Management Thread | The Song Remains the Same Edition

[MS]

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.

We were expected to be a good offensive team with good goaltending and bad defense. Instead we've been a good offensive team with bad defense and all-time terrible goaltending.

Yes, the goaltending results are shocking. They're literally the worst we've seen in this century, and by a country mile at that.

If our very good goalie had performed in his normal fashion - or even just delivered statistically league average goaltending - we'd be sitting right in the playoff bubble picture. As expected, in what was expected to be a transition year.

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?

No team is doing that. It's totally unrealistic for where the team was at the time. It doesn't happen. It never happens.

I hate Aquilini more than anyone but I understand reality and sports outside of this market and it's a ridiculous expectation to suggest that they should have been blowing up the roster that we had in place and instead tanking for Bedard while running $20 million below the cap which is what that poster was suggesting.

 

[quat]

... 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.

Management literally came in and stated unequivocally what they felt were the issues plaguing the team. It's hardly impossible or never seen in the history of any sport ever, ever, ever to have tried to address those issues. This black and white scenario you've created isn't helping your argument, particularly when the new management acknowledged the same issues most here agreed upon. Yourself included.

Given the agreed upon situation, taking a step back to build around your younger star players is neither rare nor unusual.

 

[racerjoe]

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.

When did I say get rid of all the bad contracts for free? Who is living in the fantasy land... I thought this team would be 5th in the div this year... So I also didn't expect them to be some juggernaut playoff team... just in the mix, and you don't think this goaltending has been a major contributor?

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Adam Fox is on $9.5m/year.

The team not only was attractive to the player, they had assets to trade for him, and the ability to extend him.

It’s absolutely wild this is just chalked up to luck.

It’s even more wild people are talking about him like he’s currently on his ELC.

The purpose of a rebuild is to pivot to a contention window and maintain it. New York’s plan looks to be yielding the results of that plan.

They acquired a Norris level D man who refused to go anywhere but to them and it only cost them IIRC 2 2nd round picks.

The Rangers have an unfair built in advantage.

 

[Canucker]

They acquired a Norris level D man who refused to go anywhere but to them and it only cost them IIRC 2 2nd round picks.

The Rangers have an unfair built in advantage.

Lets hope Bedard gives us that kind of advantage. lol

 

[Breakers]

Could we finally weaponize cap space?


Only took us 8 years for this idiotic owner and various managements to realize it is an option.

 

[VanillaCoke]

Backing up one poor opinion with another seems like a bold move to me, but i commend the conviction to ones beliefs.

Dont think certain posters are willing to admit being incorrect and instead just make extreme counter examples and try to explain things away to where they weren't actually incorrect because reasons.

This season being garbage didnt exactly take edgar cayce like foresight..

 

[EpochLink]

Could we finally weaponize cap space?


Only took us 8 years for this idiotic owner and various managements to realize it is an option.

Here's hoping, we need the cap space.
Also, Aquaman needs to back the f*** up in regards to how this management is run.

The Aqualini family must know they are the most despised family in the lower mainland outside the Sahota's

 

[4Twenty]

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 think it’s intellectually dishonest to get to keep everything the same but move the goaltending numbers around. That’s just me though.

It’s also not like either of those guys going down. Goaltending is volatile; Demko was coming off of off-season surgery.

Same defence corps.

 

[Ernie]

We were expected to be a good offensive team with good goaltending and bad defense. Instead we've been a good offensive team with bad defense and all-time terrible goaltending.

Yes, the goaltending results are shocking. They're literally the worst we've seen in this century, and by a country mile at that.

If our very good goalie had performed in his normal fashion - or even just delivered statistically league average goaltending - we'd be sitting right in the playoff bubble picture. As expected, in what was expected to be a transition year.



No team is doing that. It's totally unrealistic for where the team was at the time. It doesn't happen. It never happens.

I hate Aquilini more than anyone but I understand reality and sports outside of this market and it's a ridiculous expectation to suggest that they should have been blowing up the roster that we had in place and instead tanking for Bedard while running $20 million below the cap which is what that poster was suggesting.

