Management Discussion v46 | Warning in OP (#834)

[carrotshirt]

While I’m thrilled to see many of our prospects and young players excelling, I have no faith in the current management team to select and execute a direction for the franchise.

They really seem to fly by the seat of their pants based on a hot or cold streak, buying or selling on the bounce of a couple pucks.

I’d like to see a replacement that can establish an actual vision to lead us long suffering fans to the promised land.

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[racerjoe]

We clearly have a direction... It's "We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom."

 

[carrotshirt]

“I’m, ya know, hoping for the best, just like the rest of you. Rip the puck.”

- Jim Benning

 

[M2Beezy]

Positive:

Pettersson
Boeser
Baertchi trade
Gaudette
Lockwood
Demko
Vanek singing
De Zotto singing
Nielsson
Lind

Negative:

Virtanen
Juolevi
Eriksson contract
Sutter contract
Forsling
Losing Trampkin
Vey
Sutter trade
First Pedan trade
2016 TDL catastrophe

 

[F A N]

In terms of direction, I have said to look at his drafts to determine the type of players he likes on his team. While I am worried whenever he says he thinks the team has an abundance of players/prospects at certain positions, on the flip side, he's constantly trying to build a team. Even in drafting, I think you could see some team build/positional needs consideration. While the BPA philosophy has been the consensus best way of drafting for the past how many years, I personally wonder if that should be changed. In Baseball, teams do take into account players who play who is considered premium positions. The idea is that say a center fielder is worth more than a left or right fielder all else being equal. Certainly, there were strong arguments over whether the Oilers should draft the consensus BPA Yakupov at the time when their needs were clearly elsewhere.

I obviously have been a Benning supporter and I don't think he's the best GM in the league or even close to it, but I have always said that if he can deliver at the draft table then his time here would be a good one in hindsight. And ya, I do think he's delivering on the draft table. He didn't exactly nail his top 6 selections, but overall, it looks like every draft of his will deliver at least an NHL player or two. That's not something that can be said of previous GMs.

 

[Shattered Dreams]

In terms of direction, I have said to look at his drafts to determine the type of players he likes on his team. While I am worried whenever he says he thinks the team has an abundance of players/prospects at certain positions, on the flip side, he's constantly trying to build a team. Even in drafting, I think you could see some team build/positional needs consideration. While the BPA philosophy has been the consensus best way of drafting for the past how many years, I personally wonder if that should be changed. In Baseball, teams do take into account players who play who is considered premium positions. The idea is that say a center fielder is worth more than a left or right fielder all else being equal. Certainly, there were strong arguments over whether the Oilers should draft the consensus BPA Yakupov at the time when their needs were clearly elsewhere.

I obviously have been a Benning supporter and I don't think he's the best GM in the league or even close to it, but I have always said that if he can deliver at the draft table then his time here would be a good one in hindsight. And ya, I do think he's delivering on the draft table. He didn't exactly nail his top 6 selections, but overall, it looks like every draft of his will deliver at least an NHL player or two. That's not something that can be said of previous GMs.

Yes, it is commendable to get NHL players at the draft, but showing up for 200 games without making a huge impact on winning means very little to me. You could draft three players that go on to play 500 games each, but if they only have 100 career points each, that doesn't scream "Stanley Cup winning team."

You need to find stars in the draft to lead the charge. This management group has poorly assessed the state of their current roster and in my opinion, is too reliant on a majority of their picks hitting for their future roster to succeed. I love how well Boeser is playing in the NHL and how Pettersson is doing in Sweden.

But they are not going to save this team alone. I am not worried about our goaltending, but we still lack a #1 centre and honestly, there are several pieces missing from our future blue line. We need offensive defencemen. If Juolevi is a 25 point shutdown defenceman, then we need to add offensive contributors on the blue line.

This is why I disagree with picking for positional need. It will get you burned, just like we have been burned by picking Juolevi over Tkachuk/Keller. If your bar of success is being better than the last regime in drafting, then that's a pretty low bar. That regime was busy winning divisional titles and President's Trophies. It's not an excuse for the lack of talent left in the prospect pool, but this current iteration of the team continues to burn the candle at both ends.

