesn't look great now, and Id like to see him moved, but hard to blame brass for that.

Miller was the teams best player, and will continue to be a big part of this team for some time.

The plan was made pretty clear with the Hronek deal. If they kept both picks, then I would really question what they were doing.

 

[valkynax]

This is going to look like a defence of Benning and I don't mean it to be but,

1. That was an austerity call by Luigi Aquillini due to Covid.

2. God that was a pathetic call. I was watching the draft with an Oilers fan friend and he howled when the 'from the London Knights' was finished with "Olli Juolevi". Ugh.

3. You can't really use who a second round pick was to assess a trade. Would it have been a good trade if Calgary had picked a nobody?
For the record, I've always been bullish on the Baertschi bet. I think if things had gone differently with injuries and he was put in a better position to succeed he would have been a decent player.
The problem was that he and Horvat were tasked, at times, with being our best offensive players on a bad team when he would have been far better suited to being in the Teravainen role on Carolina or something similar.

With that said, it was only. a good bet (IMO) in isolation, but the fact that we were making bets on Linden f***ing Vey at the same time means it was all just bad business and we needed to be reloading picks.

Andersson was a hell of a great get for Calgary.

4. I have never heard anything about this. Not calling you a liar (obviously) but do you have a source? I'd be curious to look more deeply into this.

1 - To this day I find it puzzling that people continues to push this weird narrative where shitty owner and shitty GM are mutually exclusive. It boggles my mind. OK there's been enough rumors to suggest that Fredolini is a spoiled bratty little BITCH of an owner, with severe insecurity issues who can't keep his grubby hands off of team affairs, we get it. At the same time, how does this absolve JEB of his share of responsibilities? Oh he told me to do it? Is that all there is? Unless you can provide explicit rock solid evidence showing that JEB strongly disagreed with letting three UFAs walk which was Fredolini's idea, if you bring up the "oh Fredolini's fault" card, I'll throw this out as many times as I need to: is JEB a spineless, gutless, gimpy coward who's too chickenshit to argue against erroneous decisions from his boss? Or is he an equally incompetent dumb f*** and is in on the whole plan? Pick one, dealer's choice.

3 - That's a weak argument. It's not about 2nd round pick alone, it's about how JEB erroneously misjudged the value of Baertschi and made an unnecessarily risky move for no good reason. And this is far from the first time this moron pulled a stunt like this, many of his acquisitions have worked out extremely poorly. JEB thinks he's got the eye to sort out diamonds in the rough, what he consistently ended up doing was getting garbage returns. He thinks he's too smart and too clever to follow the most obvious answers. And this "I'm so smrt, smrter than all of y'all" mentality shows in almost everything he does, including when this moron shifted blames to Abbotsford flood and deflected accountability by claiming how much stress his family is been under.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

1 - To this day I find it puzzling that people continues to push this weird narrative where shitty owner and shitty GM are mutually exclusive. It boggles my mind. OK there's been enough rumors to suggest that Fredolini is a spoiled bratty little BITCH of an owner, with severe insecurity issues who can't keep his grubby hands off of team affairs, we get it. At the same time, how does this absolve JEB of his share of responsibilities? Oh he told me to do it? Is that all there is? Unless you can provide explicit rock solid evidence showing that JEB strongly disagreed with letting three UFAs walk which was Fredolini's idea, if you bring up the "oh Fredolini's fault" card, I'll throw this out as many times as I need to: is JEB a spineless, gutless, gimpy coward who's too chickenshit to argue against erroneous decisions from his boss? Or is he an equally incompetent dumb f*** and is in on the whole plan? Pick one, dealer's choice.

3 - That's a weak argument. It's not about 2nd round pick alone, it's about how JEB erroneously misjudged the value of Baertschi and made an unnecessarily risky move for no good reason. And this is far from the first time this moron pulled a stunt like this, many of his acquisitions have worked out extremely poorly. JEB thinks he's got the eye to sort out diamonds in the rough, what he consistently ended up doing was getting garbage returns. He thinks he's too smart and too clever to follow the most obvious answers. And this "I'm so smrt, smrter than all of y'all" mentality shows in almost everything he does, including when this moron shifted blames to Abbotsford flood and deflected accountability by claiming how much stress his family is been under.

1. I'm not absolving Benning of making a tremendous number of bad moves and I do think that at his core he's basically a spineless middle management suck up who is willing to betray himself to survive corporately.
But when people turn him into a caricature it only obscures the fact that the problems are multi-pronged and not as simple as they appear.
People love to meme, 'hurr durr ran out of time' but that's not a serious interpretation of what happened and it's important to know and acknowledge that there was more at play there.

Look, I have taken shit for being a 'Benning bro' a ton in the past for basically two reasons.

