Management Thread | The Song Remains the Same Edition

[4th line culture]

Yes, because a series of events - mostly a shocking breakdown at the goaltending position - has dictated that that is the best approach for the rest of this season once it was lost.

If you think that a management group is going to go to an owner (any owner, not just this dumbass we have here) and say : You know how we built some momentum at the end of last year and finished pretty well with a young team and weren't that far away from making the playoffs? And how we managed to get our superstar player re-engaged after he looked totally lost for an entire year? Well, we aren't going to try and build off that at all! What we plan to do is blow everything up, run $20 million below the salary cap, lose as many games as possible, cost you $millions, reverse the positive steps we just made in terms of fan and player engagement, and maybe hit it lucky on a 5% chance of landing the #1 overall pick!

... you have no clue. It's absurd. It isn't how sports works. It isn't how real life works. Just because you think that that's the quickest way to build a contender in a video game doesn't mean that that was any sort of real possibility in a real world dealing with real money and real people.

If they had started the rebuild at last trade deadline would the fan and player engagement be worse than it is now?

 

[MS]

I know it would be unconventional for a team that did as well as it did as well as it did in the 2nd half to "blow it up"....but there were a lot of people around here who saw that this team was unsoundly built and really needed to be torn down, despite the turnaround under BB. It may not be popular, or in some ways realistic to blow things up completely...but taking a conscious "step back" this season was completely within the realm of possibility and really should have been the directive IMO.

If they had started the rebuild at last trade deadline would the fan and player engagement be worse than it is now?

... and posts like this just continue to fail to acknowledge that this was something that was simply never going to happen.

We'd be in a better place if we traded for McDavid last summer, too. That also was never going to happen.

Fan attitudes to rebuilds are pure video game nonsense, like it's some sort of easy decision that average teams just make all the time! No team ever 'blows it up' unless their core has completely aged out and they have zero chance of competing (ie. Montreal last year, what SJ should be doing now). Teams that finish with 92 points and have all of their core players in their early-mid 20s do not do this. Ever. It's nonsense to think it would ever even have been on the table as an option.

 

[Canucker]

... and posts like this just continue to fail to acknowledge that this was something that was simply never going to happen.

We'd be in a better place if we traded for McDavid last summer, too. That also was never going to happen.

Fan attitudes to rebuilds are pure video game nonsense, like it's some sort of easy decision that average teams just make all the time! No team ever 'blows it up' unless their core has completely aged out and they have zero chance of competing (ie. Montreal last year, what SJ should be doing now). Teams that finish with 92 points and have all of their core players in their early-mid 20s do not do this. Ever. It's nonsense to think it would ever even have been on the table as an option.

Sure, and thats why we are where we are...a lack of vision and spine. Build a shitty team, double down on it and expect different results.

 

[MS]

Sure, and thats why we are where we are...a lack of vision and spine. Build a shitty team, double down on it and expect different results.

This isn't a 'lack of vision' relative to other teams.

Literally no owner or organization in sport would do this from the position we were in. It's not how things work.

It's super easy for fans in video-game mode to say 'do this!' when it isn't their money getting lost by the $millions and they don't have to look the people reporting to them in the face and tell them they aren't trying to compete.

It also remains an incredibly intellectually dishonest argument to act like the results we've seen this year have been an accurate representation of the team on paper going into the season. If Thatcher Demko gives us league average goaltending numbers we're somewhere in the playoff bubble picture.

 

[arttk]

Sure, and thats why we are where we are...a lack of vision and spine. Build a shitty team, double down on it and expect different results.

Vision is overrated as f*** for a sports team within a capped league. It's not like european football where you have Real Madrid where a president can execute a vision that leverages prestige to getting the best players into creating a financial juggernault that runs over everyone for a decade+.

Every team in a capped league has essentially the same vision.

What matters is process, execution and luck, especially in a capped league.

 

[Canucker]

This isn't a 'lack of vision' relative to other teams.

Literally no owner or organization in sport would do this from the position we were in. It's not how things work.

It's super easy for fans in video-game mode to say 'do this!' when it isn't their money getting lost by the $millions and they don't have to look the people reporting to them in the face and tell them they aren't trying to compete.

