Post-Game Talk: 29 more games of this trash | Flames 4 @ Canucks 1

[JuniorNelson]

The league changed this season. A lot! Canucks seem to dimly grasp this conceptually but are too timid to go all in. Sell all the over thirties. Start there.

Aquilini thinks you need superstars to sell hockey. Fine. He needs to look around the league and recognize what a modern superstar looks like. They are not slow thirty five year olds. Slow players do not fit the updated game. Duh!

This team does not need so much mentorship. One Sedin would do, if it's Daniel. Daniel and Edler have ample leadership. They can currently contribute to a useful model. Hankless Canucks are not slow up the middle, do not take too many men penalties and can ably back check. What's the valid counter-argument? Hank sells tickets? FFS!

 

[canucksfan]

That's my beef with Benning.

Yeah he inherited a mess (reason why Gillis was fired) but he bungled the 'clean-up' job so far IMHO.

He didn't inherit a mess.

 

[ahmon]

That's my beef with Benning.

Yeah he inherited a mess (reason why Gillis was fired) but he bungled the 'clean-up' job so far IMHO.


So 29 NHL GMs should get canned every year?

check the post I was responding to.

 

[The Drop]

and lost in the finals,

So clearly whatever decisions were made apparently were the incorrect ones.

ok. so every year there are 29 stupid teams. cool.

 

[Soups On]

He didn't inherit a mess.

Exactly.
Benning inherited a solid foundation for a retool. Except he botched almost all the first few deals and gave extensions to players that really shouldn't have gotten extensions.

I wonder how different people would feel about Benning if he didn't extend Dorsett and Sbisa for a crazy amount (or didn't pay to get rid of Kassian or get rid of Garrison for cheap or... Oh forget it :/ )

 

[CanaFan]

And exactly how did Benning decide to try to solve this problem?

By trading picks for other organizations' 22-23 year old AHL players. You know, those guys who weren't able to be part of that "healthy competitive team" that drafted them, because they were not "NHL quality players".

That's kind of a big issue here. The first question you should ask is "is the player good enough?". If yes, then the age matters. Like if Benning traded a couple of 2nd rounders for Drouin, that would probably be a good way to "fill the age gap". But it's just completely irrelevant how young/old your replacement level players are.



What you fail to realize is that we were the best team in the league there for a while. The window was wide open, and that's when you absolutely have to go hard and try to win it all. Every single team does that when they are in that position. Look at the way LA and Chicago have been bleeding picks in the last years.

No Cup contending team willingly trades 29 year old veteran players at the peak of their value for younger assets because "they will start to get worse and lose value in a couple of years". It's a ludicrous NHL16-level notion.

The only reason why we are at the bottom of the league is the incompetence of this current management. There were more than enough good pieces to get the proper retool under way, while supplementing it with better drafting than in previous years. The idiots in charge just completely butched it and as a result, we are the bottom and probably will be for a long time now.

Please give me a hypothetical example of how you retool with the pieces that were available after 2014. I'd love to hear all of the great young players that teams were lining up to give us for NTC Kesler, old man Bieksa, and waiver wire Chris Higgins. It should be very interesting.

Again I'm not saying Benning has done a good job though I know many of you desparately want to pin a "Benning supporter" label on anyone who doesn't put 100% of this team's crappiness on Benning.

But the team that he inherited in 2014 had rot beneath the floorboards and that is a major part of the problem today. That is the part that many of you seem to want to ignore in your rabid furvor to lay all the blame at the feet of Benning.

 

[ahmon]

ok. so every year there are 29 stupid teams. cool.

its as cool as saying a team making the finals must have made "all the decisions" correctly- implying great management.

 

[Hit the post]

its as cool as saying a team making the finals must have made "all the decisions" correctly- implying great management.

Depends on how the teams got the Finals - eg., compare the 1982 Canucks to that of the 2011 Canucks (was it a fluke run...).

 

[ahmon]

Exactly.
Benning inherited a solid foundation for a retool. Except he botched almost all the first few deals and gave extensions to players that really shouldn't have gotten extensions.

I wonder how different people would feel about Benning if he didn't extend Dorsett and Sbisa for a crazy amount (or didn't pay to get rid of Kassian or get rid of Garrison for cheap or... Oh forget it :/ )

How do you retool when your most important players are already 33 years old? (Sedins)

The second Benning took over, we needed a rebuild.