This is not an accurate post. The Canucks are a bottom 10 team in every single possession metric. They would need Demko to be a Vezina caliber goalie to be in the playoff conversation, not merely an average NHL goalie. Also, the penalty kill is terrible and there appears to be no solution to that with this roster.

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?

Dude, you declared you were a Kraken fan in 2021, you had the avatar and all. C'mon now.

 

[credulous]

plenty of people called this team as being an 80-90 point team at best. that they're gonna end somewhere around 70 instead is down to goaltending but let's not pretend this is a 100 point roster let down by demko/martin

 

[4th line culture]

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?

If miller had a blown acl to start the season things may have gone better

 

[Coffee]

Dude, you declared you were a Kraken fan in 2021, you had the avatar and all. C'mon now.

You and this entire board knows MS is Canucks for life.

And we are lucky to have him

 

[bandwagonesque]

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

This is no different than isolating any other unpredictable variable and positing a different outcome. It's the same shit pro-Benning posters did for years and were rightly pilloried for. Literally every other important player has been healthy all year. But injuries!

 

[andora]

So basically this endless argument - essentially - is boiling down to one side saying i knew i was right and the other side saying there was nothing to be right about due to reality.. i think this is what i have read the past several pages?

everything was dead under benning and green. the players, the fans .. everything. a new group comes in and speaks about what they saw with a dead team - they stunk. then they came to life, played exciting hockey, fought to make it meaningful hockey, got the city excited and seemed to come together (even the cliched fighting through injuries to key players to stay alive storyline)..

i don't understand why a new group (that we need to remember this as a business still needs to build trust with their employees) was going to cut their throats and gut the team. very likely they said to themselves in february - well ok shit.. looks like they are going for it. call it a bump or whatever tired nickname it has now the team played meaningful inspired games for a long time and fought to get as close as they could, and management let them do it. ok, show us what you got.

the talk about failing the deadline or not moving the ufa players (i saw a couple times) who were all these ufa players that could have been moved to get the assets? motte? lammiko.. and how did we blow a deadline when it was talked about how valuable miller was at his salary for TWO runs for a team - and a leaked offer was a 1st rounder, lundqvist and chytil? wow, great f***en value for TWO runs.. late first rounder, a bum stalled flaw dman and at the time a middling find his way young player (even though i liked him at the time) - doesn't seem like there was that much value to have in the first place.

management was going to give this group a chance with how they were playing, the team said no, let us try and fix this and they did it. that is like THE most normal thing in a company to happen when new management comes in. one thing i don't think i've read yet, in all the 'dumb management' tone is that they DIDN"T buy into the bump and add to the team, making those deadline expensive deals to try and help them get there. THAT is something managements do all the time, but these guys didn't which sure as hell doesn't get mentioned.

it is also totally reasonable to believe that from their initial assessment of the team to say, December this year that it hasn't changed, that they are now just being proven correct by the players/results/coaches etc..

overall i'm not exactly sure what the argument is about really - i mean i feel i am fairly rational when it comes to this stuff, have followed this game for over 30 years, played for many and i enjoy studying and learning trends/financials etc.. but last year if i had a choice between playoff berth or the long overdue rebuild or tool or pivot or whatever the nuance word of the hour is i would have said playoffs.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Adam Fox is on $9.5m/year.

The team not only was attractive to the player, they had assets to trade for him, and the ability to extend him.

It’s absolutely wild this is just chalked up to luck.

It’s even more wild people are talking about him like he’s currently on his ELC.

The purpose of a rebuild is to pivot to a contention window and maintain it. New York’s plan looks to be yielding the results of that plan.

Which teams at the time didn't have the equivalent of 2nd and 3rd round picks?

 

[me2]

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.

That's kind of the opposite of what has happened here for 10 years. No vision is the same for all teams in a cap league. Running the wrong vision has led to continued failure.

If you don't understand your team, tailor your vision appropriately you are doomed to mediocrity or worse. At least the league rewards gross incompetence comes with high picks, like we are getting this year.