It also remains an incredibly intellectually dishonest argument to act like the results we've seen this year have been an accurate representation of the team on paper going into the season. If Thatcher Demko gives us league average goaltending numbers we're somewhere in the playoff bubble picture.

It's a lack of vision to think that simply tinkering around the edges of a fundamentally flawed team was going to be a winning formula.

I'm not saying that this year is an "accurate representation of the team", I'm saying that even with a healthy, average Demko we're at best mediocre...this is not a well-constructed team with absolutely no pipeline of help from below...at best this was going to be a season long fight to be a playoff team and a continued path of mediocrity. What we have right now is the product of being a shitty team that has to rely on top notch goaltending that has completely failed.

 

[4Twenty]

This isn't a 'lack of vision' relative to other teams.

Literally no owner or organization in sport would do this from the position we were in. It's not how things work.

It's super easy for fans in video-game mode to say 'do this!' when it isn't their money getting lost by the $millions and they don't have to look the people reporting to them in the face and tell them they aren't trying to compete.

It also remains an incredibly intellectually dishonest argument to act like the results we've seen this year have been an accurate representation of the team on paper going into the season. If Thatcher Demko gives us league average goaltending numbers we're somewhere in the playoff bubble picture.

It’s intellectually dishonest to act like 50+ games played with zero pressure was the real Canucks. Split the difference between both seasons and that’s what the Canucks are. A sub 90 point roster.

Rebuilding was the correct path. What they did has made their job infinitely harder.

$20m under the cap might not be realistic but having flexibility should’ve been the short term goal.

This is the worst western conference in recent memory and these guys are miles out of it.

 

[MS]

It's a lack of vision to think that simply tinkering around the edges of a fundamentally flawed team was going to be a winning formula.

I'm not saying that this year is an "accurate representation of the team", I'm saying that even with a healthy, average Demko we're at best mediocre...this is not a well-constructed team with absolutely no pipeline of help from below...at best this was going to be a season long fight to be a playoff team and a continued path of mediocrity. What we have right now is the product of being a shitty team that has to rely on top notch goaltending that has completely failed.

That may turn out to be the case, but again : this is how the world works. Teams only 'blow it up' as an absolute last resort when there are zero other options.

 

[MS]

It’s intellectually dishonest to act like 50+ games played with zero pressure was the real Canucks. Split the difference between both seasons and that’s what the Canucks are. A sub 90 point roster.

Rebuilding was the correct path. What they did has made their job infinitely harder.

$20m under the cap might not be realistic but having flexibility should’ve been the short term goal.

This is the worst western conference in recent memory and these guys are miles out of it.

I give zero shits about the Bruce Bump. My take was the same in 2019 and 2020 and 2021 as it was in 2022. The core was set, it was pretty decent, you have to try and build around them.

Whether rebuilding was theoretically the correct path in video game land is totally irrelevant. It's not something that was ever going to be on the table with real money and real people. I don't know why this is so difficult for people to understand.

They're miles out of it because they're having - by a mile - the worst statistical goaltending season this league has seen in decades. They're literally 40% worse in terms of deviation from league average goaltending than the previous worst team of the last 25 years. It's an absolutely absurd result. Where would they be if they were getting an expected goaltending result and Demko had delivered league-average goaltending numbers?

 

[Canucker]

That may turn out to be the case, but again : this is how the world works. Teams only 'blow it up' as an absolute last resort when there are zero other options.

And I think that is where the problem lies...it's easy to throw out what the "norms" are, but the norms aren't always the best way to course correct, they're just the easiest to justify because they're the path of least resistance.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Fan attitudes to rebuilds are pure video game nonsense, like it's some sort of easy decision that average teams just make all the time! No team ever 'blows it up' unless their core has completely aged out and they have zero chance of competing (ie. Montreal last year, what SJ should be doing now). Teams that finish with 92 points and have all of their core players in their early-mid 20s do not do this. Ever. It's nonsense to think it would ever even have been on the table as an option.

In on Feb 8 2018, when Glen Sather and Jeff Gorton published their famous letter to fans, the Rangers were 25-24-5 after a 1-7 skid and 6 of their top 7 scorers were 26 and under. They rebuilt because the team was badly constructed, their defence was garbage and their farm system was barren. They took the unusual step of writing the letter because they knew fans would question their decision and wanted to forstall this with an explanation.

