Post-Game Talk: Knights def. Canucks - 7-4 - Where do we go from here?

[tantalum]

I agree Green is not a good coach, but Gretzky sucked as a coach too.
And Scotty Bowman didn't even make it to the NHL.

I mean thinking a guy had to have played in the NHL to do a NHL job is sort of the reason they have Benning and Green…

Being a NHL player is in no way a prerequisite for such jobs. Or shouldn’t be.

While I agree with what you’re saying, I can’t help but think Drance is giving Travis Green a pass here…this isn’t JUST roster construction, this roster has some serious issues, but they have too much talent to be as terrible as they are…even when motivated to play a “statement game” they don’t seem as into it as their opponent. There is something rotten in that dressing room and to me it’s their coaching staff.

I still think people overestimate the talent on the roster overall. There is good offensive talent. Some of it very good. The only great is Hughes IMO but let’s say they have more. And overall the offnesive numbers for the better players are good. Some are career year good right now. The problem has long been they have almost non-existent talent on the other side of the puck across the roster and don’t have consistent thinking and effort. And when I say those last two things I’m not talking issues with the coach or system but things that are common to any system that all the players know yet have simply never been able to perform consistently over the long haul.

Miller for example is not all of a sudden going to fix his flaws of effort, poor pass selection etc under a new coach. The only way those get minimized is by minimizing his ice. That’s the choice his previous teams were making when they moved him. Horvat at nearly 27 years of age is not likely to all of a sudden figure out the defensive side of center to be consistent at this level. Boeser isn’t going to all of a sudden become a better skater (his effort has generally been fine and he seems to want to be where he needs to be but struggles to get there). Pearson, Dickinson and anyone on the 4th line isn’t suddenly going to be something other than an offensive black hole. Myers isn’t going to suddenly be good. OEL isn’t going to be able to move back the hands of time. Etc.

A better coach gets more out of them I agree with. I don’t agree with it actually mattering in the end until a good chunk of the other stuff is changed. To me Green is the perfect coach for this team right now because it allows for the crap roster build to actually be highlighted. Lol.


It is a bad roster. It is a good to excellent top 6 of players, an underwhelming (at best) bottom 6, deplorable blueline and horrendous depth. That flaws are covered by goaltending more often than not.

That isn’t to say Green doesn’t share blame. He’s a horrible coach and you might be right with Drance but the problems go well above Green and that needs to dealt with. I also think Drance plays that game…he knows the best thing to happen is for Benning to be canned first or at the same time so would rather put the spot light on that portion rather than green. But I also agree with Drance that Green has consistently been handled a fatally flawed roster. The difference is Green is often to blame for that (Beagle, Roussel etc) and Green does himself no favors.

 

[iceburg]

I'm sure it's been discussed in previous pages but how does Hoglander get the 2nd fewest minutes played last night? He was probably their best player.

 

[iceburg]

5'8 on skates

I legit had a dream I was watching a Canucks game and Garland was inside the net, standing, on skates.

 

[Wildcarder]

I don't understand how we can replace Virtanen and Roussel with Garland and Podkolzkin (massive improvement) and an aging Edler with a better looking OEL, and we look almost worse than last year.

 

[Diversification]

I'm sure it's been discussed in previous pages but how does Hoglander get the 2nd fewest minutes played last night? He was probably their best player.

Green says he’s a young and improving player. Says he’s really effective from the face off dots on meaning he doesn’t trust Hog defensively.

 

[iceburg]

Green says he’s a young and improving player. Says he’s really effective from the face off dots on meaning he doesn’t trust Hog defensively.

Yeah. I heard him say that and that was my take away. As I recall it was the veterans he trusts that made serious gaffs to lose the game. Just sayin'

 

[likash]

I don't understand how we can replace Virtanen and Roussel with Garland and Podkolzkin (massive improvement) and an aging Edler with a better looking OEL, and we look almost worse than last year.

OEL is not better defender than Edler when it comes to defending. Elder plays the heavy minutes in LA and Doughty is out injured. How the hell is the defence better when we've lost Schmidt and Edler? They were both key on PK and they took the hard matchups. Schmidt sucked on offence but he was solid on defence. Same with the Eagle who kills forwards along the boards and wins most battles for the puck. He is slow and not what he used to be but he is solid. He also makes 3m while OEL makes 7. We are getting murdered along the boards on defence this year. Demko's game in the first month covered a lot of mistakes. When he is human, we get murdered. You guys need to stop beliving the propaganda. After 8 years you should know it;s all bulljive.

 

[Diversification]

Yeah. I heard him say that and that was my take away. As I recall it was the veterans he trusts that made serious gaffs to lose the game. Just sayin'

I know you’d prefer not to be so definitive, but in the results-based criteria of professional sports, it’s best if he and the team part ways.