 

[Canucker]

So basically this endless argument - essentially - is boiling down to one side saying i knew i was right and the other side saying there was nothing to be right about due to reality.. i think this is what i have read the past several pages?

everything was dead under benning and green. the players, the fans .. everything. a new group comes in and speaks about what they saw with a dead team - they stunk. then they came to life, played exciting hockey, fought to make it meaningful hockey, got the city excited and seemed to come together (even the cliched fighting through injuries to key players to stay alive storyline)..

i don't understand why a new group (that we need to remember this as a business still needs to build trust with their employees) was going to cut their throats and gut the team. very likely they said to themselves in february - well ok shit.. looks like they are going for it. call it a bump or whatever tired nickname it has now the team played meaningful inspired games for a long time and fought to get as close as they could, and management let them do it. ok, show us what you got.

the talk about failing the deadline or not moving the ufa players (i saw a couple times) who were all these ufa players that could have been moved to get the assets? motte? lammiko.. and how did we blow a deadline when it was talked about how valuable miller was at his salary for TWO runs for a team - and a leaked offer was a 1st rounder, lundqvist and chytil? wow, great f***en value for TWO runs.. late first rounder, a bum stalled flaw dman and at the time a middling find his way young player (even though i liked him at the time) - doesn't seem like there was that much value to have in the first place.

management was going to give this group a chance with how they were playing, the team said no, let us try and fix this and they did it. that is like THE most normal thing in a company to happen when new management comes in. one thing i don't think i've read yet, in all the 'dumb management' tone is that they DIDN"T buy into the bump and add to the team, making those deadline expensive deals to try and help them get there. THAT is something managements do all the time, but these guys didn't which sure as hell doesn't get mentioned.

it is also totally reasonable to believe that from their initial assessment of the team to say, December this year that it hasn't changed, that they are now just being proven correct by the players/results/coaches etc..

overall i'm not exactly sure what the argument is about really - i mean i feel i am fairly rational when it comes to this stuff, have followed this game for over 30 years, played for many and i enjoy studying and learning trends/financials etc.. but last year if i had a choice between playoff berth or the long overdue rebuild or tool or pivot or whatever the nuance word of the hour is i would have said playoffs.

Thats not exactly the choice, at least it's not one that isn't tainted with bias and oversimplification...if it were as simple as "making the playoffs" vs "long drawn out rebuild" that's an easy choice, but its not. People got excited over a hot streak and thought it was indicative of the overall state of the team, it's pretty clear that this team had some serious problems that were being masked by very strong goaltending...those problems were ignored, and management decided to sally forth rather than try and address some of the actual problems at hand.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

plenty of people called this team as being an 80-90 point team at best. that they're gonna end somewhere around 70 instead is down to goaltending but let's not pretend this is a 100 point roster let down by demko/martin

If you are a 90s level team that relies on stellar goaltending to get that far with giant anchor contracts, are you a team worth putting the chips in on? Is there even precedence for a situation like that? I'm not 100%, the best I can think of off the top of my head is if Colorado pushes farther after 2010. But there is no tangible way to measure that, it's just all circumstance and philosophy. The game's changed a lot since 2010.

How do you even dig out of a hole like the one we are in without rebuilding? Is it all semantics? What constitutes a rebuild for us tankies? I honestly don't care and I don't have answers, all I know is I want a Cup as soon as possible. I know I ain't the only one.

This team and the road AquaJim put it on has a question to answer ratio that is astronomical.

 

[arttk]

That's kind of the opposite of what has happened here for 10 years. No vision is for for all teams in a call league. Running the wrong vision has led to continued failure.

If you don't understand your team, tailor your vision appropriately you are doomed to mediocrity or worse. At least the league rewards gross incompetence comes with high picks, like we are getting this year.

I don’t know why you want to lump in Benning with Allvin.

Hey if you want to say Benning had no anything I am with you.

This is a cap and draft based league, there really isn’t that much vision involved with team building. I think you are talking about identity and not vision.

When I think vision I am thinking like Chelsea deciding to build the best football academy and then creating a loan army that no other team had giving them a competitive advantage over other teams. That’s vision, doing stuff no other team does.

