Management Thread Blurst of Times

And the Canucks will be lapped once again by those who have done it. But then we'll keep hearing about the Buffalo boogeyman in the meantime.
To be fair it is a Valid boogeyman. At least for us. Both teams with Notoriously intrusive Owners, Both Lacking in critical Culture guys (since the sedins for us) and both birthed from the same cursed expansion. I doubt our culture is as bad as theirs, but then again its hard to say.
 
And the Canucks will be lapped once again by those who have done it. But then we'll keep hearing about the Buffalo boogeyman in the meantime.

The natural time to rebuild was the end of 2017-18 season, when the Sedins retired.

But the 2020 run gave that idiot another two years to retool on the fly.

And now they are here in 2025 at essentially the same caliber of team they had 7 years ago. Still the middling team that barely makes or misses the playoffs.

Building a real contender like Florida or Tampa has never been in the cards for Aquilini.
 
To be fair it is a Valid boogeyman. At least for us. Both teams with Notoriously intrusive Owners, Both Lacking in critical Culture guys (since the sedins for us) and both birthed from the same cursed expansion. I doubt our culture is as bad as theirs, but then again its hard to say.
I don't think it's a valid one against the very concept of rebuilding, though, and it gets trotted out all the time as though it isn't the exception that proves the rule. Almost every (maybe literally every) past Cup contender since Detroit's pre-Cap momentum ended has bottomed out before becoming good. Why is it that the one example of Buffalo -- who by the way deals with disadvantages that most NHL teams don't -- somehow outweighs the far more numerous examples of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Colorado, Tampa, Atlanta/Winnipeg, Florida, Carolina, hell, even New York. It's taken a little longer, but soon Montreal, Ottawa, Anaheim and probably Detroit will be back to respectability, because that's how this system works.

I agree there's a good chance Aquilini would screw up the rebuild process, but the alternative -- running a Ponzi scheme with the few futures that the Canucks have -- pretty much guarantees that he will. Barring a miracle (something along the lines of Washington this year), the Canucks have condemned themselves to the mushy middle over the medium term by never accumulating assets. For the one example of Buffalo messing up their rebuild (and notice long periods of futility like this mostly only happen in markets that the players think they're too good for, including Columbus and Ottawa), there are endless examples of teams not emerging as contenders after not rebuilding.

To be clear -- to save everyone the response -- I am not advocating doing it with Hughes still willingly on the roster. I am saying they have charted a near-impossible path to follow if the goal is to win a Cup. But increasingly people realize the goal is not to win a Cup.
 
I don't think it's a valid one against the very concept of rebuilding, though, and it gets trotted out all the time as though it isn't the exception that proves the rule. Almost every (maybe literally every) past Cup contender since Detroit's pre-Cap momentum ended has bottomed out before becoming good. Why is it that the one example of Buffalo -- who by the way deals with disadvantages that most NHL teams don't -- somehow outweighs the far more numerous examples of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Colorado, Tampa, Atlanta/Winnipeg, Florida, Carolina, hell, even New York. It's taken a little longer, but soon Montreal, Ottawa, Anaheim and probably Detroit will be back to respectability, because that's how this system works.

I agree there's a good chance Aquilini would screw up the rebuild process, but the alternative -- running a Ponzi scheme with the few futures that the Canucks have -- pretty much guarantees that he will. Barring a miracle (something along the lines of Washington this year), the Canucks have condemned themselves to the mushy middle over the medium term by never accumulating assets. For the one example of Buffalo messing up their rebuild (and notice long periods of futility like this mostly only happen in markets that the players think they're too good for, including Columbus and Ottawa), there are endless examples of teams not emerging as contenders after not rebuilding.

To be clear -- to save everyone the response -- I am not advocating doing it with Hughes still willingly on the roster. I am saying they have charted a near-impossible path to follow if the goal is to win a Cup. But increasingly people realize the goal is not to win a Cup.
I don't think people disagree with the concept of rebuilding, i think a bunch of us just think we missed the opportunity to properly rebuild and we are at a stage where we just need to continue to build.

regarding the idea that all successful teams started from a rebuild, well EVERY SINGLE TEAM in the league outside of Vegas have rebuilt, that's just the way how things work. I mean, can you find a team that has actually not rebuilt at some point outside of VGK? Maybe Seattle but they are essentially going through one right now.

the issue a bunch of us debate on is the idea that you can do a quick rebuild. the quickest rebuild we've seen is LA and NYR and that took like 5-6 years. a bunch of folks here, not sure if you are one of them, argued that we should've done a quick short rebuild when this management team came on board because we ONLY need to do it for 2 years because somehow we are special and Quinn and Petey are 100% onboard with it.
 
