Management Thread - Read OP

[arttk]

So there had been a lower scoring team in Canuck history at the time of Benning's hiring? Which team?

And we won't even get into the futility of this franchises history.

The 2016-17 set a franchise low in goals scored. Who was in charge? Benning and oh we were close to spending to the cap as well that season.

 

[Pastor Of Muppetz]

The 2016-17 set a franchise low in goals scored. Who was in charge? Benning and oh we were close to spending to the cap as well that season.

in 2013-14..we scored 14 more goals than 2016-17..Hardly a substantial difference.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

Interesting (in perhaps a symptomatic way) how all of you avoided my question, except Melvin to some degree, though he altered the question somewhat in his answer. Perhaps you simply misunderstood it. So here it is again:



I don't want more rhetoric and rehashing. I just want a clear statement of what objective results would force you to reconsider your opinion. I mean if the Canucks somehow won a Stanley Cup, you would be forced to reconsider your opinion, wouldn't you? How about if they advanced to the second round in year 1 or 2? Or are there no actual results that would make you reconfigure your opinion?

I think the answer from the other side is pretty easy. If the Canucks miss the playoffs in both of the next two seasons, the Benning regime is clearly an objective disaster of epic proportions and indefensible in sum.

Ok. I'll bite. If the team makes a legitimate run at the Stanley Cup these next two years, lets say WCF. I'll admit I was completely off on where this team was at this summet and Jim eas right.

 

[arttk]

in 2013-14..we scored 14 more goals than 2016-17..Hardly a substantial difference.

Well the 2013 team sucked because Torts lost the room and the team bounced back the following year
The 2016 team was bad because the roster was mostly constructed by Benning and continued to be bad despite Benning’s fixes.

 

[Melvin]

Well the 2013 team sucked because Torts lost the room and the team bounced back the following year
The 2016 team was bad because the roster was mostly constructed by Benning and continued to be bad despite Benning’s fixes.

Why are we talking about the 2013 team? Yikes!

 

[arttk]

Why are we talking about the 2013 team? Yikes!

Falling into the but Gillis trap

 

[I in the Eye]

Ok. I'll bite. If the team makes a legitimate run at the Stanley Cup these next two years, lets say WCF. I'll admit I was completely off on where this team was at this summet and Jim eas right.

If Jesus Christ, himself, came down from the clouds in a chariot of fire to the middle of downtown Vancouver... Looks just like the Jesus Christ in the paintings, can turn water into wine, can split the Pacific Ocean with his little finger... I'd be willing to say it might be Jesus Christ... The Catholics may have been right, and me, a nonbeliever, may have been wrong... but how can we know it's not just an alien with a sense of humour?

 

[clunk]

Hahahaha. This kid just can't stop making accounts. Wonder what the next one will be...

"Micheal Ferland" probably.

 

[Melvin]

Jesus Christ he didn't even make it through one day.

I am actually annoyed with myself for giving the benefit of the doubt and responding in earnest with a few thoughtful posts that I put time and effort into. Deep down I knew who it was.

Time to just not respond to anyone who has registered the same week they are posting in this thread. It tuens out to be him like 95% of the time.

So frustrating

 

[clunk]

Jesus Christ he didn't even make it through one day.

I am actually annoyed with myself for giving the benefit of the doubt and responding in earnest with a few thoughtful posts that I put time and effort into. Deep down I knew who it was.

Time to just not respond to anyone who has registered the same week they are posting in this thread. It tuens out to be him like 95% of the time.

So frustrating

Yeah, honestly there are only a select few pro-Benning posters on here who are even worth putting effort into responses for. Just a massive waste of time.

 

[I in the Eye]

I don't get it. There was ample opportunity for Benning to prove the naysayers wrong... Years and years worth of time. And, yet, the best that can be mustered is wait this year or next... and the only reason a time limit is now placed on it is because Benning has announced it, through his first round conditional trade. It's the equivalent of Lowe saying "this year, the rebuild is over". Benning is going to keep pushing the time father and father away for however long he is allowed to continue to do so. He's probably already squeezed another year of goodwill past his current contract. He said 4 or 5 years was reasonable to judge him by. The supporters are now past reasonable and into unreasonable, by Benning's own standards.

 

[F A N]

@Pastor Of Muppetz , @F A N do you agree with this position.

I do agree with this position. If the Canucks miss the playoffs the next two seasons then that would be 6 seasons without playoffs and not having a 1st round pick in 2021.

For me, results matter and recent results should matter more. When Benning got his last extension I was of the position that he deserved to be fired. But I supported the decision to bring him back as I felt that despite not having stockpiled draft picks and trying for a retool on the fly, we were getting solid results at the draft table. Given the Canucks' history, this was not a given. Past GMs would typically have one outstanding draft and than some clunkers that produced 0 (although 2016 still has the potential to be one). To his credit, the Canucks have had two straight Calder trophy finalists (with Pettersson winning). Hughes may make it 3.

