Bravo Benning. The D is pretty much rebuilt.

[No Face No Case]

I really like whats happening with this back end renovation.
Its not over but progressing well.

Jim has added much needed muscle and beef and now just grabbed the most coveted junior Defenceman on the planet in Juolevi (Bob McKenzie) and College NCAA All-Tournament Team Troy Stecher from North Dakota.

The same people that were screaming murder for signing Gudbranson a few weeks ago and not a puck moving D are the same people that are now screaming murder for signing the best young pmd on the planet arguably.
Anything Benning and Linden do they will hate.
Ignore them.



Juolevi-Tanev
Hutton-Gudbranson
Edler-Tryamkin
Pedan-Subban-Stecher-Brisebois etc...

Marky/Demko



Benning hasn't been perfect and i haven't cosigned all of his moves but he has done a stellar job at rebuilding this D in less than 2 years with limited assets.

Click to read more...

 

[Ainec]

Just by adding Juolevi we went from a 20-25 D core around the league to 18-25! Woohoo!

 

[Huggy]

edit if juolevi progresses like that the top 4 ismt terrible but i still want tkachuk

 

[Ainec]

Calgary
Anaheim
San Jose
Arizona
Los Angeles
Vancouver
Edmonton
Las Vegas

isn't it great that we have the 6th best D?! IN OUR DIVISION

feels fantastic!

 

[Canadian Canuck]

Don't have a bonafide #1 dman still. Signing Stamkos would make me forget about a dman rather quickly though...

 

[Carl Carlson]

We won't know what we truly have in Juolevi for a little while. Could be top pairing or maybe a 3-4 pairing. We are still missing a true #1 Dman. We have some decent players on the backend but still room to improve.

 

[No Face No Case]

go to sleep jim

edit if juolevi progresses like that the top 4 ismt terrible but i still want tkachuk

i wanted Dubois...Tkachuk and Boeser would have been nice but juolevi is a stud.

Bob McKenzie ranked him the top D on the planet this draft.

Maybe he's an idiot too and you're the expert.


http://www.tsn.ca/matthews-goes-wire-to-wire-as-tsn-s-top-prospect-1.511597

 

[No Face No Case]

Oh got it. That'd be true then. Good thread OP! I agree. Our D is still terrible.

our D last year was terrible , agreed, its not coming back next year.

 

[GreetingsFromCanada]

Remember that time Jim Benning inherited a decent D-core in 2014? Then he proceeded to trade Garrison for a 2nd=Vey=nothing. Then we to allow 220 goals in 2015, up from 216 in 2014 actually. Hamhuis gets old and being unable to trade him was fun too. So was signing Bartkowsi. Then we broke the bank for Gudbranson, who is inferior to Garrison in every way but we sold the farm for him. Then, cause we suck cause of Benning we land with the 5th overall pick. Even though logic dictates you should go for the BPA and forward need on your offensive record breakingly bad team you pick a Jouveli. Why? Cause you broke the defence in the first place.

 

[Ainec]

Since the lockout here are the top selected Ds. If a defenseman was taken first overall I will add the 2nd defenseman taken in the same draft.

2005 - Brian Lee 9th overall
2006 - Erik Johnson 1st overall, Ty Wishart 16th overall
2007 - Thomas Hickey 4th overall
2008 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2009 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2010 - Erik Gudbranson 3rd overall
2011 - Adam Larsson 4th overall
2012 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2013 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2014 - Aaron Ekblad 1st overall, Haydn Fleury 7th overall
2015 - Noah Hanifin 5th overall
2016 - Olli Juolevi 5th overall

So given the history of the last 11 years. Knowing this draft not hyped up as a dmen draft as it were in 2008 and 2012, nor was there a dmen contending for 1st overall at any point during the draft year as it were in 2006, 2009, 2013 we're looking at Juolevi being somewhere here:

Brian Lee
Ty Wishart
Thomas Hickey
Erik Gudbranson
Adam Larsson
Haydn Fleury
Noah Hanifin

 

[Pip]

Tryamkin, Gudbranson + Pedan will be laying beatdowns in front of our net this year to your star players.
take it to the bank goofy.