 

[MS]

In on Feb 8 2018, when Glen Sather and Jeff Gorton published their famous letter to fans, the Rangers were 25-24-5 after a 1-7 skid and 6 of their top 7 scorers were 26 and under. They rebuilt because the team was badly constructed, their defence was garbage and their farm system was barren. They took the unusual step of writing the letter because they knew fans would question their decision and wanted to forstall this with an explanation.

Their leading U-30 forward had 47 points that year, their leading defender had 26 points, and the team was built around a 36 y/o goalie floating them with superstar performances. Like it's easy to say they had 'young forwards' but none were actually performing at a high level and you're counting Jesper Fast.

There isn't really a comparison there to a team that had Petterson/Hughes/Demko/Horvat performing at an extremely high level aged 22-27.

 

[4Twenty]

You give all the shits about the Bruce bump. It’s your baseline for their moves and why you supported what’s ended up as a tank. A tank that had to trade a 2nd to fit under the cap. Anyways.


Almost as video gamey as art’s all prospect lineups and clearing $18m in cap with no cap coming back.

Last offseason hurt the Canucks badly.

And lo’fing’L at 24 year old Zibanehad, 25 year old JT Miller, 28 yr old mcdonagh, 25 year old Kevin Hayes, 22 year old buchnevich, 25 year old Kreider, 22 year old Pionk being behind what the Canucks have

 

[MS]

You give all the shits about the Bruce bump. It’s your baseline for their moves and why you supported what’s ended up as a tank. A tank that had to trade a 2nd to fit under the cap. Anyways.


Almost as video gamey as art’s all prospect lineups and clearing $18m in cap with no cap coming back.

Last offseason hurt the Canucks badly.

My take was exactly identical in the summer of 2021 when the team had an absolutely shit season as it was in 2022.

I'm looking at the roster and the players and the ages of those players and their level of performance. This team just went through a 5+ year tank and had a solid collection of young players to build around. You build around them.

The notion that you take a team in that position and you blow it up is just total nonsense. I'll keep calling it video game crap because it is video game crap of the sort you'd expect to see from a 15 year old who has no idea how the world works.

Again, where would this team be right now if Thatcher Demko had delivered statistically league-average goaltending, as literally everyone here would have expected?

 

[Nucker101]

As someone pointed out, you're making the word "IF" do an awful lot of heavy work.

One could go as far to say “video game trades”

 

[mriswith]

Dude, you were suggesting that the team run $20 million below the cap and tank for Bedard.

It remains an absolutely absurd video game suggestion to think that any team in the history of sports would have done that from the position that we were in.

Wrong, I said repeatedly Bedard wasn't the goal. Restocking futures and clearing cap was the goal.

It remains an absolutely absurd opinion to call what amounted to ~6 months of foresight "unthinkable in the history of sports!!!!!"

Your plan of re-sign everyone and compete immediately with no steps back was the worst case scenario for this franchise. Thankfully avoided.

 

[quat]

This is so weird to me. Management had a plan coming into the season and when things trended downward, they pivoted and changed the plan for this season. That's kinda how everything works in the real world. You have a plan and it's not working, you change. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with that. And the bit about us being fortunate, there is nothing really fortunate about it. They are leaning hard into losing right now by shutting guys down, playing Silovs, getting players to practice instead of resting for game day and essentially broadcasting to everyone that, winning doesn't matter process does. If you paid attention to the interview with Waddell, Allvin were negotiating with teams for the highest pick and he got it.

After all these years of Benning executing a plan and double downing, triple downing regardless how the season is doing, like I am genuinely surprised that posters are like dunking on this management group for pivoting. If they go into next season and the season after where their initial plan fails and they have to pivot again, then that's when we should really be hammering them because like how can you make the same mistakes over and over again.

They've pivoted several times though. Management came in and gave a frank assessment of the problems the team was facing. It's seemed genuine and pretty accurate.

They then did pretty much the exact opposite of what they'd identified as the issue and followed a similar course of action the last GM had long been following.

