yup and what I think it boils down to the simple act of having a plan. Yzerman has had and currently has a plan. What is that plan? Well, it's to grow a core of Kucherov, Stamkos, Hedman, and the new goalie Vaselevskiy together and add the pieces around them. They found a great defensive player in Point. They found supporting D and forwards like Sergachev, Johnson, Paquette and JT Miller. That's always been the plan. When Stamkos went down last year it made it hard to make the playoffs but the key is he didn't waver from that plan. He didn't make rash moves, like dealing Drouin for a rental at the TDL. He was patient, and stuck to the plan. And it's benefiting him hugely right now. They are the best team in the league, a complete powerhouse, because he stuck to the plan and was patient.
Benning, meanwhile, has no plan. He's never had a plan. He is impatient. He makes moves off of impulse. Benning will say one thing, and then waver from it. The biggest example of this is the Gudbranson trade. Benning acted like Gudbranson would be a formative piece to our group, and then after only 18 months Gudbranson is well on his way to being out the door because it seems like he's nowhere near as good as Benning had thought. All he has is a general type of team he wants the Canucks to be: big bodies, fast, hard to play. That's all well and good, but what does that actually look like?What is our core, Jim? It changes every 5 minutes. First it's Sutter, now it's Dowd.
The truth of the matter is we don't have a core. Horvat, Boeser, Tanev is all the core we have, and Tanev doesn't really fit into our timeline. Horvat isn't a #1 C either, more of a good #2. We need a GM who has a plan. I want a GM who will be able to tell us right now, what our team will look like a year from now, two years from now, 5 years from now. And even more than that, we need a GM who will stick to the ****ing plan even when we're injured, even when there's setbacks.