Pedan is trash

 

[Virtanen2Horvat]

We just need that elite no.1 now then our D is complete. We will see how the defense performs this year and when Juolevi sets in but I am pretty happy with the way its shaping. Forwards come later. Defense wins championships. Sucks we missed out on Tkachuk though.

 

[Nuckles]

lol. So Benning reached for a d-man with limited upside, overpaid for a #5 d-man, and drafted a big d-man who hasn't proven anything in the NHL and he rebuilt the back-end? Cool beans. It also looks like he'll let Hamhuis walk for nothing.

 

[Burke's Evil Spirit]

*every elite team rolls out at minimum 4 puck-moving D night after night*

"Jim has added much-needed muscle and beef"

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Yes! Juolevi will fit right in next year and be awesome! YEAH!

And we all believe that because we're morons.

 

[Olli Juolevi]

Tkachuk is a good player but a winger isn't what this team needs to build around. I'd much rather assemble a decent core of defensmen, draft a true #1C and from there draft good wingers to compliment the team. If you draft purely around wingers (virt...Brock...tkachuk) your team is going nowhere. You can sign capable wingers or promote wingers (burrows) to play first line minutes with a #1C but you have to draft good centers and lately we've done jack to do so.

Drafting Tkachuk was simply not going to help this team moving forward in the future. Who cares if he scores 30 goals if our defense is crap? I would have been happy with Keller but Juolevi is fine with me to build around.

People on HF are completely missing the big picture and are being overly short sighted about the future of this team.

 

[y2kcanucks]

Tkachuk is a good player but a winger isn't what this team needs to build around. I'd much rather assemble a decent core of defensmen, draft a true #1C and from there draft good wingers to compliment the team. If you draft purely around wingers (virt...Brock...tkachuk) your team is going nowhere. You can sign capable wingers or promote wingers (burrows) to play first line minutes with a #1C but you have to draft good centers and lately we've done jack to do so.

Drafting Tkachuk was simply not going to help this team moving forward in the future. Who cares if he scores 30 goals if our defense is crap? I would have been happy with Keller but Juolevi is fine with me to build around.

People on HF are completely missing the big picture and are being overly short sighted about the future of this team.

Not at all. You're wrong. Drafting Tkachuk would have given us that elite forward prospect and elite scorer that we desperately need. Instead we take a defenseman who's tools project as a Dan Hamhuis.

Glad you prefer building around second pairing defensemen rather than top line forwards though. Sure-fire way to keep the team in the basement.

 

[VanFan101]

Since the lockout here are the top selected Ds. If a defenseman was taken first overall I will add the 2nd defenseman taken in the same draft.

2005 - Brian Lee 9th overall
2006 - Erik Johnson 1st overall, Ty Wishart 16th overall
2007 - Thomas Hickey 4th overall
2008 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2009 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2010 - Erik Gudbranson 3rd overall
2011 - Adam Larsson 4th overall
2012 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2013 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2014 - Aaron Ekblad 1st overall, Haydn Fleury 7th overall
2015 - Noah Hanifin 5th overall
2016 - Olli Juolevi 5th overall

So given the history of the last 11 years. Knowing this draft not hyped up as a dmen draft as it were in 2008 and 2012, nor was there a dmen contending for 1st overall at any point during the draft year as it were in 2006, 2009, 2013 we're looking at Juolevi being somewhere here:

Brian Lee
Ty Wishart
Thomas Hickey
Erik Gudbranson
Adam Larsson
Haydn Fleury
Noah Hanifin

I don't think I've ever seen someone cherry pick info to try and force their point worse than this.

 

[alternate]

We were a pretty dominant team for a couple of years without a true #1 dman. The young group assembled/inherited by Benning can be as good as the 2011 team.

Tanev = Hamhuis
Oli = Edler
Guds = Bieksa
Hutton = Ehrhoff
Tryamkin = Rome (ok, pipe dream I know)

There's also a few recent draft picks / udfas that are coming off promising seasons. Get one unexpected break out and we are in great shape on the back end.

 

[Sempiternal]

Yes! Juolevi will fit right in next year and be awesome! YEAH!

And we all believe that because we're morons.

Hahahaha

A horrible pick @ #5 with Tkachuk on the board. Flames are going to be nasty to play against.

 

[opendoor]

We were a pretty dominant team for a couple of years without a true #1 dman. The young group assembled/inherited by Benning can be as good as the 2011 team.