The team then underperformed everyone's expectations by a wide margin. Maybe one or two posters felt they'd be in the bottom five, but even the nay-sayers weren't targeting that degree of ineptness.

Management now seems to be reverting (pivoting) back to their initial evaluation, but who knows, it's probably wise to see what they actually end up doing.

So, while you're correct, it is a positive that they seem to be adaptive in a positive fashion, a degree of distrust has been earned. You seem far more willing to given them the benefit of the doubt than others.

On point with your evaluation of Benning.

 

[racerjoe]

My take was exactly identical in the summer of 2021 when the team had an absolutely shit season as it was in 2022.

I'm looking at the roster and the players and the ages of those players and their level of performance. This team just went through a 5+ year tank and had a solid collection of young players to build around. You build around them.

The notion that you take a team in that position and you blow it up is just total nonsense. I'll keep calling it video game crap because it is video game crap of the sort you'd expect to see from a 15 year old who has no idea how the world works.

Again, where would this team be right now if Thatcher Demko had delivered statistically league-average goaltending, as literally everyone here would have expected?

He won't answer your questions... but when you don't answer one of his look out!

 

[MS]

Wrong, I said repeatedly Bedard wasn't the goal. Restocking futures and clearing cap was the goal.

It remains an absolutely absurd opinion to call what amounted to 6 months of foresight "unthinkable in the history of sports!!!!!"

Your plan of re-sign everyone and compete immediately with no steps back was the worst case scenario for this franchise. Thankfully avoided.

Yes, it remains an absolutely absurd opinion.

You set an expectation that was never going to happen in reality and then are campaigning on outrage that your non-realistic thing didn't happen. Again, it's like saying 'We should trade for McDavid!' in the summer and then 6 months later saying 'Look how good McDavid is! I told you we'd be way better if we traded for him!'

Also, unless you predicted that we'd have the worst goaltending in modern NHL history - and you didn't - your claims of foresight ring kind of hollow.

 

[4Twenty]

He won't answer your questions... but when you don't answer one of his look out!

I’m not playing but goaltending….

But you can guys can play art’s get rid of the bad contracts for free fantasy land game all you want.

 

[sandwichbird2023]

Yes, because a series of events - mostly a shocking breakdown at the goaltending position - has dictated that that is the best approach for the rest of this season once it was lost.

If you think that a management group is going to go to an owner (any owner, not just this dumbass we have here) and say : You know how we built some momentum at the end of last year and finished pretty well with a young team and weren't that far away from making the playoffs? And how we managed to get our superstar player re-engaged after he looked totally lost for an entire year? Well, we aren't going to try and build off that at all! What we plan to do is blow everything up, run $20 million below the salary cap, lose as many games as possible, cost you $millions, reverse the positive steps we just made in terms of fan and player engagement, and maybe hit it lucky on a 5% chance of landing the #1 overall pick!

... you have no clue. It's absurd. It isn't how sports works. It isn't how real life works. Just because you think that that's the quickest way to build a contender in a video game doesn't mean that that was any sort of real possibility in a real world dealing with real money and real people.

The question is, this series of events, is it really all that shocking?

- The defense sucks, not shocking at all.
- The forwards doesn't back check enough, not shocking at all.
- The PK sucks, not shocking at all, only the degree of suckage was a little surprising, but they were always going to be bottom 10 if not worse.
- The lack of structure, well even JR acknowledged this coming in, not shocking at all.
- Demko falling off so much is surprising, but realistically this is a fairly injury-prone goalie that ended the last season on IR and had surgery off season, playing behind the worst D in the league with a low-compete roster, does anybody really expect him to post top-5 goaltending stats year-in year-out?

To me there is nothing too shocking about this season. Sure we might be 5 spot lower than expected but, at best "if the stars align" scenario, we were a bubble team. It seems to me that the result only really surprised people that didn't have a good read of the roster last summer and bought into the Bruce bump.

Again I didn't EXPECT a tear down rebuild because I know our owner won't allow it. I HOPED that JR and his experience would convince the owner otherwise, but evidently it took yet ANOTHER wasted season to finally get him to go along for a rebuild. At least we look like we are on the right path now.

Yes, it remains an absolutely absurd opinion.

