Management Thread | The Song Remains the Same Edition

[credulous]

You are not living up to your username!

it's ironic. i'm a skeptic at heart

 

[me2]

ten?

 

[me2]

If JR is serious about contending sooner rather than later he needs put this year's first on the table, unprotected of necessary. I guess we find out.

 

[krutovsdonut]

About Gillis's pro scouting

A Oberg and 3rd rnd, 83rd or so pick for Higgins? A solid two way forward that moved up and own the top 9 but could also play on the 4th line.

Lapierre for Perrault and another 80 something

Erhoff for White and Rahmi

Hamhuis and Garrison the to top UFAs those years both come to Vancouver at discounts

Alberts for a 85th pick

Too many to count even the Ballard trade was not as bad, Ballard was the PP qback on two teams and another top dman highly desired league wide.

Not even close with Benning's disasters

it is a fact that gillis pro-scouting wanted to trade for gubranson and sutter. it's also a fact they completely failed to sustain or replenish the 2011 team with moves after that date.

which is why you just cited 5 trades that took place before the scf, which is 3 years before benning was hired.

canucks pro-scouting failed to make a single meaningful help now player acquisition by trade or signing after the scf when the team desperately needed them until gillis was fired. that core just withered away as marco sturm, sammy pahlson, david booth, derek roy and jason garrison skated by, signifying nothing. the kassian trade i understand but it didn't help, and even the luongo trade as a last gasp produced markstrom as a project who would need sheltering for 3 years to be ready.

If JR is serious about contending sooner rather than later he needs put this year's first on the table, unprotected of necessary. I guess we find out.

lol

 

[krutovsdonut]

You're right - but the margin here is very thin. If Detroit simply takes Hughes over Zadina, they have a better core than us.

And stars are not the only way to build a team. Look at Vegas, Seattle.



The core here is fine and sure, better than Detroit or Arizona or Montreal. But they just don't have the ability to make moves to find contributing players, even if they had the pro scouting ability to do so. You rightfully point out that amateur scouting is hard - so is pro scouting.

it is a great question whether an existing team could rebuild by building a deep middle six/ 4/5 dman roster like seattle and vegas did. could they grab all those guys in a tear down?

i'd love to see it.

 

[arttk]

it's surprising to me that people still talk about vancouver's roster like they are temporarily embarassed stanley cup contenders.

I think the most surprising part is that there is literally nobody talking like that

 

[krutovsdonut]

Gillis’ pro scouting was miles ahead of Benning, I have no idea what you are talking about. When you consider the moves in terms of quality of players acquired, hit/miss ratio, and assets given up in acquiring players, which included Ehrhoff, Hamhuis, Malhotra, Tanev, Torres, Higgins, Demitra, Sundin, Lapierre, Markstrom, Matthias, Garrison, Kassian, etc. Yeah, he had some misses like Booth and Ballard, but the hits and assets given up overshadow them.

Equating pro scouting from pre-Benning to Benning just indicates that you have not followed the team very closely at all and are out of your element in this discussion.

Gillis being interested in Sutter/Gudbranson isn’t a great point since Benning had a few additional seasons of data to go off of, where they weren’t trending very well.

what do you think happened to pro-scouting between 2011 and 2014? because that is what i was referring to. the time period immediately prior to benning come on board when our pro-scouting formed attachments to sutter and gudbranson.

garrison was a terrible fit. kassian was a project. matthias was a middle 6 player on a one year term who did have a decent year. markstrom was a great add but for three years later, (like horvat). the other names you didn't mention for a reason. here's a pop quiz, name one of the seven ufas they signed in july 2011?

they literally didn't make a single move for three years that helped a peaked out contender roster in win now mode for three years. the pro-scouting in that period absolutely sucked.

 

[arttk]

If JR is serious about contending sooner rather than later he needs put this year's first on the table, unprotected of necessary. I guess we find out.

He’ll need that prospect 3 years down the road to really compete. Goal should be to build a playoff team by year 2. Then year 3 you’ll have prospects from this year coming in with ELC contract pushing us further up.

