2018 Management Discussion

[Grub]

I'm looking at the signing of Calvin De Hann and James Neal... I mean these guys are getting around 5 Million. We are really over paying our plugs in this team.

 

[y2kcanucks]

Not an argument..just an observation....chill..

I see you ignored my latest response to you. Are you finally admitting that you were wrong and there really hasn’t been a rebuild?

 

[HSD19]

As a Benning fan, even I will have to admit that the Eriksson signing was a bad one. However - I still contend that the signing was a closeted 4 year deal, and that Eriksson will either be traded to a cap floor team after year 4 (if he recoups some of his original worth as a player) or will retire.

By the end of year 4, 31 out of the 36 million will have been paid to Eriksson. It’s modern day cap circumvention.......engineered by the genius known as Benning.

Having said all that - I think the deployment of Eriksson has been atrocious. Why the coaching staff haven’t put Eriksson and Horvat together is beyond me.

Why the coaching staff continuously plays Eriksson with Sutter is a joke. Their games are very incompatible and what you are essentially doing, is turning Eriksson into a defensive player (a role that he’s good at by the way........but not something you pay a guy 6 million for).

My hope is that the Canucks deploy Eriksson properly this coming season.......just as they finally started to deploy Sutter correctly last season.

BovinDer Horvatji is that you?

 

[Jyrki21]

So you say Benning is a liar?

I do think ownership made the most recent huge mistake of assuming Linden can't be fired in Vancouver because, essentially, people my age really used to like him and/or thought he was attractive. I think that is a miscalculation to begin with (most people would rather a good team with a good plan than one that involves Linden somehow... and the ones who don't shouldn't be listened to), but even if there would be some sort of blowback he still has to have the good sense to make the right decision.

Whether Francesco is still in rebuild-denial or has taken a more enlightened approach, there is no way he looks at the last few years and thinks, "Yeah, this is good. This is exactly what I wanted." All logic suggests that he cannot be particularly happy with poor performance, dwindling crowds and – despite the crowing here to the contrary from certain posters – absolutely no reason to believe it is about to change dramatically.

If Linden did deliver an ultimatum that Benning must be rehired (and again, the timing of the extension and the silence that preceded it absolutely supports this theory), then responsibility does fall on ownership for not taking the super-obvious tack for a for-profit enterprise and disposing of Linden as well.

So realistically, is there any level of underperformance that we think would get Aquilini to clean house this year? I just can't picture a lower level of performance.

This very well could be the team's worst season under Benning to date. Pettersson (and more Boeser) is kind of the X-factor who could offset it somehow, but logically there isn't a whole lot of other reasons to think the Canucks will improve over last year. Given the lack of "rebuild" moves to get there, I could maybe see this season getting it done. But I thought that about each of the last two seasons too, so...

 

[RandV]

This very well could be the team's worst season under Benning to date. Pettersson (and more Boeser) is kind of the X-factor who could offset it somehow, but logically there isn't a whole lot of other reasons to think the Canucks will improve over last year. Given the lack of "rebuild" moves to get there, I could maybe see this season getting it done. But I thought that about each of the last two seasons too, so...

And an observation from last season all that Benning apparently needs to do is get one promising young player (Boeser->Pettersson->Hughes) into the lineup and a significant portion of the fanbase will clap like trained seals and declare the season a success no matter how badly we do.

 

[Nuckles]

This very well could be the team's worst season under Benning to date. Pettersson (and more Boeser) is kind of the X-factor who could offset it somehow, but logically there isn't a whole lot of other reasons to think the Canucks will improve over last year. Given the lack of "rebuild" moves to get there, I could maybe see this season getting it done. But I thought that about each of the last two seasons too, so...

Yup. Goaltending is the same, defense will be identical or almost identical, and they lost three 50 point forwards (albeit with soft minutes). Pettersson should be good, but it's looking like he'll be stuck with Sutter who will absolutely weigh him down offensively.

 

[Melvin]

I do think ownership made the most recent huge mistake of assuming Linden can't be fired in Vancouver because, essentially, people my age really used to like him and/or thought he was attractive. I think that is a miscalculation to begin with (most people would rather a good team with a good plan than one that involves Linden somehow... and the ones who don't shouldn't be listened to), but even if there would be some sort of blowback he still has to have the good sense to make the right decision.

Whether Francesco is still in rebuild-denial or has taken a more enlightened approach, there is no way he looks at the last few years and thinks, "Yeah, this is good. This is exactly what I wanted." All logic suggests that he cannot be particularly happy with poor performance, dwindling crowds and – despite the crowing here to the contrary from certain posters – absolutely no reason to believe it is about to change dramatically.