Anyhow, I think it takes time for a GM's vision to be fleshed out. Ron Francis is getting a lot of credit now but there weren't too many Canes fans saying he didn't deserve it when he was let go. Similarly, Benning has had time to carry out his vision.

 

[Hoghandler]

The 2016-17 set a franchise low in goals scored. Who was in charge? Benning and oh we were close to spending to the cap as well that season.

I said Benning inherited the lowest scoring team in franchise history. What happens after the 2013-2014 season is obviously not relevant to what I said. So was I wrong? Did he inherit the lowest scoring team in franchise history?

And yeah, that team was close to the cap as well.

 

[4Twenty]

I think you're starting with a faulty premise here. Hard to say how many people were expecting/hoping for what, rather the people wanting to tank/rebuild tended to be the loudest. But more to the point, those people usually wanted an aggressive rebuild. Yes they got the desired standings results they wanted but you're supposed to pair that with selling assets stockpiling draft picks and future assets. Benning did the exact opposite of this, trading futures assets in ill advised trades for players who were supposed to make the team better but had the exact opposite effect. And for the other side of the crowd let's not even get started on his attempt to be 'competitive' the last 5 years.

The more appropriate question is after 6 seasons of making mistakes and running a losing hockey team why should he be given more opportunities? Fan loyalty goes to the Vancouver Canucks, while GM's/coaches/players come and go. There's no reason to give extended loyalty to Jim Benning.

It's a major false premise.

Go back the threads when he was hired. People were fearful the re-tool on the fly strategy would have us in years of purgatory, where you finish outside the playoffs but not bad enough for top 5 picks.

The team only sank badly after the moves Benning actually made.

And if we're just talking results....the last 4 seasons are all worse than the 83 points that got the last crew fired, so he Benning's work has sunk the team further than I thought they'd go.

Thankfully they were bad and lucky enough to get players like Pettersson and Hughes.

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

Jesus Christ he didn't even make it through one day.

I am actually annoyed with myself for giving the benefit of the doubt and responding in earnest with a few thoughtful posts that I put time and effort into. Deep down I knew who it was.

Time to just not respond to anyone who has registered the same week they are posting in this thread. It tuens out to be him like 95% of the time.

So frustrating

I, for one, appreciated him making it so easy this time. But the rest of your complaint isn’t without merit. Hopefully new additions arrive who are authentic and not just regurgitations of the same.

 

[arttk]

I said Benning inherited the lowest scoring team in franchise history. What happens after the 2013-2014 season is obviously not relevant to what I said. So was I wrong? Did he inherit the lowest scoring team in franchise history?

And yeah, that team was close to the cap as well.

98-99 team scored less so you are wrong.

 

[MS]

The ultimate standard by which Benning is judged around here tends to revert to results. Benning's teams have been very bad for 4 seasons, even though when he was hired, most were expecting/even hoping for these kinds of results.

When it comes to formulating a group evaluation, end results are probably the best measure, because they are objective. Discussions about managerial process and methodology ultimately descend into semantics and bickering.

So I'm wondering, are there any kind of results in the next two seasons that would prompt any of you to reconsider your evaluation of Benning? This is a discussion of hypotheticals that I find interesting. What standard of performance would the Canucks have to reach in the next 2 seasons to make you adjust your opinion of Benning?

This post from our special friend appears to have been deleted but I thought I'd add a response because it encapsulates a lot of the rhetoric we'll hear if the team gets off to a decent start and the message being put out there by the team. Hopefully the moderators don't mind.

1) Virtually nobody here is criticizing Benning because of the results. I hated Benning just as much during a 101-point season as I do when the team is at the bottom of the standings. And there would be no criticism at all (outside of some casuals) if being poor had been laid out as part of a rebuilding plan, as in NYR or Toronto. People criticize Benning because of his complete lack of a coherent plan in line with where the team is at and complete lack of ability to execute positive-value moves to forward that plan.

The reason the results come up is because, comically, Jim Benning is so breathtakingly bad at his job that the '100-point competing playoff team' that he thought he built was actually worse than teams that were actually trying to lose! And the criticism of the results isn't 'you're a bad GM because your team is bad', it's 'you're a bad GM because your plan was horrible and the moves you made to execute that plan were horrible and here's the proof in the pudding'.

2) This post operates from the notion that making the playoffs once as a GM is some sort of evidence of success. But, as we know, Mike Milbury made the playoffs multiple times during his tenure and Chiarelli made the playoffs during his Reign of Error and there are countless other examples of this. When 16 teams make the playoffs and playoff participation is determined so much by luck, health, and hot goaltending, and when all teams - well-run or not - have ebbs and flows based on their young talent, sneaking into the playoffs once after years of mis-management is not some sort of a feat.

So no, there are no results in the next season or two that would make me change my mind on Benning, because I wasn't using results to judge him and a playoff position doesn't mean competence. I guess if we somehow won the Cup, I would consider Benning a cosmic accident that ended up being worthwhile in the end, but I'd think of it sort of in the way that that Australian speedskater won a gold medal through sheer dumb luck when everyone else fell down.