 

[Canucker]

He didn't inherit a mess.

He inherited a mess created by ownership in the form of John Tortorella....other than that, there were enough solid pieces here to work with to maintain a decent compete level...and several assets he could have used more effectively.

 

[ahmon]

Depends on how the teams got the Finals - eg., compare the 1982 Canucks to that of the 2011 Canucks (was it a fluke run...).

considering the canucks never made it past the 1st round in the next 3 years.. should be telling about the core....

 

[Hit the post]

The second Benning took over, we needed a rebuild.

heh, who was Benning's first major UFA signing.

considering the canucks never made it past the 1st round in the next 3 years.. should be telling about the core....

To be fair, the Kings rolled over *everyone* quite easily that one year.

 

[ahmon]

heh, who was Benning's first major UFA signing.

why would that matter about what I was talking about?

what is the weather like today?

 

[Hit the post]

why would that matter about what I was talking about?

what is the weather like today?

uhh...yeah you start a rebuild by signing a big money contract to a past his prime goalie leaving developing goalies in your system to rot. Only reason Lack or Markstrom got starts was Miller getting injured.

 

[VanJack]

You have to look at this mess positively....all season long the kool-aid drinkers have been claiming that things would be different once they got all their healthy players back....just ignore all of the ugly metrics about how bad this team really was...but now there's nowhere to hide...this is Benning's team and everybody is healthy...and the fact still remains they have 13 outright wins in 52 games...To quote Mulder and Scully...the truth is out there.

 

[ahmon]

To be fair, the Kings rolled over *everyone* quite easily that one year.

everyone if you mean the canucks, blues, coyotes and devils.

one of the weaker roads to the cup.

 

[Hit the post]

everyone if you mean the canucks, blues, coyotes and devils.

one of the weaker roads to the cup.

IMHO, I think that team would've dominated any team in the post-season that year.

 

[CanaFan]

You have to look at this mess positively....all season long the kool-aid drinkers have been claiming that things would be different once they got all their healthy players back....just ignore all of the ugly metrics about how bad this team really was...but now there's nowhere to hide...this is Benning's team and everybody is healthy...and the fact still remains they have 13 outright wins in 52 games...To quote Mulder and Scully...the truth is out there.

This. I think the road games and injuries created a convenient blanket excuse for some that this team wasn't bad, it was just the injuries and all the road games. Except they were ignoring that this team actually has a better road record than home record and that the players who were injured (except Henrik) weren't playing overly well when they were in the line up. And for whatever reason, this team has actually played quite well when Hank is out and much worse when he is in (excluding his own personal impact on games).

Anyway it's just good to see all these illusions finally being stripped away and the bare truth laid out there. This isn't a playoff team and never has been. Trade, draft, and rebuild should have been the sole focus of this season, not this impossible dichotomy of "rebuilding while competing" narrative.

 

[RandV]

Bad team is bad. It looked bad coming out of camp and it is. What a terrible effort from a team clearly going through the motions. And hey can you blame them? You have a GM that gives big raises to bad players and a coach that it really doesn't matter what you do. Play well as a line and it's still 1-2-3-4 all night. Play poorly and its 1-2-3-4. Well unless you are vey or Dorsett then you might some extra shifts for no reason. I mean if the coach isn't willing to try to win can you blame the players for just looking forward to the off season?

Should also mention how hilarious and scary it is that the Flames got into Willies and Jimbos heads last year. Tonight it manifests in Bartkowski getting the nod over a better player because he's bigger and has playoff experience. Willie was scared of a 27th place team.

Yes bad team is bad. We're looking particularly bad at the moment with a 3(?) game losing streak with the last two being to bottom feeders, but technically we're on the same pace we've been all season: roughly even win loss totals and lots of OT points on pace for an 82 point season.

The only reason playoffs had seemed like a possibility even up to a few weeks ago was because of the temporary anomaly of our division where only the Kings were playing well and everyone else was equally mediocre. Now that the Sharks and Ducks have picked it up, things are normalizing and we're on pace for where 82 points usually gets you: 5th-10th last in the league. Same as 2007-08 and 2013-14.

I mean has there even been a point this year where our W column exceed the L column by more than 2-3 games, or vice versa?

 

[ahmon]

IMHO, I think that team would've dominated any team in the post-season that year.

maybe, maybe not.