How many years is this rebuild (if you can even call it one) will last? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Benning is going to leave behind a group of important pieces for the future, but I don't believe he can build a championship team on his own. It is unacceptable to give him so much leeway when he has been in this business for so long between the Sabres, Bruins and Canucks.

Just because he has done well for the last six months, it doesn't mean we erase the first two and a half years of incompetence.

 

[LeftCoast]

My main issue with Benning is that he started out with the wrong strategy - to retool on the fly while remaining a playoff team. This overall strategy affected all of this transactions - from insisting on a "now" oriented package in the Kesler deal, to giving up draft picks for Vey, Sutter, Prust, etc., to stop gap deals to bolster our D at the expense of the future (Clendenning v Forsling), to long contracts given out to Miller, Sutter, Dorset, Sbisa and Eriksson. Every one of these deals was consistent with that strategy, but was this poor execution or given the goal, could a better GM have done better? I can't decide, it was certainly frustrated by the wrong coach (which is entirely on Linden), but the result was a failure either way and that gets hung on Benning - but also on Aqualini who is likely the source of the retool on the fly strategy.

The strategy didn't change for Benning until the 2017 trade deadline. They were still committed to the same retool on the fly strategy when they signed Loui Eriksson and traded Jared McCann (and picks) for Erik Gudbransson (and a worse pick). I'm not going to write off everything done before the 2017 TDL. it was a huge mistake and without it, (particularly with a different return on the Kesler trade) we would have been much further ahead at this point. However I will credit the front office team for recognizing their strategy was not working and changing it. Further, it is mitigated slightly because it failed so spectacularly that we ended up with rebuild draft positions anyways. But this was accidental - if Willie Desjardins were a better coach, or we had fewer injuries in the 2016-17 season, they might not have traded Burrows and Hansen and we might have finished just below the playoff line and missed out on drafting Pettersson and acquiring Dahlen and Goldobin.

Going forward however, if this group can execute well on the rebuild strategy, I would be willing to forgive the failings of the past.

But the key is what they do with the rest of this season. There is a real danger that with the improvement in play under Travis Green, the emergence of Brock Boeser and the continued development of Horvat and Stecher, we might still be in a playoff position in February. This is not a time to revert to the mistakes of the past and start thinking short term. Benning must hold onto all of his picks and use the TDL to acquire more picks in the 2018 draft. That means moving Gudbransson as it would be foolish to re-sign him and possibly Vanek or Gagner (if possible).

They also have to avoid the temptation to use the Sedin (retirement) cap savings to sign another veteran to a retirement deal. Benning has pursued veteran free agents every summer - almost always to his detriment. This can't continue. Hopefully the dead cap space from Eriksson and the pending Luongo recapture penalty will dissuade them from any major foolishness.

 

[Hit the post]

And ya, I do think he's delivering on the draft table. He didn't exactly nail his top 6 selections, but overall, it looks like every draft of his will deliver at least an NHL player or two. That's not something that can be said of previous GMs.

Burke had some really bad drafts but he hit a few home runs as well.

Frankly, I'll take a few bad bust (bad as in entire draft year busts) if it means getting several elite NHLers (ie., Art Ross, Selke, Ted Lindsey award winners).

 

[opendoor]

My main issue with Benning is that he started out with the wrong strategy - to retool on the fly while remaining a playoff team. This overall strategy affected all of this transactions - from insisting on a "now" oriented package in the Kesler deal, to giving up draft picks for Vey, Sutter, Prust, etc., to stop gap deals to bolster our D at the expense of the future (Clendenning v Forsling), to long contracts given out to Miller, Sutter, Dorset, Sbisa and Eriksson. Every one of these deals was consistent with that strategy, but was this poor execution or given the goal, could a better GM have done better? I can't decide, it was certainly frustrated by the wrong coach (which is entirely on Linden), but the result was a failure either way and that gets hung on Benning - but also on Aqualini who is likely the source of the retool on the fly strategy.

