Management Threads | Structure. Standards. Habits.

[HairyKneel]

you're the one that called it a top 10 young core. i just don't agree vancouver's core is anything special. at least half the teams in the league can boast better on an apples for apples comparison

the only way you can justify at top 10 ranking is by narrowly defining it as exactly "pettersson, hughes and demko and their counterparts on other teams" which i think is so reductive as to be pointless when discussing this team's projection going forward



you can't just ignore they also have norris, sanderson, batherson and zub all of whom are way better than their counterparts in vancouver

(edited to remove chabot, i misread hronek as hughes initially)

Dude you are like another Mary Berg commercial. Nothing changes.

 

[credulous]

all this nonsense about how the pk killed the canucks and they gave up 1-2 goals against per game is pure fantasy

the canucks pk was bad but it wasn't so bad as to solely be responsible for the season's results. the net pk was 77.7% which is still bad but not that far off league average. if they can get it to .85 next season (which would be good for about 8th in the league last season) they'll allow all of 15 goals less

they probably end up with 2-3 more wins with an above average penalty kill last year

could goaltending get them another 4-5 wins? sure, if demko plays like a top 10 goalie -- a thing he has only done once in a short playoff series

that would just barely get them into the playoffs assuming nothing else goes wrong

the canucks are still a team that is totally reliant on their top line and their top defender to get results. the miller line tread water last season (and actually got worse once tocchet came in and horvat left) and the bottom two lines were absolutely demolished against everyone they went up against

quinn hughes is going to be relied on to be their top guy in both ends (probably alongside soucy or cole) because none of cole, soucy or hronek should be expected to pick up that load

this team needs so much to go right just to be decent. forget good

 

[strattonius]

all this nonsense about how the pk killed the canucks and they gave up 1-2 goals against per game is pure fantasy

the canucks pk was bad but it wasn't so bad as to solely be responsible for the season's results. the net pk was 77.7% which is still bad but not that far off league average. if they can get it to .85 next season (which would be good for about 8th in the league last season) they'll allow all of 15 goals less

they probably end up with 2-3 more wins with an above average penalty kill last year

could goaltending get them another 4-5 wins? sure, if demko plays like a top 10 goalie -- a thing he has only done once in a short playoff series

that would just barely get them into the playoffs assuming nothing else goes wrong

the canucks are still a team that is totally reliant on their top line and their top defender to get results. the miller line tread water last season (and actually got worse once tocchet came in and horvat left) and the bottom two lines were absolutely demolished against everyone they went up against

quinn hughes is going to be relied on to be their top guy in both ends (probably alongside soucy or cole) because none of cole, soucy or hronek should be expected to pick up that load

this team needs so much to go right just to be decent. forget good

I think we will have much better structure and a system to fall back on when the goals aren't pouring in.

One thing we saw last year was that if the offense wasn't running we would lose in blowout fashion, incapable of shutting or slowing a game down. Don't underestimate our coaching change - which wasn't just a head coach it was an entire staff.

Not only is our personnel upgraded on defense, I believe the added support of our structure and system will make our team defense exponentially stronger.

If we climb to a middle of the pack defensive team, this roster could easily have a 100 pt season. I get your mind is made up and it reverts to the 'same story as last year' but I see a ton of context showing us we will have a significant improvement this year.

 

[arttk]

all this nonsense about how the pk killed the canucks and they gave up 1-2 goals against per game is pure fantasy

the canucks pk was bad but it wasn't so bad as to solely be responsible for the season's results. the net pk was 77.7% which is still bad but not that far off league average. if they can get it to .85 next season (which would be good for about 8th in the league last season) they'll allow all of 15 goals less

they probably end up with 2-3 more wins with an above average penalty kill last year

could goaltending get them another 4-5 wins? sure, if demko plays like a top 10 goalie -- a thing he has only done once in a short playoff series

that would just barely get them into the playoffs assuming nothing else goes wrong

the canucks are still a team that is totally reliant on their top line and their top defender to get results. the miller line tread water last season (and actually got worse once tocchet came in and horvat left) and the bottom two lines were absolutely demolished against everyone they went up against

quinn hughes is going to be relied on to be their top guy in both ends (probably alongside soucy or cole) because none of cole, soucy or hronek should be expected to pick up that load

this team needs so much to go right just to be decent. forget good

Notice how before Tocchet took over, the PK was was at 68.1% and we had a GA of 3.9.
But yeah, go ahead and please tell us what really killed us last season.

