Yeah, same.
If Hoglander turns out to be a stud, as with Hughes we can attribute this to Benning. Great! That's the guy leading the scouting department right now. I'm a Canucks fan who hopes he makes good picks!!
And that's pretty much most of the posters in the threads here. Mr. C. nailed it on why losing Brackett sucks - and it doesn't seem like too many people disagree. Anything else being discussed is a strawman.
It is still just so odd that the pro-Benning camp isn't trying to pull the "wait and see" card the one time it may actually apply. If you think Benning is a good scout, let's see how he does now that he has the reigns. Instead of arguing about the validity of JD Burke as a source or zooming in on Trevor Linden's draft table list to see if he scribbled "Ronnie and Jim's fave!!
" next to Pettersson - why not let Jim's future performance clear up any questions regarding his track record?
Any takers on "Jim Benning will outperform the Judd Brackett-era of drafting"?
I’m going to making more responses later on this evening, but I’ll quickly address your last statement:
I can’t speak for others, but the reason why I don’t care about if “Benning outperforms Brackett” or whoever, is because it’s a very childish and irrelevant game. Drafting is always a collaborative effort, and teams win together and lose together.
Here is what’s really happening:
1) Back in 2015 when Benning started making moves that were perceived to be questionable, many folks lost their minds and started crucifying this management group. They started saying stuff like, “we won’t make the playoffs for another 7-10 years.”
2) A lot of the Benning crew told folks to stay patient, and that a true rebuild often takes 5-7 years, and that despite what people were seeing in front of them (I.e Eriksson singing, Suter trade, etc.), this management group had a solid idea of where this team was at in 2014, and that the real rebuild had started in 2014 with the Luongo deal.
3) After a rough stretch from 2016-2019, the Canucks started to trend upwards and are now knocking on the doors of the playoffs. During this time, they have managed to draft and/or develop
-a franchise center
-a franchise defenseman
-a goalie with lots of promise into a superstar goalie
-a 1st line RW sniper
-an excellent leader and a 2nd line two way center
-other key prospects such as Gaudette, Virtanen (who was appearing to be a lost cause but was salavagd due to the leadership group that Benning created here), Demko, and Tryamkin.
-We also have guys like MacEwen and Rafferty in our system that are on the cusp of being NHL regulars.
All in all, we have a very solid collection of vets, prospects, and young talent, and appear to be coming out of our rebuild (which took us about 5-6 years, which is an extremely reasonable time frame).
Instead of being excited by this, many posters are trying to save face by making passive aggressive attacks. These attacks include comments such as,
“If it wasn’t for Markstrom, we’d be a bottom 5 team.”
Or the recent stuff that we’ve been seeing with the whole Brackett stuff (ie if it wasn’t for Brackett, we wouldn’t have drafted anyone good outside of Hughes and Hoglander).
It’s all just extremely childish and petty in my eyes, but it does make for excellent and fiery debates.