 

[Ernie]

You and this entire board knows MS is Canucks for life.

And we are lucky to have him

Sure? You can be the fan of more than one team. But not accurate to say he was bullish on this roster in summer 2021, that's for sure. And he wasn't wrong, but for some reason he's lost a bit of perspective recently.

This team sucks. It's essentially a Benning team still. It needs to be restructured.

 

[andora]

Thats not exactly the choice, at least it's not one that isn't tainted with bias and oversimplification...if it were as simple as "making the playoffs" vs "long drawn out rebuild" that's an easy choice, but its not. People got excited over a hot streak and thought it was indicative of the overall state of the team, it's pretty clear that this team had some serious problems that were being masked by very strong goaltending...those problems were ignored, and management decided to sally forth rather than try and address some of the actual problems at hand.

no it isn't that simple - addressing those problems (which i am not disagreeing with) do not get addressed at a trade deadline. doing what they did i don't think is ignoring what the problems were. in the reality of WHAT happened - not ignoring those problems they should have added defensive players to the team to help it which would have been true short sightedness.

simply playing out the season and letting an inspired group (for once) try and make it - none of these things that are wrong with the team are not fixed in a trade deadline or through some random moves in an offseason

 

[canucksfan]

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.

Yup. Many teams piss away years trying to compete but in reality they have no chance. This team can’t make the playoffs, will likely be worse on paper next year, limited prospect pool, and in cap hell. They need to completely revamp the blue line which is next to impossible to do given their current situation. Demko is a question mark now as well.

 

[logan5]

I am going to agree that this poor season rests almost entirely on the goaltending.

Going purely by numbers, the historically bad goaltending this season has certainly cost the team quite a few points, but on top of that there is a huge psychological effect that has cost us a lot of games as well. It must be difficult to motivate yourself to play hard night after night knowing that the goalie is almost assuredly going to let in a couple of bad goals, and usually in the first 10 minutes of the game - night after night. Obviously the upside to this is the opportunity to add another elite player, possibly a generational player, which would increase our chances of winning the Stanley Cup.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Sure? You can be the fan of more than one team. But not accurate to say he was bullish on this roster in summer 2021, that's for sure. And he wasn't wrong, but for some reason he's lost a bit of perspective recently.

This team sucks. It's essentially a Benning team still. It needs to be restructured.

You can't just put words in his mouth and not print the receipts.

The Management Thread | We live Page to Page here

This is a good team now. In a show of gratitude towards Benning, you'll be kissing those shoes soon. This team has an absolutely shit blueline. They might be a marginal playoff team at best. But again, this is the same thing as Fake Stanley Cup 2020. There is no plan or goal to consistently...

forums.hfboards.com

The Management Thread | We live Page to Page here

This is a good team now. In a show of gratitude towards Benning, you'll be kissing those shoes soon. This team has an absolutely shit blueline. They might be a marginal playoff team at best. But again, this is the same thing as Fake Stanley Cup 2020. There is no plan or goal to consistently...

forums.hfboards.com

The Management Thread | We live Page to Page here

This is a good team now. In a show of gratitude towards Benning, you'll be kissing those shoes soon. This team has an absolutely shit blueline. They might be a marginal playoff team at best. But again, this is the same thing as Fake Stanley Cup 2020. There is no plan or goal to consistently...

forums.hfboards.com

This team has an absolutely shit blueline. They might be a marginal playoff team at best.

But again, this is the same thing as Fake Stanley Cup 2020. There is no plan or goal to consistently compete and win championships. The big goal is to sneak into 16th place to save the GM’s job and then deal with the mess later. Take one of the worse contacts in hockey that will haunt the team for half a decade? Who cares if it’s a marginal improvement now! Defer half your backup’s cap hit to a future year? Who cares! Gotta save our jobs now!

These are just snippets, though. What his truth and how he felt is between him and himself only. Our situation has changed drastically since then, keep in mind and he's allowed to change his mind with new information presented to him. I'll leave his response to him.