 

[me2]

He’ll need that prospect 3 years down the road to really compete. Goal should be to build a playoff team by year 2. Then year 3 you’ll have prospects from this year coming in with ELC contract pushing us further up.

We are in year 2

 

[arttk]

We are in year 2

I said 2 years from now

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

what do you think happened to pro-scouting between 2011 and 2014? because that is what i was referring to. the time period immediately prior to benning come on board when our pro-scouting formed attachments to sutter and gudbranson.

garrison was a terrible fit. kassian was a project. matthias was a middle 6 player on a one year term who did have a decent year. markstrom was a great add but for three years later, (like horvat). the other names you didn't mention for a reason. here's a pop quiz, name one of the seven ufas they signed in july 2011?

they literally didn't make a single move for three years that helped a peaked out contender roster in win now mode for three years. the pro-scouting in that period absolutely sucked.

I think the team was capped out and went after older declining players that had good resumes, but didn’t require giving up a lot of assets (Roy, Pahlsson, Sturm/Booth, and Doan).

You haven’t addressed the main overarching point of my post. It’s that Benning had way more misses than hits in pro scouting (both trades and UFA signings) while giving up more assets or cap space. It’s funny because the majority of his best pro scouting acquisitions occurred near the time period you keep referring to in 2014 with Vrbata, Miller, and Bonino. Benning gave a 33 year old Beagle a $12 million contract LOL.

 

[racerjoe]

Personally, I think we're at some sick and twisted Sophie's choice-type crossroads.

It is is a tough choice, and I understand the burn it down crowd, I just disagree with their conclusion. I also just disagree with lumping new management in with old. They may end up being bad, but don't burn them for their predecessors sins.

i'm just refuting the argument that pettersson, hughes and demko somehow make it unthinkable that this team could or should rebuild. if we were talking about a situation where horvat was signed to a reasonable deal and there was someway out from under the boeser/oel deals without giving up assets then i'd consider the argument but everything is lined up against this team contending any time soon

kuzmenko on a bridge deal just means we get to watch him for a couple more years before he walks. they're not contending while he's here and if he's a real difference maker then they either can't afford him or can't afford to put good players around him when his deal is up

horvat isn't going to bring back any assets that are as good as horvat. the best case if you want to contend is probably carlo + lysell and that's not good enough

after the deadline you're left with a one line team with miller and trash on the second. you have hopefully 2 quality defenseman and maybe an alright third pairing with some combination of dermott, bear, stillman and burroughs. you've got two giant problems in boeser and oel. smaller but still substantial problems in garland and myers. you've got nobody of the quality you need for a third line and your fourth line is one of the worst in the league

barring a miracle run of trades and free agent signings this team is years away from being anything more than a playoff pretender. if it takes 3 years to 'retool' then you're in a situation where hughes is one year from walking, kuzmenko is probably gone and miller, mikheyev and oel are all on the backside of their careers

i'm not talking about a 'burn it all down' rebuild where pettersson and hughes are shipped out for futures either. i'm just saying this team needs to take a longer view than next season or the one after. getting a player like peeke who only has 3 years on his deal and then can walk is not an answer for the canucks problems

if this team can't contend in the next 3 years then any move made needs to acknowledge that reality

I think you have to ask yourself if you think those three are good enough. Take everything else out with the bad contracts and any players that may not be good right now. Teams can be turned around in a hurry, Florida was a good example of that. If you believe in them you should believe they could.

They may still end up crap. Who knows.

 

[LordBacon]

Lets see now.
Oilers & flames even with their meh management > canucks
La kings done with the retool, having a good mix of veterans and prospects >> canucks
Vegas & Seattle >>>>>> canucks in everyway and is leading the league as well
Anaheim and Arizona, fully committing to a rebuild after careful examination of their situation, good management with good forecast and planning

The whole division will be destroying the Vancouver Blueberries in a regular basis for the foreseeable future
Have fun folks, the tank is everlasting

 

[credulous]

I think you have to ask yourself if you think those three are good enough. Take everything else out with the bad contracts and any players that may not be good right now. Teams can be turned around in a hurry, Florida was a good example of that. If you believe in them you should believe they could.

