So, Whose Fault Was It?

[dwarf]

Well at least the streak continues, 42 years of losing and counting!

To expect anything different would be setting yourself up for disappointment.

There must be some deep seated issue that fans are just simply not aware of.

All I know, is that if the Canucks are not playing, I won't turn on the TV. Welcome summer!

 

[Brock Radunske]

Who voted for Luongo? He's probably dead last on my list of players who deserve the blame.

This is not the FIRST time he's be unjustifiable blamed for Canuck failures...

 

[TheBleedingEdge]

Gillis. The team choked in 2011 and choked again last season and Gillis didn't make any major changes to it this season.

Yes the Kassian trade huuuge move. Check this out.

Kassian stats in a Canuck uniform.
56 GP - 8G - 6A = 14Pts

Alex Sulzer stats in a Sabres uniform.
32 GP - 6G - 6A = 12Pts

No Cody stats.

Now I by no means am suggesting Sulzer was ever more then a 5/6 defenceman.

What I am saying is those stats speak loudly on Gillis making moves for the team.

The stats for Grabner vs Raymond are very sad as well, even if you factor for a terrible back injury.

Add in a touch of AV defence first, offence whenever and voila.

It is time for a personnel change coaches and GM IMO.

 

[Bure All Day]

Yes the Kassian trade huuuge move. Check this out.

Kassian stats in a Canuck uniform.
56 GP - 8G - 6A = 14Pts

Alex Sulzer stats in a Sabres uniform.
32 GP - 6G - 6A = 12Pts

No Cody stats.

Now I by no means am suggesting Sulzer was ever more then a 5/6 defenceman.

What I am saying is those stats speak loudly on Gillis making moves for the team.

The stats for Grabner vs Raymond are very sad as well, even if you factor for a terrible back injury.

Add in a touch of AV defence first, offence whenever and voila.

It is time for a personnel change coaches and GM IMO.

Also consider, 5 of Kassians goals came playing with the Sedins..

That trade was a flat out robbery, for which we have already experienced the repercussions

 

[Fogelhund]

Yes the Kassian trade huuuge move. Check this out.

Kassian stats in a Canuck uniform.
56 GP - 8G - 6A = 14Pts

Alex Sulzer stats in a Sabres uniform.
32 GP - 6G - 6A = 12Pts

No Cody stats.

Now I by no means am suggesting Sulzer was ever more then a 5/6 defenceman.

What I am saying is those stats speak loudly on Gillis making moves for the team.

The stats for Grabner vs Raymond are very sad as well, even if you factor for a terrible back injury.

Add in a touch of AV defence first, offence whenever and voila.

It is time for a personnel change coaches and GM IMO.

A producing Kassian is exactly what the Canucks needed though, and it's a real shame his game fell apart after the first eight games.

 

[NYVanfan]

where's the "everyone but luongo" option?
need that one, as we're about to run the best player keeper the franchise has ever had out of town .... the young saviour clearly appearing to be no better in the clutch. Or are we not going to blame team meltdowns on Cory, just to mix it up?

 

[groovygoodwine]

1. Gilligan - for not providing the personnel after the core was created by nonis/burke
2. Refs - inconsistency
3. AV - some blunders here and there
4. Personnel - try and take an objective approach, this team is good, not elite.

 

[Grumbler]

Referees should be on the top of the list. If the pp chances were on even terms I swear this series be at 3-1 or 2-2 for the sharks or tied. We may still lose, but definitely not swept in 4 games.

 

[Ranfordrocks]

canucks window is gone no heart an soul on team they should clean house fire gm,coach get rid of all the players both goalies if possible how many canadian players forwords are on that team

seems like made up of euro and americans.

get rid of those horrible uniforms go back to what they wore in early 90s with skate blade and black,orange and white colors

that would honor respect

 

[jorbjorb]

It was there year in 2011. When you get that chance do expect to be back there any time soon lol.

This years team is nothing like the 2011 run.

Time to pull a 'Jay Feaster' on this organization lol.

 

[daveleaf]

Gillis!

He should be fired today and not AV. The new GM should be able to make the decision of who they want and it might be AV. The way he bumbled the Luongo situation is epic. This team with a few tweaks should be in the finals, yet, they are so far away.

Luongo should have never been blamed and never yanked last year. Schneider should have been traded and would have solidified this team. Yet, now they have a contract that is untradeable and a goalie that leaked some pretty bad goals when it counted.

 

[groovygoodwine]

Referees should be on the top of the list. If the pp chances were on even terms I swear this series be at 3-1 or 2-2 for the sharks or tied. We may still lose, but definitely not swept in 4 games.

I agree with you that the refs played a major role in this series in particular.

The reason the refs are below Gillis is because bad calls come and go, we've been on both sides of it. So we had a lot against us.. If you're on a roll and have the depth of personnel that are playing well, you can overcome these situations as a team.

Just as you said, we may have lost 4-1 or 4-2 anyways, a loss is a loss. For me, it comes down to personnel provided by management.

 

[daveleaf]

I agree with you that the refs played a major role in this series in particular.

The reason the refs are below Gillis is because bad calls come and go, we've been on both sides of it. So we had a lot against us.. If you're on a roll and have the depth of personnel that are playing well, you can overcome these situations as a team.

Just as you said, we may have lost 4-1 or 4-2 anyways, a loss is a loss. For me, it comes down to personnel provided by management.

Officiating league wide has been horrible. Drop the puck and stop farting around, I miss hockey from days past when D'Amico would just drop the puck, Koho would let them play.