 

[tantalum]

I don't understand how we can replace Virtanen and Roussel with Garland and Podkolzkin (massive improvement) and an aging Edler with a better looking OEL, and we look almost worse than last year.

Well because Podz is a rookie. Garland while certainly a better player the additive difference in one player just isn’t enough to make a true overall difference.

Edler while nowhere near a top pairing guy performed pretty good the last few seasons (really since Torts was fired). OEL isn’t a huge upgrade at all.

Then you have the flip side….Pearson’s game contunues to decline (brutal extension) which helps negate the Garland addition, Dickinson does nothing to improve the offensive capability of the bottom (the biggest flaw up front the last few years), the 4th line is cheaper but just as ineffective…perhaps more so. On the blueline you have a declining Myers and like 5 or 6 guys in the top 8 being asked to punch way above their weight class. In my view, they aren’t better because the prominent issues were not addressed, you have player decline starting to happen and the roster has relied on Vezina quality goaltending for years (and we know that can be unpredictable).

if they made three moves I think they could be a reasonable team but it would again require most things going right.

1) a proper top 9 two-way center. Create a line that can take some tough matchups AND put the puck in the net. I think they still need some change of identity on the wings but this goes a long way. In fairness they identified this issue but like many issues they addressed it incorrectly with Dickinson.

2) they need to get rid of Myers

3) they need an actual solid too 4 d-man. Really a #2 or #3.

Those aren’t, however, easy moves to make. Nor does it get the team beyond playoff contention. They aren’t moves you can trust this management to make.

 

[iceburg]

I know you’d prefer not to be so definitive, but in the results-based criteria of professional sports, it’s best if he and the team part ways.

From my perspective the results are in. It's just not my call to make, so I won't. I think last night was the first time I thought that Green sounded defeated. It's always tempting to blame the refs and injuries but coaches typically, and rightly, resist because it makes excuses for the team when they should be focusing on the things they can control. Last night Green blamed both the refs and injuries.

 

[Canucker]

I mean thinking a guy had to have played in the NHL to do a NHL job is sort of the reason they have Benning and Green…

Being a NHL player is in no way a prerequisite for such jobs. Or shouldn’t be.



I still think people overestimate the talent on the roster overall. There is good offensive talent. Some of it very good. The only great is Hughes IMO but let’s say they have more. And overall the offnesive numbers for the better players are good. Some are career year good right now. The problem has long been they have almost non-existent talent on the other side of the puck across the roster and don’t have consistent thinking and effort. And when I say those last two things I’m not talking issues with the coach or system but things that are common to any system that all the players know yet have simply never been able to perform consistently over the long haul.

Miller for example is not all of a sudden going to fix his flaws of effort, poor pass selection etc under a new coach. The only way those get minimized is by minimizing his ice. That’s the choice his previous teams were making when they moved him. Horvat at nearly 27 years of age is not likely to all of a sudden figure out the defensive side of center to be consistent at this level. Boeser isn’t going to all of a sudden become a better skater (his effort has generally been fine and he seems to want to be where he needs to be but struggles to get there). Pearson, Dickinson and anyone on the 4th line isn’t suddenly going to be something other than an offensive black hole. Myers isn’t going to suddenly be good. OEL isn’t going to be able to move back the hands of time. Etc.

A better coach gets more out of them I agree with. I don’t agree with it actually mattering in the end until a good chunk of the other stuff is changed. To me Green is the perfect coach for this team right now because it allows for the crap roster build to actually be highlighted. Lol.


It is a bad roster. It is a good to excellent top 6 of players, an underwhelming (at best) bottom 6, deplorable blueline and horrendous depth. That flaws are covered by goaltending more often than not.

That isn’t to say Green doesn’t share blame. He’s a horrible coach and you might be right with Drance but the problems go well above Green and that needs to dealt with. I also think Drance plays that game…he knows the best thing to happen is for Benning to be canned first or at the same time so would rather put the spot light on that portion rather than green. But I also agree with Drance that Green has consistently been handled a fatally flawed roster. The difference is Green is often to blame for that (Beagle, Roussel etc) and Green does himself no favors.

Maybe I am overestimating the talent, I don't know...I just look at our top 6 players and Hughes and can't understand why we have a PP working at a 15% clip? I don't understand the deployment, I don't understand the setup. When things go off the rails, as they consistently have under Green, I don't understand his rationale of giving extra minutes to clearly inferior players, I don't understand the trust he gives some veteran players who really don't deserve the trust, over younger players who haven't given him a reason not to trust them. I really think this is a better team (don't get me wrong, I think its a team that will, at best, struggle to make the playoffs) than they have shown and I think it's because the team is not led well by the coaching staff.

