Listening to Drance on Canucks Talk, management was unsure about repeating the tall-dman roster strategy from last year. They did it as a trial this year. Meaning, it is not a template they believe in wholeheartedly. That is great news to me.
The focus has to be quality and not traits. Desharnais has a monstrous profile, but is on the outs because he can't play well enough. Soucy and Myers had strugged. Forbort wasn't a concern while Brannstrom was excelling etc...
Hopefully, that trial period is nearing its end and they work to increase the skill on defense, even at the expense of size.
I wouldn’t call it great news as you’d expect a competent management team to adapt their strategy to results.
Canucks are running a 44% score adjusted CF% since the Miller benching game. Worst in the league over that stretch. xGF% is a bit worse at 42% and no appreciable difference pre- and post-Hronek injury.
Still think the team needs to maximize the current Hughes window but don’t blame management for wanting to wait and see a bit, because that’s probably not salvageable if it keeps up for another 10-12 games.
I feel like the die has already been cast though. Management has already committed to a certain window with this core, and in some ways, the poor results almost necessitate bigger trades to stay on track.
I agree that pure rental trades make less sense but I also doubt they were planning on that given last years rentals.
They need to find another top four puck moving defensemen and then hope Tochett can adjust his system so that we are able to produce more offense but not at a significant cost to our offense.
Difficult task for management and there is a good chance the Canucks have peaked, but this retool was always going to difficult given the original pieces in place.