 

[MS]

i think the premise of what's actually being discussed can be boiled down to; how many players form a core?

if it's a 1c, 1d, 1g - no question, the canucks are in a terrific spot for these three positions. but this is not the nba, and star top of the roster players just don't have that much impact relative to other sports.

if it's a 1c, 1w, 2c, 1d, 2d, 1g - well now we're maybe middle of the pack, and this is probably consistent with where the team should expect to finish

if it's a 1c, 1w, 2c, 2w, 3c, 3w, 1d, 2d, 3d, 1g and 2g ... that's where the questions start to arise.

_____________

the direction vs execution vs process framing mentioned earlier is correct.

i don't think you're wrong on direction. but the continual bedard stuff, months after the draft lottery, is a strawman at this point dude. you're arguing against an imaginary y2k - it's as lazy as bringing up gaborik and cammalleri as a dismissive dunk when the sedins were winning art rosses. let's move past that, please.

execution - we agree, it's up in the air, and can only be characterized using a "wait and see" approach. if the team makes the playoffs and wins a round or three, they are probably on a great track to success. if they miss the playoffs by 10 points despite all of these moves, they probably are not.

process - here's where i feel i keep losing you. there are only so many chips a team has. war chest, dry powder, assets, whatever. the league automatically replenishes every team via the draft each year. i'm not saying we sit on the sidelines and continue to hoard chips hoping for a magical day where everything goes on sale and we're the only ones buying. but there's a pace to these things. assets aren't just considered in absolute terms - time is a factor. you can either blow $10k at the bar in one night and be the biggest baller out on the town or you can spend $10k buying three happy hours drink a night for a year.

you keep saying the thing about how this is real life with jobs on the line, etc. i agree with that wholeheartedly. but let me offer an illustration using a recent quote from jim pattison on becoming a billionaire:

"Look, if you want to be a millionaire, be prudent. Become excellent at something, make a healthy income, live within your means, invest the surplus. It's a different formula if you want to be a billionaire. You've got to take risks."

if we think about making the playoffs as being a millionaire and winning a cup as a billionaire - the canucks process holds to some extent, in that they have been aggressive and decisive over the last 6-8 months (horvat trade, hronek trade, oel buyout). as we agree on for execution - either these things will work out, or they won't.

but i think there's a caveat for both pattison's quote and the canucks situation - in real life you need a safety net in case those risks don't pan out - as in, you have to be a millionaire (or at least have access to many of them) before the risks you take lead you to the path of a billionaire. for the canucks, i think the takeaway is that you need to be a playoff team before you start making aggressive moves to become a contender.

it's the timing of the execution which comes back to process. i've said i wouldn't have bought out oel and i would've kept the hronek picks rather than cashing them in. i was fine with keeping boeser but that was clearly wrong as you and others argued, but i incorrectly thought it made sense because moving him at what was then a perceived all-time low value felt inprudent. you have mentioned feeling the same way about keeping garland rather than moving him for a second or whatever.

you might be right that getting rid of oel and bringing in soucy and cole is an accretive, worth-more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts culture change on defense that gets the team to that "millionaire" status right away, which is potentially the first step to the billionaire path. my question is still - what are the other levers/risks that the group can take from here to improve? i'm not convinced that we can take an incrementalist approach - ie. fixing the pk, picking a cohesive coaching team, etc. - to go from millionaire to billionaire. actually, those are the levers we've used just to get here. you're also right that the 1c/1d/1g are already performing at a very high level - can we reasonably expect more improvement from them? if not... then we need improvement from other positions, like 1w, 2w, 2d, 3d. how does that happen?

i think now (or once we actually make the playoffs) is when we need a bunch of big risky boom or bust moves - but we've exhausted our assets for the most part. if this season goes right, our chances of improving ride on either miraculous internal progressions, or hoping that we can land major assets at deadlines using prospects like lekkerimaki or our yearly mid-20s first rounders.

like in some ways, i think the process you're advocating for long-term is just betting on/hoping for a different set of magic beans. imo, to be a cup contending team, we need hronek to basically be devon toews, or hirose to be the next chris tanev, or podkolzin to be nichushkin, or garland/hoglander to be a prime brendan gallagher, or willander to be dan hamhuis... or some combination of a couple of those, all while none of petey/hughes/miller/demko/kuzmenko take a step back, let alone an uncharacteristic drop off like demko's last season or petey's first half of 21-22.

