Man this is just bizarre.
October. The Canucks waive Gagner.
Fan base reaction?
Good.
He's another $3+ mil waste of a contract.
Utica finally gets the center the fans there have been whining about.
He makes it through waivers and it's announced he will be assigned to the Comets rival Toronto Marlies. This is so he can be closer to his family in Toronto. HUH?
Fan base reaction? Mixed.
Between "What the Hell is this. He should be assigned to Vancouver's farm. He is a Canuck not a Maple Leaf." That was the total consensus in Utica.
The other side was, "This is a common practice with veterans when they are finally deemed to no longer be NHL worthy. He should be allowed to be closer to his family." I have been around minor league hockey for a lot of years and this is the first case I have seen. If it's been done, it is definitely not a common practice, but instead is a pretty rare practice that players get to decide which AHL city they would prefer to go to. Higgins and Prust were both sent to Utica. Higgins was a much more important piece of Vancouver history than UFA Gagner.
The other issue is that Toronto was a bigger stage and he would have a better chance of being scouted and being picked up by another NHL team. I assume that would have meant a trade which Benning has never been able to successfully pull off for an unwanted player. What NHL team arranges to trade a player by playing him in a different city?
The worst blow was that after assigning him to Toronto we learned from Toronto that Gagner could not be assigned to Utica at any time during this season. If he went up to Vancouver and they later decided to send him down once again, he had to go to Toronto. Vancouver lost control of THEIR OWN player to another NHL franchise! I've never heard of such a thing.
15 points and 15 AHL games later he gets called back to Vancouver because the players that Benning acquired that made Gagner expendable can't do the job better than the guy who was expendable.
I am sure there will be Benning bois who will put a very positive spin on this one, but you will have zero influence on the minds of the Utica fan base. I am sure Dahlen, Jasek, MacEwen and Carcone could have benefited greatly from Gagner's presence. 2 of them would have played with him and 2 would have been with Kero when Boucher went down. When Bouch was healthy, Jasek would have been in the bottom six where he, Archibald, and Lind would have been with Gaudette to begin with and, Gadjovich, MacMaster, Palmu, and others would still have had to suffer the pain of being matched up with either Woods or Darcy and Bancks would have returned to the wing where he naturally belongs. This would have been a good top 3 centers.
As to closer to his family in Toronto___His wife and kids NEVER LEFT Vancouver. She was 3,000 miles away for ****'s sake. The Utica fan base was never given this information! Now, it is really a bogus move sending him to Toronto which is a whole 400 miles from Utica. He was no closer to his family in either location.
Now, he comes back to Vancouver to his wife and kids. Toronto was probably extremely happy to reunite him with his family as that is what NHL teams do.