Really? You can't envision a scenario where a competent GM attempts to retool and doesn't make all of those terrible moves? Why is targeting poor players and giving bad contracts to them inextricably a part of a retool? Why couldn't Benning have acquired good, undervalued players with little asset outlay in an attempt to remain competitive? Why did he have to give up assets for junk like Sbisa, Prust, Vey, Etem, etc. when you can get players like that for nothing? Why did he have to completely bungle contract negotiations and give guys like Sbisa, Dorsett, Sbisa, Miller, etc. millions more than they were worth? That's not the strategy's fault; that's Benning's lack of ability.

Benning's problem wasn't that he was trying to remain competitive, it was that he simply had no idea how to do his job. A less than ideal strategy with good execution can still produce decent results. But he took a less than ideal strategy and made catastrophically bad decisions. And that's why a team that he thought could be "turned around in a hurry" and one that he predicted could be a contender by 2018 ended up finishing bottom 3 two years in a row despite his best efforts to compete. Meanwhile the team lost an entire draft's worth of picks and some good prospects in a 3 year span as Benning made bad move after bad move.

The strategy didn't change for Benning until the 2017 trade deadline. They were still committed to the same retool on the fly strategy when they signed Loui Eriksson and traded Jared McCann (and picks) for Erik Gudbransson (and a worse pick). I'm not going to write off everything done before the 2017 TDL. it was a huge mistake and without it, (particularly with a different return on the Kesler trade) we would have been much further ahead at this point. However I will credit the front office team for recognizing their strategy was not working and changing it. Further, it is mitigated slightly because it failed so spectacularly that we ended up with rebuild draft positions anyways. But this was accidental - if Willie Desjardins were a better coach, or we had fewer injuries in the 2016-17 season, they might not have traded Burrows and Hansen and we might have finished just below the playoff line and missed out on drafting Pettersson and acquiring Dahlen and Goldobin.

Going forward however, if this group can execute well on the rebuild strategy, I would be willing to forgive the failings of the past.

But the key is what they do with the rest of this season. There is a real danger that with the improvement in play under Travis Green, the emergence of Brock Boeser and the continued development of Horvat and Stecher, we might still be in a playoff position in February. This is not a time to revert to the mistakes of the past and start thinking short term. Benning must hold onto all of his picks and use the TDL to acquire more picks in the 2018 draft. That means moving Gudbransson as it would be foolish to re-sign him and possibly Vanek or Gagner (if possible).

They also have to avoid the temptation to use the Sedin (retirement) cap savings to sign another veteran to a retirement deal. Benning has pursued veteran free agents every summer - almost always to his detriment. This can't continue. Hopefully the dead cap space from Eriksson and the pending Luongo recapture penalty will dissuade them from any major foolishness.

Again, if a GM completely bungles an attempt to remain competitive, what makes you think he'll nail the rebuild? There are countless examples of teams that get a few good young pieces and think the rebuild is over, but because they keep terrible managers who don't know how to build a team, they end up spinning their wheels. Edmonton, Buffalo, Colorado, Florida, etc. all have great young pieces but their GMs are morons so they never really get out of the basement. If the Canucks hold on to Benning or replace him with someone nearly as bad they're destined to that kind of future. They'll have a few good pieces, but most of the rest of the roster will be overpaid junk.

 

[Jay Cee]

Benning’s worst problem is long term cap management. I would say he deserves to lose his job for that more than anything. We have some money coming off the books this off season and I absolutely do not trust him with it. I also don’t trust Linden whatsoever in an level of hockey operations, or to pick Benning’s successor. Get Linden in some more showy business role like he was more suited for in the first place before his legacy is totally ruined. They made the right move with Lowe in Edmonton too late.

I would give Benning a boss who was a good manager of an NHL team and see if he has anything worth salvaging. Maybe a 2 year deal or something where he could easily be fired after the first.

