vanuck
Now with 100% less Benning!
- Dec 28, 2009
- 16,810
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Gillis left us with a roster filled with third liners and not enough depth at too many positions.
I like what Benning is doing to stack up the prospects at every position. In the future, it is highly unlikely any player will be gifted a position on the Canucks. They will have battle it out with other prospects for a shot.
The big question I have is whether we have a top five in the making. Do we have three forwards who will be a top scoring first line? Do we have that defensive pairing that pushes play forward and locks down the defensive zone?
Right behind the big question is another one about Benning, and Linden, having patience. I don't think Gillis did. Burke and Nonis certainly didn't. Does Benning have the patience to stick with a plan? If the plan is to draft players and develop them, then he has to stop firing draft picks out the door to shore up the current roster.
I understand the need to fill the gap in twenty-somethings that Gillis left. But, the constant movement of second and third round picks has hurt the club over the long haul and has to stop. Does Benning have the patience to keep his mitts off the trade gun trigger?
Disagree with the bolded. Outside of the Sedins + Kesler, Burrows, Santorelli, Higgins, Hansen and Kassian are all top 6 forwards. There was lots of depth on D too - we had Bieksa playing on the 3rd pair with Stanton last season. Weber and Corrado as spares.
Also disagree about there being a real need to fill gaps with 22-24 year old projects. It's nice to have a continuity in terms of age for players but it seems a little arbitrary if those gap-fillers are, well, just gap-fillers. You could get actual NHL-calibre players in UFA for cheap or an equivalent cost to the picks we gave up too.
His worst move wasn't trading for Ballard, it was keeping Ballard over Ehrhoff a year later when it was obvious Ballard wasn't working out, but probably still had a bit of trade value.
The goalie situation ended up being a disaster, but it was a result of a change in the CBA pushed for by another GM with a vendetta against our organization. Very odd circumstance. If the CBA stays constant, Luongo is traded fairly easily and Schneider is still the starter here.
Outside of strictly player moves, Gillis' biggest failure was not restructuring our amateur scouting staff quickly enough and gutting dogs like Delorme, believing that simply giving them better direction could solve our scouting problems. Sadly, based on reports, it seems Benning is drinking that same Kool-Aid from the same scouts.
This pretty much sums up how I see it as well. 2012/2013 seemed to mark a change in direction but now the fear is that we're back to where we started in 2008 and that the dunderheads in our scouting problem are getting the same old 5-year leash they get every time a new GM comes in.