The game is over officiated!

 

[groovygoodwine]

Yeah I totally agree. When I said the refs were bad in this series in particular, I should have just said: what is a penalty in our series may not be a penalty in another, and vice-versa.

No consistency, bring back Koho and fraser?

 

[polarbearcub]

Remember game 6 vs the hawks? Canucks played great. Reffing was atrocious. Hawks get a bs penalty shot to tie. Get pp in ot. Guess who? Kelly sutherland

 

[Grumbler]

Remember game 6 vs the hawks? Canucks played great. Reffing was atrocious. Hawks get a bs penalty shot to tie. Get pp in ot. Guess who? Kelly sutherland

The surprising part is Kelly Sutherland is born in Richmond, BC so you'd think he'd be a homer.

 

[dps]

Everyone.

Managment for not filling the holes he needed to fill the last 2 years.

Coach/es for constant line juggling all season, nonsensical pairings/lines, implementing a system that completely neutered our offense, playing an injured Cory over Lou who was playing well (speculation), spoon feeding minutes to players who were playing awful, not addressing our anemic PP, and I'm sure there's more.

The officials for calling a very imbalanced series. 24 - 10, nuff said.

The players, all of them needed to be better. Not a single player showed up for more than a period of play at a time.

To be honest I'm glad it's over. Perhaps this will finally force Gillis to make the applicable changes necessary to move forward. Change the coach/es and dump some redundant assets (Raymond, Ballard, Lou etc.). I'm on the fence about what to do with the core though, I'm convinced the biggest problem right now is coaching. Having a better system that suits our players strengths, improved special teams, a coach not afraid to split the Sedins or bench players being bone heads, along with some filling of roster holes will make a world of difference IMO. Whether or not that would be enough to win it all is debatable. I'd like to see a couple more players with some more size to hopefully improve durability in the post season and insulate our smaller forwards.

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

We signed Garrison and traded for Roy.

That's a bit simplistic.

Also jettisoned Ehrhoff, Salo and Hodgson for Corrado, Kassian.... lost Malhotra to injury... never got someone to take Torres spot.

I place the blame on everyone except a few: Luongo, Kesler, Schneider, Corrado, Roy (hard to blame the rental mis-used...), Tanev.

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

Gillis certainly has to be considered.

Ive been supportive of him but after the whole recent luongo debacle. Saying a trade was in the works etc.

The contract itself has some pluses but there are very specific and its looking like that specific situation may not arise.

Hes also changed the direction hes wanted the team to go. First fast and north south then down to winning by one goal.

Its like hes tinkering too much.

Not to mention the whole advanced stats garbage that is supposed to give an edge. Heck TO which under Burke who was against them has played excellent.

If the question of what has he done has to be asked of AV it also has to asked of MG.

 

[y2kcanucks]

Referees should be on the top of the list. If the pp chances were on even terms I swear this series be at 3-1 or 2-2 for the sharks or tied. We may still lose, but definitely not swept in 4 games.

Are you serious? It's the referees fault we showed no heart and for swept?

 

[LickTheEnvelope]

Gillis certainly has to be considered.

Ive been supportive of him but after the whole recent luongo debacle. Saying a trade was in the works etc.

The contract itself has some pluses but there are very specific and its looking like that specific situation may not arise.

Hes also changed the direction hes wanted the team to go. First fast and north south then down to winning by one goal.

Its like hes tinkering too much.

Not to mention the whole advanced stats garbage that is supposed to give an edge. Heck TO which under Burke who was against them has played excellent.

If the question of what has he done has to be asked of AV it also has to asked of MG.

I'm upset that the Canucks kept preaching a culture of winning and following the Detroit model... then lost in the cup finals and said "F THAT NOISE!" and decided to try and be a psuedo-Bruins/Kings team.

Back-fired in a big way.

 

[Jack Tripper]

Are you serious? It's the referees fault we showed no heart and for swept?

can't believe we'll have certain boarders posting this crap all summer

 

[absolute garbage]

It's a team game. It's everyone's fault. The Sharks were simply better as a team and as individuals. Yes the refereeing was atrocious and the Sharks had one period of PP time over the Canucks, yes the games were very close and especially games 2 and 4 could've easily turned into Canucks' favor, but they didn't.

That's because the team wasn't good enough. In the big picture you do indeed make your own breaks and the Canucks didn't do enough for that to happen. You can look at the game 4 for example say that, damn, if only the referees didn't have their heads in their ***** and didn't call those 2 penalties we would've won the game. Or look at game 2 and say if Hansen shot that puck into the empty net rather than miss it by few inches we would've won that game... but at the same time, Sharks completely out chanced the Canucks during the whole series.

Did Niemi have a single great save during these 4 games? I don't remember one. Is this because the Canucks executed their scoring chances so perfectly that Niemi had no chance to make those saves? Or because the Canucks didn't have enough of those chances? Obviously the latter. In general, the way the goalie plays is a good indication how the team played. Thomas won Conn Smythe against a decimated Canucks team that left everything and more on the ice. Niemi barely broke a sweat in this series.

And for the record, it's not because of lack of effort, lack of heart etc. That's pure garbage, the players are obviously trying as hard as they can. I can buy "lack of effort" as a reason when the team loses to Oilers in a random game in February or something. If you can't come up with anything else than that, you probably shouldn't say anything.

 

[Wilch]

I can't believe we're having a lengthy discussion on this matter.

I thought we signed Barker just so we can chop his head off and put it on a spike in front of Rogers Arena in case something like this happens?