to me, that pathway to being a billionaire feels more unlikely than if we had traded miller for whatever nyr combination of assets (effectively also clearing the cap space to add soucy and cole, which i would still do), kept the hronek pick on top of drafting willander and taken benson or wood, kept oel in the hopes that he ltir's himself in a year... essentially leading to potentially delaying the "millionaire" achievement by a year, but with a much deeper war chest to get to bllionaire status from there. now does that mean petey demands out for sure? who knows - he clearly isn't convinced enough by what did transpire to stay, and if all this still leads to not making the playoffs, he might be done. in my timeline, maybe you can convince him to take a one-year before demanding out because the team is one year away. or maybe he demands out this past summer. who knows.

________

point is - i think this process discussion is fascinating, and constant strawmen back to people who were wide eyed about a local generational talent being available in the draft takes away from that. your favored path, which the team seems to be following, absolutely could pan out. i think the one i was advocating for could have worked, too, but it's just hypothetical now. we'll see if they fall short and if it looks like they need at least one or two more core pieces. my gut is that they do.

I appreciate the effort put into this post even if I largely disagree.

In terms of the 'core' you're usually talking about the best 5-6 guys on a squad. And in terms of the best 5 or 6 guys on this squad ... yes, it's very good.

Where this team struggled is with the middle tier of 6-8 players. That Myers/OEL/Pearson/Boeser/Dickinson/Garland/Hamonic group absolutely blew chunks. And mostly the problem was that it was just not a solid group of fundamentally sound 'system' players who do the right things to get results. It was a collection of lazy floaters, soft slugs, guys who had no PK utility.

Bringing in guys like Mikheyev/Soucy/Cole/Beauvillier doesn't look flashy, but it's a big deal to be replacing flaky players with solid pros who fit what the team is trying to do.

___________

As for the things you're talking about in terms of the plan ... again, it just isn't how it works.

And even more than 'it just isn't how it works' generally, in this specific case the recent Pettersson interview should tell us pretty unequivocally why the team was trading for Hroneks to be filling out the core around Pettersson/Hughes and why they were doing OEL buyouts and so on. Pettersson/Hughes are 2 of the best 5 players in the 53-year history of this franchise. It is *massive* that we have these players. These players aren't happy, and there is no way you simply sit on your hands for a few years hording picks only to watch them force their way out.

 

[arttk]

Here are more fun PK stats about last season.

Before Tocchet took over in 47 games.

Our PK gave up..
3 goals once
2 goals in 11 games
1 goal in 20 games.

So basically we gave up at least 1 ppg in 32/47 games and of those 32 games, we only won 11 games.

In those 47 games, our PK was at 66.6%. If we were average like at 79%, we would have given up only 28 goals vs 45 goals in those 47 games and our GA would go down from 3.9 to 3.5. and looking at the game logs, there are like around 13 games where giving up 1 less PK goal would've resulted in a SO if not a win.
So basically if we were just an average PK team, this team would've been exactly where people expected, in the wildcard spot.

 

[RandV]

TB and NJD are good examples - i'd say looking at recent cup winners, colorado were obviously top heavy but their core also consisted of a lot of players (mack 1c, makar 1d, rantanen 1w, landeskog 2w, kadri 2c, toews 2d, kuemper 1G and maybe nich 3w and byram 3d), whereas st. louis (ror 1c, tarasenko 1w, schwartz 2w, schenn 2c, pietro 1d, parayko 2d, binnington 1g - and then a bunch of key depth guys like perron, sundqvist, bouwmeester all having big playoffs) was less top heavy and more by committee.

Colorado is an example I like coming back to. They started with a core of MacKinnon/Rantanen/Landeskog/Girard and Makar on the way, and for two years were a wildcard seed not making much noise. Then over the next 3 years they add Grubauer, Kadri, Nichuskin, Burakovsky, Kadri, Toews, Lehkonen, Manson, etc, and that was the dominant stacked team that won the Cup. And they added those players basically out of their own pile of upcoming draft picks.

There are teams that can come out of a rebuild looking pretty stacked like currently New Jersey, and then there's teams that spend years tinkering and adding before finally winning. I feel like there's a lack of appreciation here for the latter when looking at the Canucks prospective future. And often when people look at those playoff teams and the depth they're a bit oblivious that they're comparing teams that loaded up at the deadline to a team in the off season.