The only thing that would actually turn my mind on Benning is if he somehow was here another 5 years (god forbid) and managed to surround himself with good enough people that the team made positive-value moves to fit a sensible plan for an equal length of time to what we've seen the reverse happen. I consider the odds of this happening to be incredibly unlikely.

 

[Hit the post]

I think people mention playoffs because it’s a ridiculously low bar and Benning can’t even do that more than once in a blue moon while not being restrained money wise like the Yotes GM.

 

[Melvin]

I think people mention playoffs because it’s a ridiculously low bar and Benning can’t even do that more than once in a blue moon while not being restrained money wise like the Yotes GM.

It was a very weak trap he was setting to try to bait people into one of two alternatives

1) either saying that making the playoffs is enough to change their minds.

Or

2) allowing him to conclude that "nothing would change our minds" because we refused to answer the question within his constraints.

It is essentially like the "when did you stop beating your wife" question where you cannot give an answer and any sidestep leads to an accusation of nonresponsiveness.

It's clever. He's not a stupid man. He is a precise and skilled troll. But it was a trap, not an attempt at earnest discussion.

The good news is that he is now on record saying that the regime is an obvious and colossal failure in the likely event that the team misses for the next two years. I hope someone saved that post.

 

[MS]

The Canucks needed elite pieces to build there next core. None of those guys you listed, Kesler included were going to give you the currency to make that happen. Horvat is the one long term building block left in place. It's next to impossible to cobble together lesser assets and end up with franchise cornerstones.

You're also operating under the assumption that 4 down years is a long time to get a new core. 4 years is not a long time to bottom out in a re-build.

IMO you're underestimating just how much heavy lifting needs to be done to build an organisation from the ground up. It can take 10-15 years to find a franchise, 1st line centre for example. We just don't see eye to eye on how difficult it is to find elite pieces. And IMO you aren't winning anything without them.

This series of posts is utterly fascinating. Like, I don't really disagree with what you're saying about the state of the team ... but Jim Benning sure as hell did.

1) Jim Benning sold Aquilini on a quick turnaround and spent his first 3 offseasons here trying to build a competing playoff team (and was convinced he had) before finally coming to the realization at the 2017 trade deadline this wasn't happening.

2) Jim Benning obviously didn't think he needed those elite pieces from the draft as he tried to trade both our 2015 and 2016 #1 picks for old players. And there were reports Horvat was included in that Subban deal as well.

3) Jim Benning prioritized 'win now' in the Kesler deal when he had an opportunity to obtain elite young pieces.

4) Elias Pettersson is the best elite young piece we have. Jim Benning never intended on being in a position to draft him. He was loading up on win-now Eriksson and Gudbranson moves in the summer of 2016 and crowing about the playoff team he thought he'd built. We were only in a position to draft this player because he mis-judged his roster so badly and his 'playoff team' was accidentally worse than the teams tanking and trying to lose and finished in 29th place.

Like, if you actually believe what you're writing, you should want Jim Benning fired from a cannon for gross incompetence and mismanagement. There is absolutely no reconciling the views you're espousing with what Jim Benning actually did. But you seem to be living in some sort of fantasy land where Benning was nobly rebuilding from 2014 when there is a mountain of evidence that that was exponentially not the case.

 

[MS]

It was a very weak trap he was setting to try to bait people into one of two alternatives

1) either saying that making the playoffs is enough to change their minds.

Or

2) allowing him to conclude that "nothing would change our minds" because we refused to answer the question within his constraints.

It is essentially like the "when did you stop beating your wife" question where you cannot give an answer and any sidestep leads to an accusation of nonresponsiveness.

It's clever. He's not a stupid man. He is a precise and skilled troll. But it was a trap, not an attempt at earnest discussion.

The good news is that he is now on record saying that the regime is an obvious and colossal failure in the likely event that the team misses for the next two years. I hope someone saved that post.

The other thing he was trying to do was push a 'two-year' narrative for Jimbo getting fired as opposed to the obvious 'make them this year or he's done' narrative floating around fans and media and plant a seed for an extra year even if we miss the playoffs.

 

[Melvin]

The other thing he was trying to do was push a 'two-year' narrative for Jimbo getting fired as opposed to the obvious 'make them this year or he's done' narrative floating around fans and media and plant a seed for an extra year even if we miss the playoffs.

Ah, you're right. Good call.

Make the playoffs once in a six year period. What an amazing accomplishment.

 

[F A N]

Ah, you're right. Good call.

Make the playoffs once in a six year period. What an amazing accomplishment.

Wasn't that Cheveldayoff's accomplishment at one time as well?

 

[clunk]

Wasn't that Cheveldayoff's accomplishment at one time as well?

 

[YeahHeDid]

4) Elias Pettersson is the best elite young piece we have. Jim Benning never intended on being in a position to draft him

And let's not forget EP wasn't the player he wanted to draft anyway. He wanted Glass.