The next year the Kings with a similar team/core lost to the hawks in 5, so I believe the weak matchups in 2012 helped a lot.

The key point is the canucks core really only went deep in the playoffs once.

 

[arttk]

heh, who was Benning's first major UFA signing.


To be fair, the Kings rolled over *everyone* quite easily that one year.

That year was ruined by Keith's elbow. Hell Daniel has only recently fully recovered from that.

 

[Hit the post]

maybe, maybe not.

The next year the Kings with a similar team/core lost to the hawks in 5, so I believe the weak matchups in 2012 helped a lot.

The key point is the canucks core really only went deep in the playoffs once.

I think we lost a golden opportunity losing the Hawks that one post-season - just when Sundin looked like he was really getting it into gear. Sometimes you need luck - we had it but often it was bad luck (eg., Hamhuis taking *himself* out of the playoff throwing a hipcheck)

 

[Tiranis]

Please give me a hypothetical example of how you retool with the pieces that were available after 2014. I'd love to hear all of the great young players that teams were lining up to give us for NTC Kesler, old man Bieksa, and waiver wire Chris Higgins. It should be very interesting.

Seriously?

- targeted Sbisa in the Kesler trade
- gave up Garrison for a 2nd that they used on Vey
- out of the 4 candidates for the 6th overall pick they chose the worst one
- just straight up dumped a useful player in Santorelli
- wasted cap space on Miller
- almost lost Markstrom for nothing
- dumped Lack for a 3rd
- straight-up paid Montreal money AND assets to take Kassian

The notion that this team was poorly setup to retool is a complete myth. They were in an excellent position and Benning bungled every single transaction along the way.

And the way Benning managed to bungle things is somehow worse than what Gillis did with the ****ing goalie situation. At least we ended up with Horvat and Markstrom out of that, the two brightest looking young players on this team alongside Hutton.

 

[geebaan]

Seriously?

- targeted Sbisa in the Kesler trade
- gave up Garrison for a 2nd that they used on Vey
- out of the 4 candidates for the 6th overall pick they chose the worst one
- just straight up dumped a useful player in Santorelli
- wasted cap space on Miller
- almost lost Markstrom for nothing
- dumped Lack for a 3rd
- straight-up paid Montreal money AND assets to take Kassian

The notion that this team was poorly setup to retool is a complete myth. They were in an excellent position and Benning bungled every single transaction along the way.

Forsling for Clendening...

 

[racerjoe]

I disagree with two points here.

1. The canucks didn't really go that hard to win it all. Gillis actually explicitly stated he wanted to follow the Detroit model.

Previous management actually kept most of the 1st round picks. So whether or not we were contending, we certainly had picks to draft more impact players than we did.

Most teams go through cycles of contending and rebuild because it is "hard" to "consistently' draft well.

The canucks under the later years of Nonis and Gillis simply didn't draft well enough for our team to escape the downturn. It is a key -not only- reason our current team is in a rebuild.

2. Bleeding picks doesn't mean you can't draft well.

Chicago which you used in your example actually drafted Saad, Teravainen, Schmaltz in the last 5 years.




The current management has certainly made IMO many poor decisions. But it is absolutely not the "only reason".

When you say retool, are you implying that when Benning took over the job, he should have continue to believe we should build the team around the Sedins? They were like 33 at the time?

You acknowledge we need better drafting, but don't acknowledge that drafting was a weakness from the past?

You are normally a very good poster and one I really like reading, but this statement is wrong, The Canucks have had one of the least amount of draft picks, so I don't know what you mean when you say they didn't go for it.

Chicago got a lot of those players because they had so many picks. They dump a lot of parts after each cup run, and load up on young talent and draft picks for the next run.

I won't defend the first few years of the Gillis drafting, however there was only one draft I can remember where coming out of it people thought we did poorly. Yeah I can say in hindsight it was bad, but unlike this administration I have to use hindsight.

Sure you can say this admin is not the only reason this team is where it is. However the vast majority of it is. Not only that this team could easily be better and a playoff team, which is what this Admin is aiming for.

everyone if you mean the canucks, blues, coyotes and devils.

one of the weaker roads to the cup.

Weren't the Canucks and Blues were the top two teams in the NHL... So it wasn't and easy road. Sure the yotes and Devils may not have been the best, but still top two teams in the league that year.