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To be clear -- to save everyone the response -- I am not advocating doing it with Hughes still willingly on the roster. I am saying they have charted a near-impossible path to follow if the goal is to win a Cup. But increasingly people realize the goal is not to win a Cup.
Ya, that's basically it. The primary goal isn't to win a cup. The primary goal is to try to be as competitive as you can, to make the playoffs as much as you can, year after year, without committing, intentionally, to any mid to long term rebuild. And sure, ownership and management can say that they are trying to win a cup, and I'm sure that is true, but that isn't their primary goal.

And ownership hires management. If you are a manager, you don't get the job unless you make a pitch which is consistent with ownership's goal. And once you get the job, you can't go back to your owner and tell him that he needs to rebuild because you can't do what you said you could. You'll get fired. And this is what happened to Linden. And GIllis too.

Moreover, if you are a new/inexperienced manager like Alvin, you are worried about your future employability, so why on earth would you voluntarily set in a motion a plan where you are going to have a losing track record for a long period of time with no playoffs on the hope that your owner doesn't fire you at any given time making you basically unemployable from a manager perspective.

And this is the plight of being a Canucks fan. You are probably a fan for life so you probably prefer the team to take a longer term view, which has a higher chance of succcess, then consistently taking a shorter term view that has a much lower chance of success. But for the reasons given above, the team won't do that, and unless ownership sells the team, its hard to imaging them doing this anytime soon.
 
Ya, that's basically it. The primary goal isn't to win a cup. The primary goal is to try to be as competitive as you can, to make the playoffs as much as you can, year after year, without committing, intentionally, to any mid to long term rebuild. And sure, ownership and management can say that they are trying to win a cup, and I'm sure that is true, but that isn't their primary goal.

And ownership hires management. If you are a manager, you don't get the job unless you make a pitch which is consistent with ownership's goal. And once you get the job, you can't go back to your owner and tell him that he needs to rebuild because you can't do what you said you could. You'll get fired. And this is what happened to Linden. And GIllis too.

Moreover, if you are a new/inexperienced manager like Alvin, you are worried about your future employability, so why on earth would you voluntarily set in a motion a plan where you are going to have a losing track record for a long period of time with no playoffs on the hope that your owner doesn't fire you at any given time making you basically unemployable from a manager perspective.

And this is the plight of being a Canucks fan. You are probably a fan for life so you probably prefer the team to take a longer term view, which has a higher chance of succcess, then consistently taking a shorter term view that has a much lower chance of success. But for the reasons given above, the team won't do that, and unless ownership sells the team, its hard to imaging them doing this anytime soon.

This can be said really simply, and they say it every year: "Anything can happen when you get into the playoffs." This is somewhat true if you ignore probabilities and just repeat it over and over.
 
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Ya, that's basically it. The primary goal isn't to win a cup. The primary goal is to try to be as competitive as you can, to make the playoffs as much as you can, year after year, without committing, intentionally, to any mid to long term rebuild. And sure, ownership and management can say that they are trying to win a cup, and I'm sure that is true, but that isn't their primary goal.

And ownership hires management. If you are a manager, you don't get the job unless you make a pitch which is consistent with ownership's goal. And once you get the job, you can't go back to your owner and tell him that he needs to rebuild because you can't do what you said you could. You'll get fired. And this is what happened to Linden. And GIllis too.

Moreover, if you are a new/inexperienced manager like Alvin, you are worried about your future employability, so why on earth would you voluntarily set in a motion a plan where you are going to have a losing track record for a long period of time with no playoffs on the hope that your owner doesn't fire you at any given time making you basically unemployable from a manager perspective.