 

[arttk]

Here is more PK stats. The PK% after Tocchet took over went up to 78% and if you only look at the games after OEL got injured, the PK% shot up to 83%.

So I think it's reasonable to expect the PK to improve by subtracting OEL and replacing him with 2 guys that can actually PK in Soucey and Cole and also better PK centers in Suter and Bluegar.

If we can get PK up to 81% which seems reasonable, that will reduce the GA by 0.5 so that would make our GA around 3.1 which is where the Kings are at. If Demko has a good season then it's totally reasonable to expect our GA to actually drop down below 3.

 

[MarkMM]

Improved penalty-killing, more stable goaltending and a deeper defence are three things that may not be flashy but incrementally does add up to something that can move the needle.

But the biggest thing to me is culture, structure, coaching and leadership; the Canucks were a joke around the league on those items and there are good signs this has turned around and I think is being severely underestimated if the level of analysis of the changes focuses the likes of Soucy and Blueger.

 

[arttk]

Improved penalty-killing, more stable goaltending and a deeper defence are three things that may not be flashy but incrementally does add up to something that can move the needle.

But the biggest thing to me is culture, structure, coaching and leadership; the Canucks were a joke around the league on those items and there are good signs this has turned around and I think is being severely underestimated if the level of analysis of the changes focuses the likes of Soucy and Blueger.

Like you look at Boston, their GA is like at 2.1 and their offense is not actually that much higher than ours.

To be competitive it is about driving down the GA and driving up the GF. But realistically, we are already at like 3.3GF? and the best offensive team only puts up around 3.9 and that’s because they have McD and Drai.

So the question is, what’s more doable? Be as good defensively as Boston or be good offensively as Edmonton? Like even if we get a couple of impact scorers, it’s hard to imagine us scoring higher than 3.6-3.7 while I can totally see us playing tighter and getting towards 2.5GA.

 

[Hodgy]

Colorado is an example I like coming back to. They started with a core of MacKinnon/Rantanen/Landeskog/Girard and Makar on the way, and for two years were a wildcard seed not making much noise. Then over the next 3 years they add Grubauer, Kadri, Nichuskin, Burakovsky, Kadri, Toews, Lehkonen, Manson, etc, and that was the dominant stacked team that won the Cup. And they added those players basically out of their own pile of upcoming draft picks.

There are teams that can come out of a rebuild looking pretty stacked like currently New Jersey, and then there's teams that spend years tinkering and adding before finally winning. I feel like there's a lack of appreciation here for the latter when looking at the Canucks prospective future. And often when people look at those playoff teams and the depth they're a bit oblivious that they're comparing teams that loaded up at the deadline to a team in the off season.

Most critical, or pessimistic, or even perhaps realistic, views on this team’s direction don’t reject the idea that they could accomplish a Colorado like retool, or that they can’t otherwise build a successful team , the point is more that the odds are long. Colorado is a great example. Their management executed perfectly and got some luck, but it hasn’t to be recognized that the odds were against them. Most teams won’t turn two seconds into a top 30 defensemen in the NHL, or a soft one dimensional defensemen and middle six centre into a top 10 or 15 gritty two way centre, or sign a player for like league minimum that becomes a top 30 two way winger in the NHL and playoff monster. And those are just the big hits not to mention a number of other good lesser moves that were still important.

So, if your blueprint is Colorado, you are basically saying we need to make like 3 incredible home run transactions and a half dozen other smaller good ones, which isn’t a very repeatable plan.

 

[theguardianII]

Most critical, or pessimistic, or even perhaps realistic, views on this team’s direction don’t reject the idea that they could accomplish a Colorado like retool, or that they can’t otherwise build a successful team , the point is more that the odds are long. Colorado is a great example. Their management executed perfectly and got some luck, but it hasn’t to be recognized that the odds were against them. Most teams won’t turn two seconds into a top 30 defensemen in the NHL, or a soft one dimensional defensemen and middle six centre into a top 10 or 15 gritty two way centre, or sign a player for like league minimum that becomes a top 30 two way winger in the NHL and playoff monster. And those are just the big hits not to mention a number of other good lesser moves that were still important.

