Player Discussion Brendan Gaunce (Canucks will not extend qualifying offer - Dhaliwal)

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Bleach Clean

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Aug 9, 2006
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He’ll never score again


He's going to score and it will be glorious Bgav.

Gaunce has a very polished, NHL level game, IMO. There's a certain trust I have when watching him play, that nothing will go horribly wrong when he's out there. But he's got to score or all the consistency in the world won't help him. He must find a way to produce.
 

Bgav

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He's going to score and it will be glorious Bgav.

Gaunce has a very polished, NHL level game, IMO. There's a certain trust I have when watching him play, that nothing will go horribly wrong when he's out there. But he's got to score or all the consistency in the world won't help him. He must find a way to produce.
Nothing good will also happen when’s on the ice. Going over 80 games without a goal is awful and if he wasn’t a Gillis pick I don’t think you’d defend him
 

me2

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Jun 28, 2002
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Nothing good will also happen when’s on the ice. Going over 80 games without a goal is awful and if he wasn’t a Gillis pick I don’t think you’d defend him
He solid defensively. His role of the 4th line is to provide a bit of muscle and not get embarrassed on the scoreboard. It'd be much better if he scored but a 4th liner who carries his weight through defense is passable provided he is paid cheaply. You can't afford to pay one $4.5m.
 
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Bleach Clean

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Nothing good will also happen when’s on the ice. Going over 80 games without a goal is awful and if he wasn’t a Gillis pick I don’t think you’d defend him


Don't care if he's a Gillis pick. Gaunce plays with intelligence and control. Forces the game to stand still. If he could chip in more he'd be a net positive player in all respects. Someone you can put out there against hard competition.
 
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F A N

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He solid defensively. His role of the 4th line is to provide a bit of muscle and not get embarrassed on the scoreboard. It'd be much better if he scored but a 4th liner who carries his weight through defense is passable provided he is paid cheaply. You can't afford to pay one $4.5m.

Don't care if he's a Gillis pick. Gaunce plays with intelligence and control. Forces the game to stand still. If he could chip in more he'd be a net positive player in all respects. Someone you can put out there against hard competition.

I think back in the 1990s and early 2000s the ideal 4th liner could fit your description and didn't need to put up any offensive production. But in today's game, I'm not sure a player like that will have a long NHL career. Let's face it, a lot of us like Gaunce and still see "potential" in him. I surely do. To me, his inability to put up more points and heck score a goal is a mystery to me. But realistically, what if Gaunce is 26-28 years old with seasons of putting under 10 points? How attractive of a player would he be? You would calling him a replacement level player for sure.
 

Megaterio Llamas

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I'm hoping we can mark the 100 game mark with a little celebration here in the spirit of fun. Nothing too lavish, just a little something to commemorate the occasion.

That's providing he reaches the goalless century mark. After all, there are no guarantees, he had some mustard on that wrist shot to McIlhenney's glove side last game. That's the sort of thing that worries me.
 

Megaterio Llamas

el rey del mambo
Oct 29, 2011
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Anyone curious about his recent increase in foot speed, it isn't entirely down to the switch to the sleek, lightweight aerodynamic CCM Vector 8 helmet.

Check out the new wheels:

Fx7XFIq.jpg
 

iceburg

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Aug 31, 2003
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Guance is the definition of snake bit. But he is very good at a lot aspects of the game. He is strong at puck retrieval, he rarely loses battles, his skating is decent for a big guy, he is good on the PK.
His production at the AHL level suggests he should have enough offense to be a regular and effective bottom 6 forward. But you can see that he is really struggling to score. He isn't trying anything offensively other than directing the puck to the net...seems very tentative and rarely makes a play between the faceoff dots. He really just needs to go to the net consistently and let some pucks bounce in the net off of him....kinda like his first and only NHL goal.
 

rune74

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Oct 10, 2008
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He's going to score and it will be glorious Bgav.

Gaunce has a very polished, NHL level game, IMO. There's a certain trust I have when watching him play, that nothing will go horribly wrong when he's out there. But he's got to score or all the consistency in the world won't help him. He must find a way to produce.

See, this weird disconnect here...you love guance's game but dislike virtanens......
 

Dab

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Apr 17, 2017
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He’s be the perfect bottom 6 forward- if this was the dead puck era... reminds me of players the Devils would trot out to absolutely check the game into the ice.

I think he serves a purpose on a team like this one- not likely a playoff team but one that doesn’t want to bleed goals against.