If Linden did deliver an ultimatum that Benning must be rehired (and again, the timing of the extension and the silence that preceded it absolutely supports this theory), then responsibility does fall on ownership for not taking the super-obvious tack for a for-profit enterprise and disposing of Linden as well.


This very well could be the team's worst season under Benning to date. Pettersson (and more Boeser) is kind of the X-factor who could offset it somehow, but logically there isn't a whole lot of other reasons to think the Canucks will improve over last year. Given the lack of "rebuild" moves to get there, I could maybe see this season getting it done. But I thought that about each of the last two seasons too, so...

They will never fire linden imo. He will eventually be re assigned to senior vice president of horseshit like Kevin Lowe in Edmonton.

 

[xtra]

Not really..Maclean has no bias one way or the other on this matter...You can call it an' appeal to authority' or whatever you want..I'll take his opinion any day over a bitter poster on this board (that does not include 'opendoor' who had valid points).

Having no bias wasn’t the point. The point was that the authority figures you defer too often don’t know what they are talkig about hence making arguements like just buy him out stupid.

 

[lush]

Haven't had a chance until today to post about Free Agency signings
I'm always happy to see July 1 signings generally, want us to be a cap team and after freeing up 14M with no big extensions to negotiate it's only natural
I was also generally supportive of the free agent signings last summer, the deals themselves are very unimpressive but I was comfortable enough with them and not as upset as many others of the ice time they were taking away from any young players. I also didn't think they would push us into a 15-20 range draft pick. Gagner, Vanek, Del Zotto

This year we gave out similar dollars despite way more cap space, but we gave out term. Lots of people arguing about how the term is going to harm us, and my opinion is that it won't (but who knows) . Beagle and to a lesser extent Rousell will probably play like 200 apiece games over the 4 years on the deals. You see this quite a bit, just look at Dorset. On and off IR and even retirement without serious cap consequences.

Otherwise, this is obviously the most rebuilding the management team has done since its inception, we would all do it a bit differently but I'm anything but irate about these signings

 

[Addison Rae]

signing a 33 year old to a 4 year contract

“this is the most rebuilding this management team has done”

that’s pretty f***ing sad considering this team finished bottom 3 in back 2 back season before last year

 

[Cupless44]

How can any Canuck fan read this article (which is dead on) and be happy with what has just transpired??

The ONLY thing worth watching or being excited about was going to be watching young players compete for spots after 3 dismal seasons of watching a poor veteran team that is slow and cant score. That is completely gone now and we will very possibly needlessly lose young players on waivers.

Barring trades, there won’t be much competition at Canucks training camp

 

[CanaFan]

How can any Canuck fan read this article (which is dead on) and be happy with what has just transpired??

The ONLY thing worth watching or being excited about was going to be watching young players compete for spots after 3 dismal seasons of watching a poor veteran team that is slow and cant score. That is completely gone now and we will very possibly needlessly lose young players on waivers.

Barring trades, there won’t be much competition at Canucks training camp

That’s what happens when people think 25 is “young” in the NHL.

 

[Cupless44]

That’s what happens when people think 25 is “young” in the NHL.

So f***ing painful to watch Eriksson, Gagner, Schaller, Roussel, Beagle, Granlund, Sutter as over half of the forward group on a nightly basis knowing this coach will never bench them no matter how shitty they are.

I wonder how many games this team will score 1 goal or less next year.

 

[CanaFan]

So ****ing painful to watch Eriksson, Gagner, Schaller, Roussel, Beagle, Granlund, Sutter as over half of the forward group on a nightly basis knowing this coach will never bench them no matter how ****ty they are.

I wonder how many games this team will score 1 goal or less next year.

You know, if it were just for next year or maybe even the next 2 years I could probably handle it. Send all the kids to Utica, stink up the 2018-19 season a la 2015-16 Toronto and get a guaranteed top 4 pick in 2019 (Hughes, Turcotte, Newhook) to really set off this collection of young talent. Trade a few guys at the TDL for extra picks, etc. Then in 2019-20 let Gaudette, Juolevi, Dahlen, Hughes, Demko, the 2019 pick all make the team. But you need more than 1-2 top 6 spots for those kids to play in, which means you can’t have an entire 4th line filled up with Beagle, Roussel, and Schaller and 2/3 of the 3rd line filled up with Sutter and Eriksson.