They may still end up crap. Who knows.

i don't think that's the question at all. i don't think it's particularly special or impressive to have a couple elite players. no one says anaheim has to go for it because they have zegras, mactavish and drysdale. the sharks have hertl and meier and no one expects them to try to make the playoffs next year. do columbus owe it to gaudreau and laine to try to contend? the sens have stutzle, tkachuk, debrincat and chabot and everyone seems to think they should still be accumulating assets and not trying to force contention. those are four of the worst teams in the league and they're not in any worse position than the canucks. it took years for edmonton to get to the point where they were a solid playoff team and they have the two best players in the world. you can't win just by having the bare minimum of a core

vancouver lack even rudimentary depth both at the nhl level and in the system. they don't have a bunch of surplus assets to move to bring in good players to support pettersson, hughes and demko. their cap table is loaded with toxic contracts that will cost real assets to move and that will hold them back if they can't be moved. there's no solution to these problems that won't take years to fix

can pettersson, hughes and demko be part of a stanley cup winning roster? yes of course. they're all very good players. can pettersson, hughes and demko get you there without bringing in 3-4 or even 5 more players near their level? no, not even close. people underestimate just how many good to great players are on the rosters of tampa, colorado, boston, new jersey and carolina. vancouver are a pale shadow of those teams even when comparing just the top 3 players let alone when you go down to the 7th best forwards and 5th best dmen

i'm not content to watch them get a little bit better year over year for a couple seasons by making short sighted 'win now' moves and then have to rebuild anyways because pettersson or hughes or whoever force their way out or because the accumulated damage of handing out big money and term to players who aren't good enough catches up to them

 

[canucksfan]

Problem is the team seems to be heading towards a bad middle ground where the team won’t do a full rebuild but they won’t commit to winning either. Losing Horvat which seems a lock now, will be a disaster to the centre depth. The team needs to shed salary very soon but likely will wait too long if they get rid of salary at all.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Lets see now.
Oilers & flames even with their meh management > canucks
La kings done with the retool, having a good mix of veterans and prospects >> canucks
Vegas & Seattle >>>>>> canucks in everyway and is leading the league as well
Anaheim and Arizona, fully committing to a rebuild after careful examination of their situation, good management with good forecast and planning

The whole division will be destroying the Vancouver Blueberries in a regular basis for the foreseeable future
Have fun folks, the tank is everlasting

Remember when PoM said the Canucks had a better future than LA? And that last season was an anomaly? It’s impressive how often that poster is wrong.

 

[arttk]

i don't think that's the question at all. i don't think it's particularly special or impressive to have a couple elite players. no one says anaheim has to go for it because they have zegras, mactavish and drysdale. the sharks have hertl and meier and no one expects them to try to make the playoffs next year. do columbus owe it to gaudreau and laine to try to contend? the sens have stutzle, tkachuk, debrincat and chabot and everyone seems to think they should still be accumulating assets and not trying to force contention. those are four of the worst teams in the league and they're not in any worse position than the canucks. it took years for edmonton to get to the point where they were a solid playoff team and they have the two best players in the world. you can't win just by having the bare minimum of a core

vancouver lack even rudimentary depth both at the nhl level and in the system. they don't have a bunch of surplus assets to move to bring in good players to support pettersson, hughes and demko. their cap table is loaded with toxic contracts that will cost real assets to move and that will hold them back if they can't be moved. there's no solution to these problems that won't take years to fix

can pettersson, hughes and demko be part of a stanley cup winning roster? yes of course. they're all very good players. can pettersson, hughes and demko get you there without bringing in 3-4 or even 5 more players near their level? no, not even close. people underestimate just how many good to great players are on the rosters of tampa, colorado, boston, new jersey and carolina. vancouver are a pale shadow of those teams even when comparing just the top 3 players let alone when you go down to the 7th best forwards and 5th best dmen

i'm not content to watch them get a little bit better year over year for a couple seasons by making short sighted 'win now' moves and then have to rebuild anyways because pettersson or hughes or whoever force their way out or because the accumulated damage of handing out big money and term to players who aren't good enough catches up to them

SJS and Ana are in very different cycles. Anaheim, if Zegras is on a 100 pt trajectory and is on his 2nd contract, Anaheim would definitely be not tanking anymore. SJS is old as shit and Meier and Hertl are nowhere close to what Petterson is. They tried to build around them and they found out that shit ain’t going work because they aren’t players you build your franchise around. It’s not like they can build around EK who is like 32.