1. I gave him credit for drafting Boeser, Petey, and Hughes and I was watching video on these prospects (Boeser excluded) and desperately wanted Petey and Hughes in their respective draft years. I was thrilled when he took them and they worked out as well as I expected and are two of my favorite players. They would be two of my favorite players on just about any team because they were two of my favorite prospects in a long time.

and

2. What people here won't admit to is that the level of discourse surrounding him is so ignorant and vitriolic that it's dull and unnuanced.
So then you get hearsay nonsense and everyone is afraid to push back against things that either didn't happen or are incredibly speculative because then they get branded a 'benning bro'.

2 things can be true at once.

1. He was a stooge of the owner and was largely a catastrophe here (again, I say largely because I'm a biiig fan of Petey and Hughes), he was one of the worst GMs in the league many of the years here and at times, particularly early in his tenure, he was worst by far.

but, 2: there were also mitigating circumstances that don't obfuscate his incompetence or lack of spine, but do delineate the moves that were pure incompetence and the ones that were due to being hamstrung by mercurial, incompetent, rash decrees by ownership.

 

[valkynax]

1. I'm not absolving Benning of making a tremendous number of bad moves and I do think that at his core he's basically a spineless middle management suck up who is willing to betray himself to survive corporately.
But when people turn him into a caricature it only obscures the fact that the problems are multi-pronged and not as simple as they appear.
People love to meme, 'hurr durr ran out of time' but that's not a serious interpretation of what happened and it's important to know and acknowledge that there was more at play there.

Look, I have taken shit for being a 'Benning bro' a ton in the past for basically two reasons.

1. I gave him credit for drafting Boeser, Petey, and Hughes and I was watching video on these prospects (Boeser excluded) and desperately wanted Petey and Hughes in their respective draft years. I was thrilled when he took them and they worked out as well as I expected and are two of my favorite players. They would be two of my favorite players on just about any team because they were two of my favorite prospects in a long time.

and

2. What people here won't admit to is that the level of discourse surrounding him is so ignorant and vitriolic that it's dull and unnuanced.
So then you get hearsay nonsense and everyone is afraid to push back against things that either didn't happen or are incredibly speculative because then they get branded a 'benning bro'.

2 things can be true at once.

1. He was a stooge of the owner and was largely a catastrophe here (again, I say largely because I'm a biiig fan of Petey and Hughes), he was one of the worst GMs in the league many of the years here and at times, particularly early in his tenure, he was worst by far.

but, 2: there were also mitigating circumstances that don't obfuscate his incompetence or lack of spine, but do delineate the moves that were pure incompetence and the ones that were due to being hamstrung by mercurial, incompetent, rash decrees by ownership.

People turn JEB into a caricature because he's that bad of a GM, who's really really really bad at almost every last mother f***ing thing on the GM's list of duties. You also mentioned that people are obscuring the multiple factors that contributed to the team's performance...have you been to Fredolini's thread? How much of what people posted have you read? I've seen every part of the team getting criticized to oblivion, mostly justified. Where are the people who says JEB and JEB alone is the problem?

About JEB being a meme, I see no evidence of all the jokes and memes obscuring anything when it comes to serious discussions about the mountain of fail that JEB contributed. Like I said above, many posters with brighter minds than mine have blamed many people in this organization for the team's shitty performance. Just because JEB is one of the most talked about does not mean people don't know that this is a complicated case of failure with many contributing factors.

About this...so-called you taking shit as Benning Bro (your words, your label, not mine), again, are you ignoring the fact that people are VERY pleased to see Pete and Hughes and Boeser develop? I myself said multiple times that JEB's draft is the least shitty part of his tenure. Others have said the same thing. Every time this moron does anything that doesn't cause the fans to die from cringe, people celebrate, HARD. As for this lack of discourse you claim, if you think something is speculative or is just baseless rumors, do you have evidence to suggest otherwise? If so, present them. If not, simply coming out and say "oh this is just speculation buuuuuuuut I have no evidence", how do you expect people to react?

 

[gringo]

Tanev i get...but why are people even still sour over losing Toffoli?


Like he's older Boeser. I don't want that contract on the books. He's not a good player. He's not dynamic, he doesn't drive anything. He's a 1-dimensional goal scorer who goes completely missing otherwise.



Tanev i'd take back in a heartbeat. That was a mistake letting him go. We've been looking for a replacement ever since. But Toffoli can go kick rocks in Calgary for all i care.

He makes wah less than Boeser and is a way better scorer like come on man Boeser at his salary is awful.

 

[andora]

Yeah konecny is light years more effective than boeser in any zone

 

[RandV]

Everybody focuses on the hopeless salary cap vice the Canucks were left in by the Benning regime.

But the current braintrust were ones who re-signed Boeser and Miller to big ticket contracts. And if the rumor mill is to believed--they tried to trade both of them. And for all we know, they're still trying.

Does this sound like a management group with 'a plan"?