So, if your blueprint is Colorado, you are basically saying we need to make like 3 incredible home run transactions and a half dozen other smaller good ones, which isn’t a very repeatable plan.

Canucks are much like Colorado was they had some good players that they traded for future prospects after their one and done appearance.

Canucks could have done more to show EP the team had a better future, a couple of bad seasons with some higher or more 1rst round picks or high 2nd round, better use of the financial support of the owner's through retentions for improved returns or elimination of contracts.
But they didn't and EP and his agent aren't dummies they can see that in 2 years there is no real young players to take up some of the load.

Canucks "own" EP for at least two more years and unless they can somehow draft a top three picks twice I can't see EP wanting to waste his career not winning or playing for a cup. It must be exasperating for him who has been on winners his whole career prior to being here.

If fans and hockey pundits can see the reality of this team's chances why would some think he or his agent don't.

If I were his agent or him I would sign a two year contract around averaging 10.5 mil, 9.5 year one and 11.5 year two with 8 and 9 million signing bonuses those years to make a trade easier the second year and to give them some wriggle room and see what sticks to the wall.

But I do think they dropped the ball and don't think he is only in the game for the money. I don't think I would want a player that signs for 8 years on this team now just because it hasn't even shown it can make the playoffs without an act of god. That and other teams in the division and conference are gearing up to be much better over the next 5 years. Even if they luck out and make the playoffs one season over the next they are in no position to add valuable players they need to become cup contenders. IMO they are now 3+ years if seriously trying and can keep the "young" core intact. They need 5 more studs.

Maybe if they can get many more first round picks they may hang on to EP but they need a 2nd line center almost immediately, Miller slowed last year.

But then again trading EP might just get enough of a return to try to make or maintain the mushy middle for until other teams stars start to fade away.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

i think the premise of what's actually being discussed can be boiled down to; how many players form a core?

if it's a 1c, 1d, 1g - no question, the canucks are in a terrific spot for these three positions. but this is not the nba, and star top of the roster players just don't have that much impact relative to other sports.

if it's a 1c, 1w, 2c, 1d, 2d, 1g - well now we're maybe middle of the pack, and this is probably consistent with where the team should expect to finish

if it's a 1c, 1w, 2c, 2w, 3c, 3w, 1d, 2d, 3d, 1g and 2g ... that's where the questions start to arise.

_____________

the direction vs execution vs process framing mentioned earlier is correct.

i don't think you're wrong on direction. but the continual bedard stuff, months after the draft lottery, is a strawman at this point dude. you're arguing against an imaginary y2k - it's as lazy as bringing up gaborik and cammalleri as a dismissive dunk when the sedins were winning art rosses. let's move past that, please.

execution - we agree, it's up in the air, and can only be characterized using a "wait and see" approach. if the team makes the playoffs and wins a round or three, they are probably on a great track to success. if they miss the playoffs by 10 points despite all of these moves, they probably are not.

process - here's where i feel i keep losing you. there are only so many chips a team has. war chest, dry powder, assets, whatever. the league automatically replenishes every team via the draft each year. i'm not saying we sit on the sidelines and continue to hoard chips hoping for a magical day where everything goes on sale and we're the only ones buying. but there's a pace to these things. assets aren't just considered in absolute terms - time is a factor. you can either blow $10k at the bar in one night and be the biggest baller out on the town or you can spend $10k buying three happy hours drink a night for a year.

you keep saying the thing about how this is real life with jobs on the line, etc. i agree with that wholeheartedly. but let me offer an illustration using a recent quote from jim pattison on becoming a billionaire:

"Look, if you want to be a millionaire, be prudent. Become excellent at something, make a healthy income, live within your means, invest the surplus. It's a different formula if you want to be a billionaire. You've got to take risks."

if we think about making the playoffs as being a millionaire and winning a cup as a billionaire - the canucks process holds to some extent, in that they have been aggressive and decisive over the last 6-8 months (horvat trade, hronek trade, oel buyout). as we agree on for execution - either these things will work out, or they won't.

but i think there's a caveat for both pattison's quote and the canucks situation - in real life you need a safety net in case those risks don't pan out - as in, you have to be a millionaire (or at least have access to many of them) before the risks you take lead you to the path of a billionaire. for the canucks, i think the takeaway is that you need to be a playoff team before you start making aggressive moves to become a contender.