So essentially we are logjammed for the next 4 years until Beagle, Roussel, and Eriksson’s contracts are up, plus whatever grit/character/insulation filler Benning brings in next year and the year after that. Because he will.

 

[Cupless44]

You know, if it were just for next year or maybe even the next 2 years I could probably handle it. Send all the kids to Utica, stink up the 2018-19 season a la 2015-16 Toronto and get a guaranteed top 4 pick in 2019 (Hughes, Turcotte, Newhook) to really set off this collection of young talent. Trade a few guys at the TDL for extra picks, etc. Then in 2019-20 let Gaudette, Juolevi, Dahlen, Hughes, Demko, the 2019 pick all make the team. But you need more than 1-2 top 6 spots for those kids to play in, which means you can’t have an entire 4th line filled up with Beagle, Roussel, and Schaller and 2/3 of the 3rd line filled up with Sutter and Eriksson.

So essentially we are logjammed for the next 4 years until Beagle, Roussel, and Eriksson’s contracts are up, plus whatever grit/character/insulation filler Benning brings in next year and the year after that. Because he will.

I don't care about the money or that the contracts are being laughed at around the NHL....it is the logjam for the next few years that is completely demoralizing. When you have suffered through a few very bad years of hockey now in Vancouver, watching the youth movement was all there was.

 

[RandV]

I don't care about the money or that the contracts are being laughed at around the NHL....it is the logjam for the next few years that is completely demoralizing. When you have suffered through a few very bad years of hockey now in Vancouver, watching the youth movement was all there was.

And speaking of the log jam, even if someone wants to say Benning has some sort of a transition plan here let's not forget that the Beagle/Roussel deals were initially announced as 3 year contracts (I think the Roussel one was?) but Benning got talked into adding an extra year at the last hour. If you're trying to 'transition' it's hardly productive to get talked into adding an extra year onto veteran contracts.

 

[RobertKron]

Benning is talking about the Beagle acquisition in terms of 'freeing up Sutter for a more offensive role.'



“Maybe (Travis Green) can play (Sutter) up and down the lineup with better offensive players,” Benning said. “(Green) has options there.”

Was freeing up Sutter for more offensive opportunities part of the reason the Canucks chased Beagle like he was a rock star?

“Yeah, if you look at the numbers, the analytics, (Sutter) almost started every time in the defensive zone,” Benning said. “So adding Jay to our team will take some of the pressure off him, because Jay can do that too.

“Maybe Sutter gets more offensive-zone starts.

“It will be up to Travis as to how he wants to deploy his guys, but that gives him options.”

Jason Botchford: Canucks’ polarizing first day of free agency brings us the dawn of the Grit Wars

You can almost set your watch to Benning directly contradicting whatever tenuous rationalization the ellipsis gang on here use to proclaim his latest move as genius.

 

[CanaFan]

You can almost set your watch to Benning directly contradicting whatever tenuous rationalization the ellipsis gang on here use to proclaim his latest move as genius.

While everybody here is arguing whether the colour of the dress is blue or gold, Benning is 100% convinced the dress is actually a hat.

 

[MS]

So realistically, is there any level of underperformance that we think would get Aquilini to clean house this year? I just can't picture a lower level of performance.

Benning will be gone at the point where the Linden Effect wears off and fans finally start to turn on them.

We saw a bit of this at the trade deadline and at the Gudbranson extension, and now a lot more here with these signings. When a house media guy like Dan Murphy is getting critical, that's a great sign that this nightmare could finally be close to over.

The team has a brutal schedule in October and it'll be interesting to see what happens if/when the team struggles.

I don't care about the money or that the contracts are being laughed at around the NHL....it is the logjam for the next few years that is completely demoralizing. When you have suffered through a few very bad years of hockey now in Vancouver, watching the youth movement was all there was.

Absolutely. There has never been a Canuck team I've cared less about. Oh, yay, we get to watch some other teams' old overpaid journeyman lose games for us instead of our young players.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

That’s what happens when people think 25 is “young” in the NHL.

It's amazing, isn't it? You read through these threads and it's like the Benning crowd really has brainwashed themselves into thinking that NHLers typically start just dipping their toes in the big league pool at 22, 23. Oh Gudbranson? He's only 26! Pouliot? Only 24!

Yeah, the best player on the Canucks is a positively fetal 21. How'd that happen?! How come years of mentoring didn't go into that?!

