Man, what a complete show of buffoonery from these guys. It's becoming more and more clear that Benning has an incredibly simple understanding of a complex league. Literally every idea this guy has seems to drive from some core concept he has written down on a whiteboard.
The Miller contract length: he wanted more years so 3 years is a good deal because he got less than he wanted. Huh?
Miller dollar value: starters cost 5.5 to 8 million a year, so 6 million is on the low end! Does it matter that he could have had a starter at 1.15 million, or that Miller is a below average starter, or that he's buying up bad goaltending years (34-36)? Nope. Just has a concept of what a starter costs.
Miller not being a good starter: team is real confidence when he's in net. He actually believes this complete and utter tripe. This is just dumb hockey analysis being paraded around as executive decision making. He's either incapable of admitting a mistake or too myopic to even realize he's made a series of them. Unbelievable.
Sbisa contract: didn't have the prospects to fill that specific slot and D are expensive. Doesn't matter that he traded Garrison (lol) or that he could have acquired a better guy on waivers. He had a spot on his whiteboard depth chart for a 20-something left side physical D, regardless of skill level.
Sbia not being good: nice guy who tries hard and wants to be better so he'll be better. Lines up with his simplistic view of "prospects" like Stewart who will make it because they really want it and guys that really want it find a way.
Dorsett extension: brought us the heinous term "culture carrier", which sounds like something from the expository paragraph at the beginning of a post-apocalyptic novel. It's all "rubbing shoulders" and rah rah nonsense. It's fine to believe in leadership/intangibles, but overpaying for it and lauding it as an actual honest-to-god important component of Bo Horvat's development (and not like a < 1% factor) is crazy. How many million do you spend on shoulder rubbing?
I guess the upshot of all this is that they'll be an easy group to hate over the next little while. These guys are going down with Stan McCammon in Canucks lore.
It's so painful. The guy just doesn't have a clue.
On the Miller signing, jeez. No, Jim. You don't have to pay the guy that much just because he asked for a bit more and some other goalies make it.
You look around and gauge the market. 28 out of 30 teams were COMPLETELY SET in goal and not looking to make any change on July 1. There were 2 teams looking for goalies (Calgary and Vancouver) and 2 goalies (Hiller and Miller) available. Just by being patient, we were in a position to get one for a steal.
People talk about him having no leverage on Kesler because of the 'one team list'. But on Miller, he had every bit of leverage imaginable. The guy had no other interest (and pretty much admitted it) and wanted to be on the West Coast. We had him over a barrel.
And as someone else mentioned, a decade after the fanbase clued in that 'three 30-win seasons!' is a bad way to evaluate a goalie, you have the bloody GM of the team trotting out the same level of analysis.
For all the heat on Benning's new contracts for Dorsett and Sbisa at least neither came with NTC's. Gillis handed them out like candy. No reason why role players like Hansen and Higgins should have been getting NTCs.
Sbisa's contract is more of an NTC than Higgins'.
It's a hell of a lot easier to move a good player on a good contract with an NTC (although why would you want to?) than it is to move a bad player on an awful contract without one.
Sbisa would clear waivers at $2 million. He's getting nearly double that.
Higgins NTC makes it hard to trade an aging 3rd liner. There is no justification for an NTC to a 30+ 3rd liner
It's a great deal.
The fact that we have a quality top-9 two-way forward who scores 30-35 ES points every year signed for $2.5 million is NOT A PROBLEM in any way.
The core was fine. The best canuck players were Henrik, Daniel, Tanev, Edler and Horvat. That IS the core right now.
Beyond those 5 (and Kenins) the efforts were questionable.
Exactly.
The core was fine. The depth was terrible, and horribly managed by the coach.
We didn't get eliminated from the playoffs because the core was stale. We were eliminated because we had 3 capable defenders and the coach insisted on playing an atrocious 3rd pairing as much at ES as our standout shutdown pairing.