And this is the plight of being a Canucks fan. You are probably a fan for life so you probably prefer the team to take a longer term view, which has a higher chance of succcess, then consistently taking a shorter term view that has a much lower chance of success. But for the reasons given above, the team won't do that, and unless ownership sells the team, it’s hard to imaging them doing this anytime soon.
This is so wrong… you guys just have this very narrow vision of ways to get a cup which is to tank tank tank, amass a ton of assets and then leverage that when the reality is every team that has won the cup in the last 10 years have done it in different ways.

If we are actually objective about where we are at, when healthy, and this is not the Benning era where one player down leads to the house falling apart, we are talking about when our 1C, 2C, 1G, 1W, 2D, 3W are not all out to extensive period of time, we have one of the best goalie tandem, best blue line and bottom 6 forwards in the league. The plan is to keep plugging away and try to get 1 more top6 guy every single f***ing year.

Somehow that’s that part where you guys’ brain fizzle out because if you can’t imagine us being a contender next year, you guys just assume there is zero path forward.
 
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This is so wrong… you guys just have this very narrow vision of ways to get a cup which is to tank tank tank, amass a ton of assets and then leverage that when the reality is every team that has won the cup in the last 10 years have done it in different ways.

If we are actually objective about where we are at, when healthy, and this is not the Benning era where one player down leads to the house falling apart, we are talking about when our 1C, 2C, 1G, 1W, 2D, 3W are not all out to extensive period of time, we have one of the best goalie tandem, best blue line and bottom 6 forwards in the league. The plan is to keep plugging away and try to get 1 more top6 guy every single f***ing year.

Somehow that’s that part where you guys’ brain fizzle out because if you can’t imagine us being a contender next year, you guys just assume there is zero path forward.

Oh this again? I'll just the post the actual evidence instead of just posting your opinion.

2015 Chicago Blackhawks
2016 Pittsburgh Penguins
2017 Pittsburgh Penguins
2018 Washington Capitals
2019 St. Louis Blues (not tank)
2020 Tampa Bay Lightning
2021 Tampa Bay Lightning
2022 Colorado Avalanche
2023 Vegas Golden Knights (not tank)
2024 Florida Panthers

So two out of the last 10 Stanley Cup winners did not tank/rebuild. And you're missing the point of the tank. The tank gets you that 1-3 talent in the draft that you can build around for 10+ years. You can see, especially with the multi-winning cup teams, that's how you build a sustained contender.

You probably have a different definition of "contender" too. Your definition is probably just making the playoffs. My definition of contender is actually deep, deep playoff runs over a period of years. Not a one off like last year.
 
Eve
Oh this again? I'll just the post the actual evidence instead of just posting your opinion.

2015 Chicago Blackhawks
2016 Pittsburgh Penguins
2017 Pittsburgh Penguins
2018 Washington Capitals
2019 St. Louis Blues (not tank)
2020 Tampa Bay Lightning
2021 Tampa Bay Lightning
2022 Colorado Avalanche
2023 Vegas Golden Knights (not tank)
2024 Florida Panthers

So two out of the last 10 Stanley Cup winners did not tank/rebuild. And you're missing the point of the tank. The tank gets you that 1-3 talent in the draft that you can build around for 10+ years. You can see, especially with the multi-winning cup teams, that's how you build a sustained contender.

You probably have a different definition of "contender" too. Your definition is probably just making the playoffs. My definition of contender is actually deep, deep playoff runs over a period of years. Not a one off like last year.
Every single team in the league had to tank and rebuild at some point, there is like 1 team in the league that didn’t have to do that and that was VGK.

There is a lot between tank and winning the cup. That’s the f***ing point. Every one here assumes that every team on your list basically Zerg rush the cup with the massive trove of assets coming out of a rebuild when in reality the only team that did that really was the hawks and TBL.
Caps won the cup like 10+ years after drafting Ovie.
Pitts cycled through the roster multiple times between their 1st cup and 2nd and 3rd and they got Sid by having Bettman rig the lottery for them, try replicating that.
St. Louis basically was mid and had a the slowest build.
Florida took forever after their rebuild to be good and took Zito taking over and getting bargain pieces vs leveraging whatever they got through a rebuild.
Avs got their core through a rebuild of a rebuild but built their depth through signings and trades.