And seriously, if I ever hear the word "mentoring" again in the next billion years it'll be too soon. This September the team will be about 3 guys in their early 20's and 15 "mentors". I mean, wtf. Is this a hockey team or the Greek Navy?

 

[Peter10]

Had one guy on twitter arguing Baertschi is a young guy. The same Baertschi who would have been a UFA next year. Of course that is one of the problem when players make it later - they are full time NHLers for about 3 season when they close in UFAcy. People think their rookie year wasnt that long ago so theses guys automatically are considered young.

The real problem is, guys like Gaudette and Leipsic are 22-23ish, which is actually when they should slowly hit their prime years but this bonehead management group wants to insulate them to dead and have them rot in the minors. Guess what, if they cant make it to the big show at this age, they probably never will be.

 

[MS]

It's amazing, isn't it? You read through these threads and it's like the Benning crowd really has brainwashed themselves into thinking that NHLers typically start just dipping their toes in the big league pool at 22, 23. Oh Gudbranson? He's only 26! Pouliot? Only 24!

Yeah, the best player on the Canucks is a positively fetal 21. How'd that happen?! How come years of mentoring didn't go into that?!

And seriously, if I ever hear the word "mentoring" again in the next billion years it'll be too soon. This September the team will be about 3 guys in their early 20's and 15 "mentors". I mean, wtf. Is this a hockey team or the Greek Navy?

Had one guy on twitter arguing Baertschi is a young guy. The same Baertschi who would have been a UFA next year. Of course that is one of the problem when players make it later - they are full time NHLers for about 3 season when they close in UFAcy. People think their rookie year wasnt that long ago so theses guys automatically are considered young.

The real problem is, guys like Gaudette and Leipsic are 22-23ish, which is actually when they should slowly hit their prime years but this bonehead management group wants to insulate them to dead and have them rot in the minors. Guess what, if they cant make it to the big show at this age, they probably never will be.

It's a really weird thing with this fanbase that I think is more pronounced here than anywhere else. Maybe it's because we've been an outlier team that has had a lot of key players (Sedins, Kesler, Burrows, Bieksa) peak much later than average plus the unusual Schneider situation where he was stuck in the minors way longer than usual because we had the best goalie in the NHL. I don't know.

But yeah. A guy like Baertschi is not young, and his career in NA is probably closer to its finish than its start.

And a guy like Gaudette should be playing and playing now. In a key role. The last 4 Hobey Baker winners did. Kerfoot did last year in Colorado. He's 22 this year. If he can't produce in the NHL this season, he's probably a bust.

 

[Cupless44]

Had one guy on twitter arguing Baertschi is a young guy. The same Baertschi who would have been a UFA next year. Of course that is one of the problem when players make it later - they are full time NHLers for about 3 season when they close in UFAcy. People think their rookie year wasnt that long ago so theses guys automatically are considered young.

The real problem is, guys like Gaudette and Leipsic are 22-23ish, which is actually when they should slowly hit their prime years but this bonehead management group wants to insulate them to dead and have them rot in the minors. Guess what, if they cant make it to the big show at this age, they probably never will be.

Good point. In today’s NHL, players should be playing in the league by 22 if they are going to be important players.

 

[Cupless44]

Usually the Canucks get off to a decent start and then fade after January but I think they could have a really tough start and be bad from the get go next year. I think the criticism and heat will be turned up on this management pretty early next year and they could be in for a long season.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

It's a really weird thing with this fanbase that I think is more pronounced here than anywhere else. Maybe it's because we've been an outlier team that has had a lot of key players (Sedins, Kesler, Burrows, Bieksa) peak much later than average plus the unusual Schneider situation where he was stuck in the minors way longer than usual because we had the best goalie in the NHL. I don't know.

But yeah. A guy like Baertschi is not young, and his career in NA is probably closer to its finish than its start.

And a guy like Gaudette should be playing and playing now. In a key role. The last 4 Hobey Baker winners did. Kerfoot did last year in Colorado. He's 22 this year. If he can't produce in the NHL this season, he's probably a bust.

I don't think so. I think it's a product of the Benning buddies using the prospect pool as the tactic of last resort when it comes to defending Dear Leader. The longer the prospect pool remains this ethereal goal that's way off down the line the longer the last possible line of defense holds. As soon as those names start being expected to produce on NHL ice, people will start wondering about how the team's really going to fit together, how the salary cap's doing and how great Benning really is at the one thing he's still being revered for in the local FOX news circles.

In other words, when people start expecting the prospect pool to become the team in earnest, the dominoes with really start falling.