Tanev = Hamhuis
Oli = Edler
Guds = Bieksa
Hutton = Ehrhoff
Tryamkin = Rome (ok, pipe dream I know)

There's also a few recent draft picks / udfas that are coming off promising seasons. Get one unexpected break out and we are in great shape on the back end.

Except the left side of that ledger is likely to be worse in every single instance. And there's no Salo there.

 

[Olli Juolevi]

Not at all. You're wrong. Drafting Tkachuk would have given us that elite forward prospect and elite scorer that we desperately need. Instead we take a defenseman who's tools project as a Dan Hamhuis.

Glad you prefer building around second pairing defensemen rather than top line forwards though. Sure-fire way to keep the team in the basement.

Tkchuk will probably be a good player but is a winger really what we needed?!?! Did we need to draft another scoring winger over the top rated defenseman of the draft? We have virts. We have bae. We have boesser. I guess overly negative people might think that they will turn out to do absolutely nothing for this team but honestly I think they are improving.

Juolevi will just have to prove you wrong. I was also upset that we passed on the #5 rated pick (Tkchuk) but in hindsight this is the pick we needed. Keller would have been great to build around as well but Juolevi will surprise a lot of people on these boards with his sound and intelligent play.

 

[sting101]

Since the lockout here are the top selected Ds. If a defenseman was taken first overall I will add the 2nd defenseman taken in the same draft.

2005 - Brian Lee 9th overall
2006 - Erik Johnson 1st overall, Ty Wishart 16th overall
2007 - Thomas Hickey 4th overall
2008 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2009 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2010 - Erik Gudbranson 3rd overall
2011 - Adam Larsson 4th overall
2012 - said to be the most stacked draft for D throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2013 - defenseman battling for 1st overall throughout the draft year (noone had this to say for 2016)
2014 - Aaron Ekblad 1st overall, Haydn Fleury 7th overall
2015 - Noah Hanifin 5th overall
2016 - Olli Juolevi 5th overall

So given the history of the last 11 years. Knowing this draft not hyped up as a dmen draft as it were in 2008 and 2012, nor was there a dmen contending for 1st overall at any point during the draft year as it were in 2006, 2009, 2013 we're looking at Juolevi being somewhere here:

Brian Lee
Ty Wishart
Thomas Hickey
Erik Gudbranson
Adam Larsson
Haydn Fleury
Noah Hanifin

What a convenient narrative.
Add Doughty Pietrangelo Ekman-Larsson Lindholm Reilly

Tkachuk could as easily be the next Dal Colle or Hodgson.

It was a solid pick......the more i watched of this kid the more impressed i was. Hes a much better prospect than Hamhuis. We just acquired a 15yr anchor and probably the best ever Canuck defenseman.

As mentioned its disapointing we didnt get a goal scorer but you build from the backline and we can now move Edler in a year or 2 for a forward.

 

[Ainec]

What a convenient narrative.
Add Doughty Pietrangelo Ekman-Larsson Lindholm Reilly

Tkachuk could as easily be the next Dal Colle or Hodgson.

It was a solid pick......the more i watched of this kid the more impressed i was. Hes a much better prospect than Hamhuis. We just acquired a 15yr anchor and probably the best ever Canuck defenseman.

As mentioned its disapointing we didnt get a goal scorer but you build from the backline and we can now move Edler in a year or 2 for a forward.

with the exception of OEL those guys were all in the most hyped dmen draft (08, 12).. ever.

2016 was never talked about for D

 

[GreetingsFromCanada]

Tkchuk will probably be a good player but is a winger really what we needed?!?! Did we need to draft another scoring winger over the top rated defenseman of the draft? We have virts. We have bae. We have boesser. I guess overly negative people might think that they will turn out to do absolutely nothing for this team but honestly I think they are improving.

Juolevi will just have to prove you wrong. I was also upset that we passed on the #5 rated pick (Tkchuk) but in hindsight this is the pick we needed. Keller would have been great to build around as well but Juolevi will surprise a lot of people on these boards with his sound and intelligent play.

Let me make this abundantly clear, unless we have Corey Perry this team has nothing comparable to Tkachuk. Juoveli isn't so far above and beyond Sergachev and co that he's worth taking over those guys.