it's the timing of the execution which comes back to process. i've said i wouldn't have bought out oel and i would've kept the hronek picks rather than cashing them in. i was fine with keeping boeser but that was clearly wrong as you and others argued, but i incorrectly thought it made sense because moving him at what was then a perceived all-time low value felt inprudent. you have mentioned feeling the same way about keeping garland rather than moving him for a second or whatever.

you might be right that getting rid of oel and bringing in soucy and cole is an accretive, worth-more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts culture change on defense that gets the team to that "millionaire" status right away, which is potentially the first step to the billionaire path. my question is still - what are the other levers/risks that the group can take from here to improve? i'm not convinced that we can take an incrementalist approach - ie. fixing the pk, picking a cohesive coaching team, etc. - to go from millionaire to billionaire. actually, those are the levers we've used just to get here. you're also right that the 1c/1d/1g are already performing at a very high level - can we reasonably expect more improvement from them? if not... then we need improvement from other positions, like 1w, 2w, 2d, 3d. how does that happen?

i think now (or once we actually make the playoffs) is when we need a bunch of big risky boom or bust moves - but we've exhausted our assets for the most part. if this season goes right, our chances of improving ride on either miraculous internal progressions, or hoping that we can land major assets at deadlines using prospects like lekkerimaki or our yearly mid-20s first rounders.

like in some ways, i think the process you're advocating for long-term is just betting on/hoping for a different set of magic beans. imo, to be a cup contending team, we need hronek to basically be devon toews, or hirose to be the next chris tanev, or podkolzin to be nichushkin, or garland/hoglander to be a prime brendan gallagher, or willander to be dan hamhuis... or some combination of a couple of those, all while none of petey/hughes/miller/demko/kuzmenko take a step back, let alone an uncharacteristic drop off like demko's last season or petey's first half of 21-22.

to me, that pathway to being a billionaire feels more unlikely than if we had traded miller for whatever nyr combination of assets (effectively also clearing the cap space to add soucy and cole, which i would still do), kept the hronek pick on top of drafting willander and taken benson or wood, kept oel in the hopes that he ltir's himself in a year... essentially leading to potentially delaying the "millionaire" achievement by a year, but with a much deeper war chest to get to bllionaire status from there. now does that mean petey demands out for sure? who knows - he clearly isn't convinced enough by what did transpire to stay, and if all this still leads to not making the playoffs, he might be done. in my timeline, maybe you can convince him to take a one-year before demanding out because the team is one year away. or maybe he demands out this past summer. who knows.

________

point is - i think this process discussion is fascinating, and constant strawmen back to people who were wide eyed about a local generational talent being available in the draft takes away from that. your favored path, which the team seems to be following, absolutely could pan out. i think the one i was advocating for could have worked, too, but it's just hypothetical now. we'll see if they fall short and if it looks like they need at least one or two more core pieces. my gut is that they do.

That is a heluva post.

Puts in to words a lot of my thoughts.

 

[rypper]

I don't think Elias Pettersson gives two shits about acquiring first round picks.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

I appreciate the effort put into this post even if I largely disagree.

In terms of the 'core' you're usually talking about the best 5-6 guys on a squad. And in terms of the best 5 or 6 guys on this squad ... yes, it's very good.

Where this team struggled is with the middle tier of 6-8 players. That Myers/OEL/Pearson/Boeser/Dickinson/Garland/Hamonic group absolutely blew chunks. And mostly the problem was that it was just not a solid group of fundamentally sound 'system' players who do the right things to get results. It was a collection of lazy floaters, soft slugs, guys who had no PK utility.

Bringing in guys like Mikheyev/Soucy/Cole/Beauvillier doesn't look flashy, but it's a big deal to be replacing flaky players with solid pros who fit what the team is trying to do.

___________

As for the things you're talking about in terms of the plan ... again, it just isn't how it works.

And even more than 'it just isn't how it works' generally, in this specific case the recent Pettersson interview should tell us pretty unequivocally why the team was trading for Hroneks to be filling out the core around Pettersson/Hughes and why they were doing OEL buyouts and so on. Pettersson/Hughes are 2 of the best 5 players in the 53-year history of this franchise. It is *massive* that we have these players. These players aren't happy, and there is no way you simply sit on your hands for a few years hording picks only to watch them force their way out.

So... Let me get this straight.

The Canucks did the right thing when they made short term moves so that Pettersson would commit long term to the team. And as a proof of this concept you offer the fact that Pettersson, after these moves, refused to commit long term..?