 

[M2Beezy]

Rough weekend for our future guys. Boesers worst game and no points for the BBB line. Pettersson only the one point. Gaudette and Lind didnt even play. Not much for Locky or Juolevi

 

[Krnuckfan]

Positive:

Pettersson
Boeser
Baertchi trade
Gaudette
Lockwood
Demko
Vanek singing
De Zotto singing
Nielsson
Lind

Negative:

Virtanen
Juolevi
Eriksson contract
Sutter contract
Forsling
Losing Trampkin
Vey
Sutter trade
First Pedan trade
2016 TDL catastrophe

Credit for Pettersson, Boeser, Gaudette, Lockwood, Demko, Lind should go to Judd Brackett. Not a lot left on the positive ledger for benning.

 

[Motte and Bailey]

The biggest problem I have with Benning is he hasn't been given a 5 year extension yet. How many times does he need to commit highway robbery? Baertshi trade, Granlund trade, Dahlen trade, Pouliot trade, MDZ signing, Stecher signing, Vanek signing, Boeser draft, Gaudette draft, Pettersson draft, Lind draft, the list goes on and on.

 

[F A N]

You need to find stars in the draft to lead the charge.

You do. But no team manages to draft star players in every draft. Consistently drafting NHL players out of every draft will go a long way towards consistently putting together a winning team. The Predators did that. They went a long time not really drafting stars but payroll permitting, they consistently had good teams because they kept drafting NHL players.

This is why I disagree with picking for positional need. It will get you burned, just like we have been burned by picking Juolevi over Tkachuk/Keller. If your bar of success is being better than the last regime in drafting, then that's a pretty low bar. That regime was busy winning divisional titles and President's Trophies. It's not an excuse for the lack of talent left in the prospect pool, but this current iteration of the team continues to burn the candle at both ends.

I don't disagree. I don't believe in picking for positional need per se, but at the end of the day you need put together a team and try to stock the cupboards with good prospects at every position. As for the bar being set low in terms of drafting. It is low. The Canucks have been poor drafters period, and I believe it has directly led to the Canucks NOT winning a Stanley Cup. The previous regime made many good moves to get to the Cup final. But their downfall was ultimately bad drafting over the years. It caught up with them. You can't trade for a Christian Ehrhoff for cheap every year. You can't pick up a Wellwood or even Dale Weise type player on waivers to start the season every year. In their last season, they ended up trading for Zach Dalpe. And the previous regime benefitted from some prospects coming in. Whether this current management is brought back or new management is brought in, I have always said that if Benning can deliver on the draft table it will go a long way to helping this team rebuild.

How many years is this rebuild (if you can even call it one) will last? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Benning is going to leave behind a group of important pieces for the future, but I don't believe he can build a championship team on his own. It is unacceptable to give him so much leeway when he has been in this business for so long between the Sabres, Bruins and Canucks.

Huh? Leeway for what? Last I checked, Benning hasn't been the GM for 20 years. You can believe what you want.

Just because he has done well for the last six months, it doesn't mean we erase the first two and a half years of incompetence.

It's not uncommon for new GMs to make mistakes. If we're discussing whether or not to bring Benning back, then his recent work and his ability to deliver a better future should be evaluated. Should Jim Rutherford be evaluated based on his last few years in Carolina?

Burke had some really bad drafts but he hit a few home runs as well.

Frankly, I'll take a few bad bust (bad as in entire draft year busts) if it means getting several elite NHLers (ie., Art Ross, Selke, Ted Lindsey award winners).

Not to take anyway from Burke drafting the Sedins, but when Burke hasn't had a top 3 pick, he hasn't really done much. He did good with the Kesler pick, but that was one of the best drafts ever. In reality, the team would have been better off drafting Perry and even Richards for the first 6-7 years post draft?

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

Credit for Pettersson, Boeser, Gaudette, Lockwood, Demko, Lind should go to Judd Brackett. Not a lot left on the positive ledger for benning.

Oh ya ..ya know..I'll just leave it all to Judd..