You set an expectation that was never going to happen in reality and then are campaigning on outrage that your non-realistic thing didn't happen. Again, it's like saying 'We should trade for McDavid!' in the summer and then 6 months later saying 'Look how good McDavid is! I told you we'd be way better if we traded for him!'

Also, unless you predicted that we'd have the worst goaltending in modern NHL history - and you didn't - your claims of foresight ring kind of hollow.

C'mon that is such a straw man. The option to trade for McDavid was never available. The option to rebuild was and is. It take management to convince the ownership, but isn't that why we hired JR? Because he would be able to tell the owner to back off?

 

[MS]

I’m not playing but goaltending….

But you can guys can play art’s get rid of the bad contracts for free fantasy land game all you want.

It's not 'But goaltending' ... which by the way remains a juvenile false equivalency to blaming Gillis' prospect pool for Benning's failures 6 years later.

It's intellectually dishonest to pretend that our position in the standings is a fair and expected representation of where the team appeared to be last summer when you compare our expected goaltending to the all-time horrific results we've received. Nobody would have predicted that.

It's no different than if all of Pettersson/Horvat/Miller had blown their ACLs in the preseason and we were using Dries and Studnicka as our top 2 centers all year and saying 'I told you so!' when the team is bad.

Again, where would this team be in the standings if you hold everything else the same but we receive league-average goaltending instead of the absolutely shocking mess we've been delivered?

 

[I Hart Conor Garland]

So. Much. This.

What have we heard about this group from management and coaches?

1. Unprofessional. Poor preparation. Not ready to start the game.
2. Poor practice habits.
3. River hockey.
4. Lack of conditioning (Tocchet recently)
5. Poor leadership group.
6. Back to grade school defensively.
7. Bruce saying in exasperation ‘I know I want to win’…perhaps the most damning really.

But yes, let’s continue to coddle this group. They have so much potential!

Ya but this is the kinda group where ya just gotta get in then anything can happen. Can we talk to Mysie about an extension yet?

 

[Cancuks]

Put Demko and OEL on LTIR and we can take on nearly $20 million in cap dumps or retention. We could be the middleman for Kane and Toews trades. Time to acquire some more second round picks as I believe this is where the good defensemen will be drafted this season.

 

[mriswith]

Yes, it remains an absolutely absurd opinion.

You set an expectation that was never going to happen in reality and then are campaigning on outrage that your non-realistic thing didn't happen. Again, it's like saying 'We should trade for McDavid!' in the summer and then 6 months later saying 'Look how good McDavid is! I told you we'd be way better if we traded for him!'

Also, unless you predicted that we'd have the worst goaltending in modern NHL history - and you didn't - your claims of foresight ring kind of hollow.

Wrong again. As always the problem with your posts is the extreme hyperbole. I gave up on them doing what I hoped they'd do when they bombed the trade deadline, from that point on it was too late to generate the market required for the volume of deals they needed to do. So you're wrong that I expected they'd do it, you're wrong that I am campaigning on outrage they didn't do it, and you're wrong that it's in any way comparable to trading for McDavid.

The issue is that you have always been dead set that it was never a viable option to deal the UFA aged guys and build around Pettersson/Hughes/Demko. You refused and still refuse to accept that it was a viable path. You have been completely dogmatic, there-is-only-one-way the entire time.

You have insisted that only Benning's plan of compete immediately with this group is the only way.

You literally called it video games on repeat to talk about trading the UFA aged guys and building around the young core. Not everyone who wanted that course of action agreed with my idea of trying to run near the cap floor, you had an identical opinion for what they wanted to do too, so don't try and retcon this as being solely about running near the cap floor.

You were completely suckered by the Bruce bump. You constantly referred to their point pace under Bruce, that's getting suckered by the bump.

I didn't predict we'd finish this poorly, I thought we'd hover around the wild card. I said there's an oceanic gap between this team and a contender and we'd never get there without massive changes and it took an unexpected losing streak to get mgmt to apparently see it too.

It's a lot easier to make massive changes by stockpiling for a year or two than it is to simply expect GM of the year performance and multiple home runs to fall from the sky - your plan. I like the plan with a higher probability of success and more room for error than hoping for a generational turnaround to fall from the sky.