You keep talking about how we lack depth, yes you are right but depth is relatively easier to acquire than a PPG dman and 100pt Center. There are like 5ppg dman and around 10 100 pt players in the whole league. You don’t simply tank and magically find them.

And the point about finding 4-5 more players that are on Petey and Hughes level. Wtf are you smoking? You think we can find like 4-5 PPG/100 point player? Like Colorado was the best last year and they have like 3 guys in that caliber. Tampa was the best prior and they didn’t have like 4 guys at that level.

Elite guys are hard as f*** to acquire, depth pieces are easier to acquire. You are severely underplaying how valuable our 1C and 1D are and basically saying oh we don’t have the enough 2Ws and 3C/W and D so let’s blow it all up. Like 2nd, 3rd line guys, 2nd paring guys are traded and signed in FA every year. 1C and 1D are never in play. The only time it’s in play is when he needs a major neck surgery that freaks owners out.

 

[racerjoe]

i don't think that's the question at all. i don't think it's particularly special or impressive to have a couple elite players. no one says anaheim has to go for it because they have zegras, mactavish and drysdale. the sharks have hertl and meier and no one expects them to try to make the playoffs next year. do columbus owe it to gaudreau and laine to try to contend? the sens have stutzle, tkachuk, debrincat and chabot and everyone seems to think they should still be accumulating assets and not trying to force contention. those are four of the worst teams in the league and they're not in any worse position than the canucks. it took years for edmonton to get to the point where they were a solid playoff team and they have the two best players in the world. you can't win just by having the bare minimum of a core

vancouver lack even rudimentary depth both at the nhl level and in the system. they don't have a bunch of surplus assets to move to bring in good players to support pettersson, hughes and demko. their cap table is loaded with toxic contracts that will cost real assets to move and that will hold them back if they can't be moved. there's no solution to these problems that won't take years to fix

can pettersson, hughes and demko be part of a stanley cup winning roster? yes of course. they're all very good players. can pettersson, hughes and demko get you there without bringing in 3-4 or even 5 more players near their level? no, not even close. people underestimate just how many good to great players are on the rosters of tampa, colorado, boston, new jersey and carolina. vancouver are a pale shadow of those teams even when comparing just the top 3 players let alone when you go down to the 7th best forwards and 5th best dmen

i'm not content to watch them get a little bit better year over year for a couple seasons by making short sighted 'win now' moves and then have to rebuild anyways because pettersson or hughes or whoever force their way out or because the accumulated damage of handing out big money and term to players who aren't good enough catches up to them

What @arttk said.

 

[krutovsdonut]

I think the team was capped out and went after older declining players that had good resumes, but didn’t require giving up a lot of assets (Roy, Pahlsson, Sturm/Booth, and Doan).

You haven’t addressed the main overarching point of my post. It’s that Benning had way more misses than hits in pro scouting (both trades and UFA signings) while giving up more assets or cap space. It’s funny because the majority of his best pro scouting acquisitions occurred near the time period you keep referring to in 2014 with Vrbata, Miller, and Bonino. Benning gave a 33 year old Beagle a $12 million contract LOL.

actually your post listed vey, baertschi, gudbranson, sbisa, and pouliot as the examples. so i think my comment about benning's proscouting being bad early on as a carry over from the gillis era responded to those examples pretty well, especially when my thesis is actually that benning blew the retool on the kesler trade and follow ons. plus you forgot clendenning.

also, the question i put to you is whether you acknowledge the extent to which aquaman was the problem after all in the benning era. you seem to continue to downplay aquaman because you hate benning so much. i will put it to you this way. subtract aquaman and i think benning is a better manager. substract benning and we see the same old shit anyway.

this team's fundamental problem is that it is de facto managed by an overinvolved manipulating entitled brat of an owner who thinks that aggression and rolling the dice and spending as much money as you can is the way to succeed in hockey. that is the pattern year after year.

so last summer with all new management sure enough we overspent on ufas, then we gambled on extending a player early known for being aggressive and a gambler. and now our owner just lew to vegas, and we have hired a new coach known for being aggressive and a gambler.

let's see how it all works out differently this time.