 

[Melvin]

He is objectively a dullard and the idea that he is somehow this idiot savant at picking names out of a hat for late round picks just doesn't hold up to even the smallest amount of scrutiny.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

He is objectively a dullard and the idea that he is somehow this idiot savant at picking names out of a hat for late round picks just doesn't hold up to even the smallest amount of scrutiny.

Idle speculation + Benning" trash talk"=0

 

[Ori]

Oh ya ..ya know..I'll just leave it all to Judd..View attachment 85103

It looks so nice and peaceful - I live near the sea so I really recommend it.

 

[Shattered Dreams]

I don't disagree. I don't believe in picking for positional need per se, but at the end of the day you need put together a team and try to stock the cupboards with good prospects at every position. As for the bar being set low in terms of drafting. It is low. The Canucks have been poor drafters period, and I believe it has directly led to the Canucks NOT winning a Stanley Cup. The previous regime made many good moves to get to the Cup final. But their downfall was ultimately bad drafting over the years. It caught up with them. You can't trade for a Christian Ehrhoff for cheap every year. You can't pick up a Wellwood or even Dale Weise type player on waivers to start the season every year. In their last season, they ended up trading for Zach Dalpe. And the previous regime benefitted from some prospects coming in. Whether this current management is brought back or new management is brought in, I have always said that if Benning can deliver on the draft table it will go a long way to helping this team rebuild.

That doesn't mean Benning will build a championship team. The drafting got better when Brackett had more influence and control. He may have been made director of amateur scouting in 2016, but Jim Benning has his fingerprints all over Juolevi. Just like he does with Virtanen. The Boeser pick was a great pick, but Jason Botchford described a clear divide between Benning and Linden/Brackett. Most of the picks were choices made by Brackett. From the sounds of the Patcasts after the draft, Jim would have preferred Cale Makar if he was there and probably I would infer that he deferred to Brackett when he was gone.

If Benning is fired, I have a good feeling that the draft success will be roughly the same without him. Some of the garbage has been cleaned out of our scouting team. However, tell me how someone who can seemingly assess amateur talent so well be so wrong most of the time with pro scouting? Are Baertschi, Granlund and Pouliot going to be all he has to show for in his pro scouting assessments? That's not enough when you throw away Jared McCann, the 2016 33rd overall, Gustav Forsling and the absolutely ridiculous cache of draft picks pissed away because an idiot was trying to cut corners and turn this team around quickly.

 

[Jay Cee]

Again it is the same old fanfic style filling in the blanks. Who knows how that conversation went to pick the best players.

Big picture, Benning’s job is not to do every single job in the organization by himself. He came in the be the drafter, he has taken ownership of it and it seems like through Weisbrod it seems to be implied they micromanage it.

I would be willing to put the credit, big picture in Benning’s lap. The question is how does that look? So so right now.

 

[Shattered Dreams]

Huh? Leeway for what? Last I checked, Benning hasn't been the GM for 20 years. You can believe what you want.

I never said he was the GM for 20 years. Stop putting words in my mouth to fit your agenda. An executive learns from higher ups around him. If there was this invisible wall between a AGM and a GM where no information about the position was exchanged, then why do teams higher former AGM's to be General Managers?

What I don't want is to be told we are rebuilding for the next 10 years. I don't want an Oilers rebuild where we lie to ourselves and say we are competitive when we are not. The Oilers thought they were done with Eberle, Hall, RNH, Paajarvi and Yakupov. Look how that turned out. The Avalanche thought they would be unstoppable with O'Reilly, Duchene, Landeskog, Barrie and Mackinnon. Look how that turned out.

These kinds of deflections are what frustrate me with Canucks fans. This rebuild is far from being done, yet we have shills like IMac putting out future lines requiring an insane majority of our prospects to max out their ceilings. Just because you have a few shiny new pieces, doesn't mean the job is done. It should be pretty telling where this team is headed when moves are made or not made at the Trade Deadline.

 

[Shattered Dreams]

Again it is the same old fanfic style filling in the blanks. Who knows how that conversation went to pick the best players.