Ultimately he’s likely upgradable this summer.
 

Cupless44

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Jun 25, 2014
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Don't care if he's a Gillis pick. Gaunce plays with intelligence and control. Forces the game to stand still. If he could chip in more he'd be a net positive player in all respects. Someone you can put out there against hard competition.

I don't mind Gaunce, his skating is looking a little better and he checks hard but I have to agree with what Ray Ferraro said.

He said it is hard to ice players who never score in today's NHL. The best thing that can happen on a shift is nothing. On a bad shift this player gets scored on. On a good shift he doesn't get scored on. But there is no upside that impacts a game. The upside is not getting score on.
 

Bleach Clean

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I don't mind Gaunce, his skating is looking a little better and he checks hard but I have to agree with what Ray Ferraro said.

He said it is hard to ice players who never score in today's NHL. The best thing that can happen on a shift is nothing. On a bad shift this player gets scored on. On a good shift he doesn't get scored on. But there is no upside that impacts a game. The upside is not getting score on.


Ferraro, and you if you agree with him, are only half right. It's not hard to ice players that cannot score, so long as their line mates score.
It's not hard to ice players that cannot score, if they limit the scoring options of the opposition at a greater rate than even the scorers do. It's about the scoring differential, not scoring itself, that makes a player useful.

This is why shot metrics and on-Ice goal differentials are important. They let us know who's doing well despite the last touches to put the puck in the net. Gaunce is that player. Eye test approved. Where as a more erratic player with far worse differentials might score here or there, but is a greater liability in goals for/goals against when his on-ice play is evaluated in full.

It comes down to what information you take into account when you judge players.
 
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krutovsdonut

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i'd give gaunce some time with boeser and whoever the new top line left winger is going to be. maybe granlund. what choice to we have?
 

Pip

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Nothing good will also happen when’s on the ice. Going over 80 games without a goal is awful and if he wasn’t a Gillis pick I don’t think you’d defend him
Preventing goals and pushing the play to the other end of the is “something good”

He does need to produce but he does a lot of good things out there
 

shortshorts

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Oct 29, 2008
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He's a minimum level player at the worst. Still with moderate upside as well. He's shown he learns the game at his own pace and has glimpses both in the AHL and NHL

Definitely a player you keep as that 13th forward/rotate between AHL/NHL until other players beat him out... or he becomes better.
 

tyhee

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Feb 5, 2015
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I don't mind Gaunce, his skating is looking a little better and he checks hard but I have to agree with what Ray Ferraro said.

He said it is hard to ice players who never score in today's NHL. The best thing that can happen on a shift is nothing. On a bad shift this player gets scored on. On a good shift he doesn't get scored on. But there is no upside that impacts a game. The upside is not getting score on.

Isn't that a bit of an oversimplification, though? The best thing that can happen on a shift is that your team scores. It doesn't have to be the individual player pulling the trigger (though of course that helps.) The worst thing that can happen is that the other team scores.

Also, the question isn't whether to play Gaunce or Horvat, or Gaunce or one of the twins. The players he has to beat are those at the bottom of the lineup. They are those that are least effective in having their own team score compared with the other team.

This season the Canucks have scored a higher % of the goals at 5 on 5 with Gaunce on the ice (42.86%) than they do with Granlund (38.1%,) Gagner (29.17%) or Vanek (38.1%.) Of course he's also ahead of Dowd's one game (0%.) It isn't very good, but even though each of those three players score more than Gaunce, the team has done worse with them on the ice than with Gaunce on the ice. (Yes, I realize that GF% is a stat that inherently suffers from small sample size as well as differences in usage.)

Imo Gaunce deserves to play-at the bottom of this lineup. He doesn't score himself, but we don't see clips of him ignoring his man on the way to his own net to cause goals against. He doesn't need to outscore the opposition personally. He just needs to be less bad than the worst of the other forwards at the combination of avoiding goals against and having his team score. He's ok at the first and poor at the second.

Stats were from corsica.hockey. I would have looked at QOC and zone starts but the site started giving me consistent (hopefully temporary) error messages when I tried.
 

Brock Boeser Laser Show

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Sep 27, 2017
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I swear every shot he takes is either along the ice or at the goalie's crest. If he wants to beat NHL goalies he needs to hit the sweet spots (blocker side a foot off the ice or top shelf where mamma hides the cookies). I'd rather he miss high or wide than continue to hunt crests with the hope one puck will turn into an alien and go thru the goalie's chest.
 
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