Miller is a big ticket but is market value, and Boeser is a few million over what he provides. Other than that the guys new management have signed acquired maybe you can they should have looked past but you can't really say any of them are over paid.

Benning on the other hand ran the team at it's peak with about $30M salary cap just wasted on replacement level players.

 

[Bubbles]

The rumor mill is not to be believed.

Boeser was an RFA, one year removed from being the teams leading scorer. Yea it doesn't look great now, and Id like to see him moved, but hard to blame brass for that.

I advocated on here to trade Boeser around 4 years ago where his value more or less peaked. People need to take off the rose coloured glasses and admit that Boeser has not really improved his play since his 2nd year. He always be a 25-30 goal scorer. So one should pay him accordingly.

With Kuzmenko on the team Boeser is a luxury that the team doesn't need. But the Canucks traditionally drive down the value of the their own players before they trade them.

 

[Bleach Clean]

Tanev i get...but why are people even still sour over losing Toffoli?

Like he's older Boeser. I don't want that contract on the books. He's not a good player. He's not dynamic, he doesn't drive anything. He's a 1-dimensional goal scorer who goes completely missing otherwise.

Tanev i'd take back in a heartbeat. That was a mistake letting him go. We've been looking for a replacement ever since. But Toffoli can go kick rocks in Calgary for all i care.

Toffoli would have been great here at that salary.

I think you underrate him defensively. He's probably about middling to upper end in possession metrics on that squad, which would be upper end here (likely). That would outline him as a driver. Still, he is one dimensional like Boeser. He's a shooter, but that's fine if he's pushing the play enough and not hurting you defensively.

Not sure they get Kuzmenko if he were still here though, but that would be the only trepidation.

 

[BimJenning]

2. God that was a pathetic call. I was watching the draft with an Oilers fan friend and he howled when the 'from the London Knights' was finished with "Olli Juolevi". Ugh.

Same here. I was watching the draft in Calgary with a bunch of Flames and Oilers fans and they were like, "I'm sorry man" LOL.

 

[F A N]

I advocated on here to trade Boeser around 4 years ago where his value more or less peaked. People need to take off the rose coloured glasses and admit that Boeser has not really improved his play since his 2nd year. He always be a 25-30 goal scorer. So one should pay him accordingly.

With Kuzmenko on the team Boeser is a luxury that the team doesn't need. But the Canucks traditionally drive down the value of the their own players before they trade them.

25-30 goals is good production but I think the problem is that Boeser isn't the same dynamic goal scorer we saw in his first two seasons here. Boeser in his first two seasons vs now is like Naslund in in his prime vs post-Moore hit.

 

[MarkMM]

Tanev i get...but why are people even still sour over losing Toffoli?


Like he's older Boeser. I don't want that contract on the books. He's not a good player. He's not dynamic, he doesn't drive anything. He's a 1-dimensional goal scorer who goes completely missing otherwise.



Tanev i'd take back in a heartbeat. That was a mistake letting him go. We've been looking for a replacement ever since. But Toffoli can go kick rocks in Calgary for all i care.

My biggest issue was that it was stupid to trade that 1st for him and then disastrous to then let him go for nothing in the end.

 

[Coffee]

Kindly asking you a quick question, @VanJack .

During the Canucks best stretch of hockey under Tocchet. Do you see a team who is a couple medium pieces away from being a WCF threat, or are we in for some dark times?

I know you’re not really a fan of these hypothetical questions, but I really been wanting to ask you about this.

Kind regards,

C

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

2. God that was a pathetic call. I was watching the draft with an Oilers fan friend and he howled when the 'from the London Knights' was finished with "Olli Juolevi". Ugh.

I guess you could say that Jim Benning did a “heck of a job” making that pick, lololol.

 

[valkynax]

I guess you could say that Jim Benning did a “heck of a job” making that pick, lololol.

#AverageBad GM

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

I guess you could say that Jim Benning did a “heck of a job” making that pick, lololol.

I guess you could say that reading through my history trying to cherrypick quotes from several years ago to drop apropos of nothing makes you my biggest fan.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

I guess you could say that reading through my history trying to cherrypick quotes from several years ago to drop apropos of nothing makes you my biggest fan.

I just saw you post that and got a good laugh out of it. No searching was needed, just a decent memory

 

[AwesomeInTheory]

'hurr durr ran out of time'

That's....the thing, though.

That was literally something Benning said when talking about that whole clusterf***--"ran out of time."

It's memed on because it was such a stupid thing to say, and because it indicated just how out to lunch Benning was with his decision making skills.

He spent not 1, but 2 offseasons chasing OEL and it cost the team big.

The whole train of thought, starting with trading for Toffoli, and ending up with OEL, is insane.

 

[oceanchild]

So frustrating being a fan of this team. I think the team needs to actually fix its cap problems first and get some ELC contracts on the roster. But will instead sell more Future to fix more past and trade out some crap Contracts to get marginal players on inflated salary.

Sigh