The point is you do not need to tank to get assets, majority of the teams that won the cup just build their team over time.
 
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Eve

Every single team in the league had to tank and rebuild at some point, there is like 1 team in the league that didn’t have to do that and that was VGK.

The point is you do not need to tank to get assets, majority of the teams that won the cup just build their team over time.

Not the Canucks, which is what we're talking about here.

You're missing the point. Teams here have followed the same formula. They tank for a few years and get the top 1-3 talents in the draft in those years, then build around those top talents.

In Chicago, it was Toews, Kane, Keith, and Seabrook.
In Pittsburgh, it was Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Fleury.
In Tampa, it was Stamkos, and Hedman
In Colorado, it was MacKinnon, Makar and Rantanen
In Florida, it was Ekblad and Barkov and Huberdeau.

I'm not really counting Washington as they didn't really tank or rebuild, they were just bad.

I'm not saying it's the only way to build an actual contender, but when 7 out of the last 10 Cup winners have tanked and rebuild in the same fashion, how can you say that it's not working? Instead the Canucks want to build a St. Louis Blues type team and hope a hot goalie can get you past some teams.
 
Not the Canucks, which is what we're talking about here.

You're missing the point. Teams here have followed the same formula. They tank for a few years and get the top 1-3 talents in the draft in those years, then build around those top talents.

In Chicago, it was Toews, Kane, Keith, and Seabrook.
In Pittsburgh, it was Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Fleury.
In Tampa, it was Stamkos, and Hedman
In Colorado, it was MacKinnon, Makar and Rantanen
In Florida, it was Ekblad and Barkov and Huberdeau.

I'm not really counting Washington as they didn't really tank or rebuild, they were just bad.

I'm not saying it's the only way to build an actual contender, but when 7 out of the last 10 Cup winners have tanked and rebuild in the same fashion, how can you say that it's not working? Instead the Canucks want to build a St. Louis Blues type team and hope a hot goalie can get you past some teams.
We tanked, but sure we never did a proper rebuild. Does that mean we should just go for one more and endure like 5-6 years of misery just to make up for it?

Florida drafted Barkov at 2013 and they won the cup 10 years later.
Caps drafted Ovie 2004 and won the cup in 2018.
Pens got Crosby from a rigged draft lottery, you want to replicate that?

To be clear, every single cup winner tanked at some point and got their core through that. Pietrangelo, Ovie, Doughty etc. the point is once you have those central piece, you just build. Unless something crazy happens like with the Avs where they had to rebuild a rebuild, none of those teams decided that oh wait, we need one more piece, time to f***ing tank. They just went out and traded for those pieces like D Toews, Tkachuk, Reinhart/Bennet, half the team on the VGK, or they sign FAs like Hossa, Pietrangelo, Nichukskin, Forsling. Point is even if you are missing a couple of pieces, once you have the stars, all the teams that won just went out and acquire them in different ways.

Even Jim “I don’t know what talent is” Benning was able to luck into a 1st line winger/center… it’s really not as hard to the point where we have to tank and rebuild so we can get like a 2C and a top line winger.
 
I wouldn’t call whatever the Panthers decided to do from 2002 to 2018 “tanking”.

Uh, they tanked from 2010-14. They drafted 3,3,23,2,1 in those years. Not sure where you're getting 2002 to 2018 from, I never said those.

We tanked, but sure we never did a proper rebuild. Does that mean we should just go for one more and endure like 5-6 years of misery just to make up for it?

Florida drafted Barkov at 2013 and they won the cup 10 years later.
Caps drafted Ovie 2004 and won the cup in 2018.
Pens got Crosby from a rigged draft lottery, you want to replicate that?

To be clear, every single cup winner tanked at some point and got their core through that. Pietrangelo, Ovie, Doughty etc. the point is once you have those central piece, you just build. Unless something crazy happens like with the Avs where they had to rebuild a rebuild, none of those teams decided that oh wait, we need one more piece, time to f***ing tank. They just went out and traded for those pieces like D Toews, Tkachuk, Reinhart/Bennet, half the team on the VGK, or they sign FAs like Hossa, Pietrangelo, Nichukskin, Forsling. Point is even if you are missing a couple of pieces, once you have the stars, all the teams that won just went out and acquire them in different ways.