I agree that Green is, with all his flaws, suited to coach a team managed by Benning...a guy like AV or Trotz can "dumb down" a team and eke out wins with gutty defense and meagre, opportunistic scoring...things that Green seems completely incapable of doing. The flaws of Benning's roster construction are very apparent...but so is the construction of his coaching staff.

Bottom line for me, they all gotta go...Benning, Weisbrod, Green and his staff (except Shaw and Clark)...none of them should have been hired in the first place.

 

[Fatass]

We are a soft team, that other clubs enjoy playing against. It shows up every game. Other teams must be game planning to run us out of the rink. It’s very hard to to watch us get beat up so bad.

 

[Dr Black]

I don't understand how we can replace Virtanen and Roussel with Garland and Podkolzkin (massive improvement) and an aging Edler with a better looking OEL, and we look almost worse than last year.

They miss Motte and Sutter on the Penalty kill. You would never imagine that 2 seemingly mediocre players would make that big a difference. But the Canucks penalty kill has single-handedly lost them how many games now?

 

[Canucker]

They miss Motte and Sutter on the Penalty kill. You would never imagine that 2 seemingly mediocre players would make that big a difference. But the Canucks penalty kill has single-handedly lost them how many games now?

Sure, they miss them....but to be as bad as they are on the PK takes a special kind of horrible. Penalty killing really isn't that difficult of a concept, box out, take away passing lanes, get in front of shots, have a quick stick, pressure when appropriate...it just takes a willingness to put yourself in the mindset of discipline and positioning, don't get drawn out of position...the units they put out there have no discipline whatsoever, they chase, they lose their checks, they don't battle and then they are sent out to kill the next penalty over and over again with the coaches expecting a better result. You could bring back Sutter and Motte and it may not have a lick of a difference because you still have 1-2 other players on the ice who aren't good at penalty killing, now you have Sutter and Motte trying to compensate for their shortcomings. It's a mess and it starts at the top.

 

[vanarchy]

Drance getting awfully close here.

I like it because he's directing the heat not just to coaching but where the real rot is.

 

[sting101]

We are a soft team, that other clubs enjoy playing against. It shows up every game. Other teams must be game planning to run us out of the rink. It’s very hard to to watch us get beat up so bad.

Bieksa calls out Canucks for ‘gracious loser’ attitude after loss - Sportsnet.ca

Nothing has changed

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

The game went sideways at the end..That call on Demko was BS imo (although I;'m not blaming the loss on the refs)..

Vegas don't look like world beaters to me at all..Better than than Canucks, but not by much,,I believe Vegas was a better team 2 years ago.

 

[Bojack Horvatman]

Listen to the postgame presser. Green does not trust Hog defensively.

Now how he arrives at that conclusion on a relative scale with other players on the team, that’s another matter altogether. But that how Green feels.

It's not like Hoglander has been one of our best ES players since he entered the league, and the numbers support it. Wait... he has. Oh well then he must be getting lit up this year as we are a bad team. Oh he has only been a minus one game.

I swear "bad defensively" to Green just means younger than 22.

 

[M2Beezy]

Despite the points, energy and defensive responsibility I thought Hoglander had a poor game and the minutes REFLECTED that. Id even consider scratching him for next game

 

[arttk]

The game went sideways at the end..That call on Demko was BS imo (although I;'m not blaming the loss on the refs)..

Vegas don't look like world beaters to me at all..Better than than Canucks, but not by much,,I believe Vegas was a better team 2 years ago.

Vegas is missing like 100+ goals with 3 key players injured. They still popped in 7 without them.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

Vegas is missing like 100+ goals with 3 key players injured. They still popped in 7 without them.

It was anybodys game until the middle of the 3rd..It went sideways at the end..The score isn't indicative of the actual game.

 

[Bojack Horvatman]

The game went sideways at the end..That call on Demko was BS imo (although I;'m not blaming the loss on the refs)..

Vegas don't look like world beaters to me at all..Better than than Canucks, but not by much,,I believe Vegas was a better team 2 years ago.

They have been missing a large chunk of their top 6. I actually think they have done a pretty good job of weathering the storm.

 

[arttk]

It was anybodys game until the middle of the 3rd..It went sideways at the end..The score isn't indicative of the actual game.

It’s not like this is the only game we gave up 7 goals. Yeah Vegas is not at the top form because their key guys are out, even with almost all their top guys out, they still managed to torch us.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

They have been missing a large chunk of their top 6. I actually think they have done a pretty good job of weathering the storm.

we've been missing a large chunk of our top 6 as well..If you know what I mean..?

 

[Jyrki]

It was anybodys game until the middle of the 3rd..It went sideways at the end..The score isn't indicative of the actual game.

So... until the Canucks started playing even worse, it was a 50/50? That still means the Knights were substantially better on average, which the score is perfectly indicative of.