 

[MS]

So... Let me get this straight.

The Canucks did the right thing when they made short term moves so that Pettersson would commit long term to the team. And as a proof of this concept you offer the fact that Pettersson, after these moves, refused to commit long term..?

Sigh.

1) We don't know the full picture yet. If the team plays well this year and he signs, then it's kind of confirmed that both the right direction was taken and with the intended initial result.

2) For the umpteenth time, just because a plan might not have been executed correctly doesn't mean it wasn't the right plan. If we did the general thing that needed to be done to retain our core players but the individual moves are shit and Hronek is a dumpster fire and Pettersson gives up and forces his way out ... it doesn't mean the plan was wrong. It's crazy how people still cannot differentiate 'plan' from 'execution'.

And for the umpteenth time x10, TEAMS IN OUR POSITION DO NOT TAKE STEPS BACK. And it's a waste of time continuing to discuss this until people accept this as a truth.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

Sigh.

1) We don't know the full picture yet. If the team plays well this year and he signs, then it's kind of confirmed that both the right direction was taken and with the intended initial result.

2) For the umpteenth time, just because a plan might not have been executed correctly doesn't mean it wasn't the right plan. If we did the general thing that needed to be done to retain our core players but the individual moves are shit and Hronek is a dumpster fire and Pettersson gives up and forces his way out ... it doesn't mean the plan was wrong. It's crazy how people still cannot differentiate 'plan' from 'execution'.

And for the umpteenth time x10, TEAMS IN OUR POSITION DO NOT TAKE STEPS BACK. And it's a waste of time continuing to discuss this until people accept this as a truth.

Obviously I disagree with this.

I do agree that it is pointless to try to discuss it with you.

 

[theguardianII]

And for the umpteenth time x10, TEAMS IN OUR POSITION DO NOT TAKE STEPS BACK. And it's a waste of time continuing to discuss this until people accept this as a truth.

What position?
Not bad enough to get a franchise or NHL player as an almost guarantee?
And not good enough to be in the playoff hunt by game 65?
Especially last year with so many teams tanking for the super deep draft.

For this team a step back would have been a baby step, soon it will have to be a leap because "all those young prospects" are not young anymore.

Just how many EP's, QH's are there in the prospect pool?

EP and his agent have many examples of players who hung on and signed long term deals early, Rick Nash wasted away in Columbus, Horvat and others as well. Their careers fizzled away while contemporaries were playing for cups or at least contenders.

Also there is the Canada factor now. No Canadian team has won a cup in over 30 years and there are 7 Canadian franchises now, so those are daunting odds that they will change in the near future. Maybe TO, Canada's team as proclaimed by Bettman or Edmonton just because McDavid is so otherworldly.

EP might see playing in Arizona, Columbus or Buffalo as being a better opportunity for a cup.

Then there is always becoming a "professional" punch in and punch out get paid regardless of outcomes

Demko ain't no babe in the woods, Miller in his 30's, EP drafted in 2017 and Hughes 2018. This will be 2024 soon.

The defence may be youngish but small and soft. Even Soucy has to play softer due to concussions.

At least 9 forwards are at their prime or just past it most with another birthday this season, this might/maybe okay if they were a team but how is the room going to adjust with so many new faces? Especially the veterans who have been used to playing on winning teams? Regular season games are heavily managed by refs, but the real games, the playoffs are reffed properly for the most part.

I will still await the start of the season to make a prediction but it is getting pretty close to being made for me just by the nonsense Allvin is trying to feed the fans. Almost the exact same script as Benning with the same types of moves.

 

[Hit the post]

...

 

[arttk]

Colorado is an example I like coming back to. They started with a core of MacKinnon/Rantanen/Landeskog/Girard and Makar on the way, and for two years were a wildcard seed not making much noise. Then over the next 3 years they add Grubauer, Kadri, Nichuskin, Burakovsky, Kadri, Toews, Lehkonen, Manson, etc, and that was the dominant stacked team that won the Cup. And they added those players basically out of their own pile of upcoming draft picks.

There are teams that can come out of a rebuild looking pretty stacked like currently New Jersey, and then there's teams that spend years tinkering and adding before finally winning. I feel like there's a lack of appreciation here for the latter when looking at the Canucks prospective future. And often when people look at those playoff teams and the depth they're a bit oblivious that they're comparing teams that loaded up at the deadline to a team in the off season.