Even Jim “I don’t know what talent is” Benning was able to luck into a 1st line winger/center… it’s really not as hard to the point where we have to tank and rebuild so we can get like a 2C and a top line winger.

The Canucks never tanked, except in 2017. There's never been a period of 3-4 years where they were picking in the top 3.

The difference is that those teams were a few tweaks from actually contending. Are you implying that a few more tweaks and the Canucks become legitimate Stanley Cup contenders? They can't even get into the playoffs. Even if you get that 2C and top line winger, the team is slightly improved to be a wild card team, not a legitimate contender.
 
The natural time to rebuild was the end of 2017-18 season, when the Sedins retired.

But the 2020 run gave that idiot another two years to retool on the fly.

And now they are here in 2025 at essentially the same caliber of team they had 7 years ago. Still the middling team that barely makes or misses the playoffs.

Building a real contender like Florida or Tampa has never been in the cards for Aquilini.
Yeah with all those trades and free agent signings there
 
Uh, they tanked from 2010-14. They drafted 3,3,23,2,1 in those years. Not sure where you're getting 2002 to 2018 from, I never said those.



The Canucks never tanked, except in 2017. There's never been a period of 3-4 years where they were picking in the top 3.

The difference is that those teams were a few tweaks from actually contending. Are you implying that a few more tweaks and the Canucks become legitimate Stanley Cup contenders? They can't even get into the playoffs. Even if you get that 2C and top line winger, the team is slightly improved to be a wild card team, not a legitimate contender.
Yes and it took them 10 years since they finished tanking to win a cup, it’s not as simple as tank -> profit. You are basically assuming all the steps in between will marginally happen because of tanking when tanking is basically the circle of life for all hockey teams in a closed no relegation environment.

We finished basically at the basement for6/8 years when Benning was here, yeah he didn’t purposely tanked the team but tank we did. Yea he also f***ed up a lot of high draft picks but that doesn’t change the fact we actually have a core now that includes the best dman in the league.

We had probably the worst season possible in terms of injuries and we are a couple points away from the last WC spot. Sorry this team is not a top line winger and 2C away from a WC spot, we are a top line winger and 2C away from finishing top 2 in our division.
 
This is so wrong… you guys just have this very narrow vision of ways to get a cup which is to tank tank tank, amass a ton of assets and then leverage that when the reality is every team that has won the cup in the last 10 years have done it in different ways.

If we are actually objective about where we are at, when healthy, and this is not the Benning era where one player down leads to the house falling apart, we are talking about when our 1C, 2C, 1G, 1W, 2D, 3W are not all out to extensive period of time, we have one of the best goalie tandem, best blue line and bottom 6 forwards in the league. The plan is to keep plugging away and try to get 1 more top6 guy every single f***ing year.

Somehow that’s that part where you guys’ brain fizzle out because if you can’t imagine us being a contender next year, you guys just assume there is zero path forward.
100%.

It's like people don't understand there are 32 teams and their players and executives get paid too.

The best bet is to be relevant for a long time, and hope that in the right year you can have the right young guy develop and/or the right ufa who fills a need and/or a couple of guys have career years at the same time.
Oh this again? I'll just the post the actual evidence instead of just posting your opinion.

2015 Chicago Blackhawks
2016 Pittsburgh Penguins
2017 Pittsburgh Penguins
2018 Washington Capitals
2019 St. Louis Blues (not tank)
2020 Tampa Bay Lightning
2021 Tampa Bay Lightning
2022 Colorado Avalanche
2023 Vegas Golden Knights (not tank)
2024 Florida Panthers

So two out of the last 10 Stanley Cup winners did not tank/rebuild. And you're missing the point of the tank. The tank gets you that 1-3 talent in the draft that you can build around for 10+ years. You can see, especially with the multi-winning cup teams, that's how you build a sustained contender.

You probably have a different definition of "contender" too. Your definition is probably just making the playoffs. My definition of contender is actually deep, deep playoff runs over a period of years. Not a one off like last year.
Hilarious that you don't know the difference between good fortune after a bad run for the franchise and a 'tank'.