Big picture, Benning’s job is not to do every single job in the organization by himself. He came in the be the drafter, he has taken ownership of it and it seems like through Weisbrod it seems to be implied they micromanage it.

I would be willing to put the credit, big picture in Benning’s lap. The question is how does that look? So so right now.

See, it's hard for me to credit Benning with every pick. Sure, he can say he takes responsibility for the picks, but there is more to being a GM than drafting. I don't think Benning has the time to scout as many players as some people may think. It would make sense that he focuses on first round picks, like most GM's do. And even then, it's more of a final say. I don't recall Benning flying out to Sweden to look at Pettersson. He made a trip to see free agents in the World Championships.

That's the major reason why so much focus is put on Virtanen, Juolevi, Boeser and Pettersson. It's also the reason why Gillis is criticized since he got nothing out of White, Hodgson, Schroeder and Jensen. Horvat and Shinkaruk were all he left behind. So I guess that makes Gillis 1 for 6 on first rounders and Benning 2 for 5 since he threw away McCann. It's an improvement. Like I said, that's a low bar to clear.

 

[Jay Cee]

See, it's hard for me to credit Benning with every pick. Sure, he can say he takes responsibility for the picks, but there is more to being a GM than drafting. I don't think Benning has the time to scout as many players as some people may think. It would make sense that he focuses on first round picks, like most GM's do. And even then, it's more of a final say. I don't recall Benning flying out to Sweden to look at Pettersson. He made a trip to see free agents in the World Championships.

That's the major reason why so much focus is put on Virtanen, Juolevi, Boeser and Pettersson. It's also the reason why Gillis is criticized since he got nothing out of White, Hodgson, Schroeder and Jensen. Horvat and Shinkaruk were all he left behind. So I guess that makes Gillis 1 for 6 on first rounders and Benning 2 for 5 since he threw away McCann. It's an improvement. Like I said, that's a low bar to clear.

Say I am a manager of a business in some capacity which I might be, and I come on board and take ownership of making an area better, and then I make the area better.

You could try and dig deep and watch YouTube videos and decifering Bothford decifering Friedman and everything in between. You could look at all the quotes that all the scouts said about a given player to try and figure out every pick belonged to. You will be no farther ahead of what exactly happened to lead to that pick being made though.

That’s what I mean. Ok, Benning isn’t doing every scouting job on the team at the same time as being the GM but picking where his direct influence goes or not is pretty dubious at best.

 

[TheOtherGM]

Credit for Pettersson, Boeser, Gaudette, Lockwood, Demko, Lind should go to Judd Brackett. Not a lot left on the positive ledger for benning.

Oh come on. Not a huge Benning supporter nor a huge Benning basher. Somewhere in the middle here, but if you're going to slag the guy for the bad moves at least give him a shred of credit for the good pieces that enter the organization.

 

[TheOtherGM]

You need to find stars in the draft to lead the charge. This management group has poorly assessed the state of their current roster and in my opinion, is too reliant on a majority of their picks hitting for their future roster to succeed. I love how well Boeser is playing in the NHL and how Pettersson is doing in Sweden.

Well, I think they've found two bona-fide stars in Boeser and Pettersson, even though I will be told to wait and see on the later.
There's a real possibility they've found three if you include Demko, who I believe remains very highly regarded?

There are no stars on defence, but there were no stars on the 2011 team either. It was a solid six-man unit led by 1B types Edler and Hamhuis, but there wasn't a game changer back there. Who knows what Hutton or Juolevi or someone we haven't drafted yet ultimately becomes.

The 2011 team had depth for days and that could already be in the pipeline as well.
Out of Gaudette/Lind/Gadjovich/Dahlen/Goldobin/Lockwood, let's say just two of them hit. Just for the sake of argument Gaudette and... Lind.

Then you're moving ahead with Horvat/Baertschi/Boeser/Elias/Gaudette/Lind/Gaunce which is a decent start to building depth not taking into account any future draft picks or trades.

That is just based on what's already in the system.