 

[gringo]

Benning sucked man. f*** OEL.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

actually your post listed vey, baertschi, gudbranson, sbisa, and pouliot as the examples. so i think my comment about benning's proscouting being bad early on as a carry over from the gillis era responded to those examples pretty well, especially when my thesis is actually that benning blew the retool on the kesler trade and follow ons. plus you forgot clendenning.

also, the question i put to you is whether you acknowledge the extent to which aquaman was the problem after all in the benning era. you seem to continue to downplay aquaman because you hate benning so much. i will put it to you this way. subtract aquaman and i think benning is a better manager. substract benning and we see the same old shit anyway.

this team's fundamental problem is that it is de facto managed by an overinvolved manipulating entitled brat of an owner who thinks that aggression and rolling the dice and spending as much money as you can is the way to succeed in hockey. that is the pattern year after year.

so last summer with all new management sure enough we overspent on ufas, then we gambled on extending a player early known for being aggressive and a gambler. and now our owner just lew to vegas, and we have hired a new coach known for being aggressive and a gambler.

let's see how it all works out differently this time.

I forgot a lot of examples as the Reign of Error under Benning is exhausting.

It looks like we’re just talking past each other. Gillis still had some decent, cheap finds near the end of his tenure, like Richardson, Weber, and Santorelli.

Benning largely targeted other team’s waive eligible garbage, who generally did not have proven track records. New management has already avoided this in acquiring established NHLers in Dermott, Bear, and Lazar. I’m not defending new management as a whole, but they have already shown better talent evaluation than the last regime (low bar, though).

You have a simplistic view that it can be attributed to Aquilini. The agenda can (age gap players, retool over rebuild), but the specific players acquired are likely more attributed to management decisions.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

Of course I've acknowledged that? I've repeatedly said that it was an accidental tank. The whole meaning of 'accidental' is that it wasn't what they were trying to do.

But the bottom line is that we ended up with 6 top-10 picks as part of that accidental tank and the sort of collection of talent you'd expect from an intentional tank. And much better than what teams like Arizona/Detroit/LA were rewarded with for their years of tanking.

Arizona is a unique kind of trouble because of their arena / owner situation.

I would swap teams with Detroit and LA in a heart beat.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

If JR is serious about contending sooner rather than later he needs put this year's first on the table, unprotected of necessary. I guess we find out.

Absolutely.

That is our most valuable asset for a team willing to trade away right now pieces.

 

[krutovsdonut]

You have a simplistic view that it can be attributed to Aquilini. The agenda can (age gap players, retool over rebuild), but the specific players acquired are likely more attributed to management decisions.

actually i do think he has involved himself in specific player decisions repeatedly if not habitually, but i can only prove it in limited cases.

but obviously it's more important that i think he sets a lot of parameters for team direction and spending that leads to them trying to do things, and also to having money burning a hole in their pocket with orders to do something with it every july and high expectations from the boss to deliver.

the line is also blurry between direction and players. like i said, i really want to know who decided marky, stecher and tanev all had to go. it's very hard for me to believe that was allowed to happened unless it was aquaman's idea, and it's harder to believe benning kept his job after the next season if it was benning's idea given the way it turned out. it just has aquaman bold move written all over it for me as do some other moves that should have gotten benning fired.

anyway, i will check in again in a year or two to see how you feel about aquaman's level of involvememt

 

[arttk]

Arizona is a unique kind of trouble because of their arena / owner situation.

I would swap teams with Detroit and LA in a heart beat.

LA is interestingz Yea they did a rebuild but unfortunately the high picks they drafted aren’t doing too hot and if Byfield and Turcotte don’t pan out , they will go through another rebuild in 2 years when Kopitar and Doughty goes and Danault and Arvidsn start their decline.