Chicago, Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Colorado were all some variation of ownership problems that led to the team being rather hopeless for awhile (Colorado wasn't ownership but a convergence of a bunch of things).

Pittsburgh almost moved, Chicago became loathed by their own fans, Tampa had joke ownership of a horror movie producer who almost tried to trade Stamkos for pennies on the dollar before being stopped by others.

None of these are the same as 'tanking' where a 'competent' braintrust just throws in the towel.

I don't think many here really understand group psychology or how hard it is to 'unquit' once you've pulled the plug.

Going through brutal adversity and getting lucky enough to draft franchise players is one thing. But quitting is how you ruin a franchise.

Anaheim is maybe sort of pulling out of their tailspin after 7 years, Utah has been a joke forever, Buffalo is a national joke, Chicago has people speculating that Bedard will want to leave and that's WITH them winning what was perceived as a once in a generation lottery, Columbus has been bad forever, Detroit is looking pathetic and rudderless, Edmonton and Florida were lost in the wildnerness for like 12 and 20 years respectively.

I could go on and on and on.

And including Washington is hilarious since they are an example counter. They recycled cores while staying relevant literally 15 years after their 'tank' before winning their cup.

Tampa also got incredibly lucky in later rounds in an impossible to reproduced manner.

All of this is video game thinking where dumb A.I. sits there while your team accrues a trillion draft picks and tricks the A.I. while you draft multiple franchise players. It just doesn't happen without a confluence of bad franchise luck/ownership and crazy fortune in drafting.

It's not a replicable 'system' and there are like 15 teams we can point to as direct evidence.
 
Our D is the least of our problems though, isn’t it?

Adding Ian Cole into the lineup (at 1.3 million more than Forbort against the salary cap): I’m not sure that would have solved any of the problems this team has faced this season:

Does EP40 not struggle with Ian Cole still around?

Do the JTM and EP40 issues not occur with Ian Cole around?

Does Demko not get hurt with Ian Cole around?

Does Quinn Hughes not get hurt with Ian Cole around?

Does Hronek not get hurt with Ian Cole around?

Sure, on the surface I agree that Ian Cole was a great guy to have around, but I don’t see how he solves any of the issues that have buried this team this season.
ian cole probbaly beats the shit out of JT miller for "bullying or causing locckeroom issues" for sure.
 
To be clear -- to save everyone the response -- I am not advocating doing it with Hughes still willingly on the roster. I am saying they have charted a near-impossible path to follow if the goal is to win a Cup. But increasingly people realize the goal is not to win a Cup.
Only people playing videogames think the goal is to win a cup.
 
The dumb thing is that Francesco is inherently a fan. He grew up a fan, still is, has been quoted that some of his influence in team direction is such that he wants the team to win before his dad passes.

If he could just back off and let the adults do their thing as opposed to him being a billionaire child playing real life nhl 25 they might just get a sniff.

I think anytime the team has had a modicum of success in the last 15 years, it's been when he's been hands off. (With the exception of maybe the bubble playoffs.)
 
Eve

Every single team in the league had to tank and rebuild at some point, there is like 1 team in the league that didn’t have to do that and that was VGK.

There is a lot between tank and winning the cup. That’s the f***ing point. Every one here assumes that every team on your list basically Zerg rush the cup with the massive trove of assets coming out of a rebuild when in reality the only team that did that really was the hawks and TBL.
Caps won the cup like 10+ years after drafting Ovie.
Pitts cycled through the roster multiple times between their 1st cup and 2nd and 3rd and they got Sid by having Bettman rig the lottery for them, try replicating that.
St. Louis basically was mid and had a the slowest build.
Florida took forever after their rebuild to be good and took Zito taking over and getting bargain pieces vs leveraging whatever they got through a rebuild.
Avs got their core through a rebuild of a rebuild but built their depth through signings and trades.

The point is you do not need to tank to get assets, majority of the teams that won the cup just build their team over time.
You need to tank for elite talent but it has to be an orchestrated tank and not accidental because that's how you end up like we did. The elite guys are the guys that you build/retool around and you need at least 2. We got lucky with Hughes but he was still picked in the top 10. Those Shotgun and Juolevi busts is what killed this core.
 
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