You guys group players as core players too liberally.

 

[rypper]

Q&A: Canucks GM Patrik Allvin talks changing the narrative this season

In his post-summer, pre-tournament interview, Patrik Allvin sat down with Sportsnet to discuss the organizational culture shift, Elias Pettersson, the importance of a good start and more.

www.sportsnet.ca

Carbon copy of Jim Benning I tells ya!

 

[Diogenes92]

So Allvin was quoted as stating that the team "saw a huge boost in momentum after a coaching change" and he's very hopeful about that, seemingly forgetting that the exact same thing happened with Boudreau the previous year and we all know how that turned out.

Management used Boudreau as a scapegoat all season and fired him right before the easiest stretch of the Canucks schedule.

There's more evidence that the team will quit on their coach than buy-in at this point in time.

 

[arttk]

What position?
Not bad enough to get a franchise or NHL player as an almost guarantee?
And not good enough to be in the playoff hunt by game 65?
Especially last year with so many teams tanking for the super deep draft.

For this team a step back would have been a baby step, soon it will have to be a leap because "all those young prospects" are not young anymore.

Just how many EP's, QH's are there in the prospect pool?

EP and his agent have many examples of players who hung on and signed long term deals early, Rick Nash wasted away in Columbus, Horvat and others as well. Their careers fizzled away while contemporaries were playing for cups or at least contenders.

Also there is the Canada factor now. No Canadian team has won a cup in over 30 years and there are 7 Canadian franchises now, so those are daunting odds that they will change in the near future. Maybe TO, Canada's team as proclaimed by Bettman or Edmonton just because McDavid is so otherworldly.

EP might see playing in Arizona, Columbus or Buffalo as being a better opportunity for a cup.

Then there is always becoming a "professional" punch in and punch out get paid regardless of outcomes

Demko ain't no babe in the woods, Miller in his 30's, EP drafted in 2017 and Hughes 2018. This will be 2024 soon.

The defence may be youngish but small and soft. Even Soucy has to play softer due to concussions.

At least 9 forwards are at their prime or just past it most with another birthday this season, this might/maybe okay if they were a team but how is the room going to adjust with so many new faces? Especially the veterans who have been used to playing on winning teams? Regular season games are heavily managed by refs, but the real games, the playoffs are reffed properly for the most part.

I will still await the start of the season to make a prediction but it is getting pretty close to being made for me just by the nonsense Allvin is trying to feed the fans. Almost the exact same script as Benning with the same types of moves.

Teams that has a legit 1C, 1D and 1G entering the start of their prime don’t intentionally make their team worse.

So Allvin was quoted as stating that the team "saw a huge boost in momentum after a coaching change" and he's very hopeful about that, seemingly forgetting that the exact same thing happened with Boudreau the previous year and we all know how that turned out.

Management used Boudreau as a scapegoat all season and fired him right before the easiest stretch of the Canucks schedule.

There's more evidence that the team will quit on their coach than buy-in at this point in time.

According to Woodley, the team improved to the point that we were top5 in preventing high danger chance against despite fielding a AHL D+ Hughes. Even simple stats showed that we made hugh improvements. PK was 66% under BB and it was 77% under Tocchet. If you take out the OEL games, it was at 82/83% ( don’t remember exactly).


The advance stats didn’t change under BB.

 

[timw33]

i'm not giving them any credit for improving the roster when their "big moves" were ian cole and teddy blueger

the top of this roster is identical to last year save that they've replaced horvat with hronek

forgive me for not expecting different results

Is everyone forgetting that we bought out OEL.

 

[GranvilleIsland]

Q&A: Canucks GM Patrik Allvin talks changing the narrative this season

In his post-summer, pre-tournament interview, Patrik Allvin sat down with Sportsnet to discuss the organizational culture shift, Elias Pettersson, the importance of a good start and more.

www.sportsnet.ca

Carbon copy of Jim Benning I tells ya!

One signs Ian Cole for 1 year at 3 million the other signs Jay Beagles to 4 years at 3 million per.

Not that Allvin has been perfect so far and the team isn't rebuilding like myself and others had hoped but I can say he's a far superior GM to Benning, even with his flaws.

Is everyone forgetting that we bought out OEL.

It was the biggest improvement of the off-season.