The Pro Tank Thread I Post #621

[SillyRabbit]

I'm on the boat of getting rid of Benning at ALL costs. Every moment he sits in the chair is likely another FIVE minutes of extra work our next GM will have to do to rid this organization of his vile, putrid stench.

At the end of the day, I think this actually benefits the team more than the first overall would.

I actually posted a poll about a year ago asking if people would replace their GM with Benning and in exchange they would get a top 5 pick as compensation.

The results were overwhelmingly “no.”

Getting rid of him will help this organization a lot more than any one pick.

 

[valkynax]

At the end of the day, I think this actually benefits the team more than the first overall would.

I actually posted a poll about a year ago asking if people would replace their GM with Benning and in exchange they would get a top 5 pick as compensation.

The results were overwhelmingly “no.”

Getting rid of him will help this organization a lot more than any one pick.

Yep, I mentioned this before: it is easier to make up for the lack of high picks with competent management than the other way around

Look at Buffalo and that Albertan city. People cite those two teams as examples of how tanking doesn't work - no, it's not that tanking didn't work, it's because both teams were ran by people who drink the same stash of mercury thermometers with Dim Jim.

 

[nuck luck]

It's a good thing that it's a completely unrealistic hypothetical. A team with tkachuk and nylander playing on Bo's wings would never be in a position to draft Pettersson.

So we should be happy about a lessor pick? That hurts too...

And if there was a 'plan' in place we could have kept prospects in the AHL and picked Pete. Certainly not a stretch had we decided on a rebuild as we should have.

 

[Svencouver]

So we should be happy about a lessor pick? That hurts too...

And if there was a 'plan' in place we could have kept prospects in the AHL and picked Pete. Certainly not a stretch had we decided on a rebuild as we should have.

No, what I'm saying is the trajectory of a team is unpredictable and taking the best possible trajectory as a wistful possibility while discounting every possible factor that would stop it from having taken place is irrational.

 

[valkynax]

No, what I'm saying is the trajectory of a team is unpredictable and taking the best possible trajectory as a wistful possibility while discounting every possible factor that would stop it from having taken place is irrational.

Yeah had we drafted competently we'd have gotten those players, although I would take a step back and tell myself: you know what, maybe expecting the team to hit ALL those players was a bit of a tall order, hitting one of two of the players we missed would be good enough for me.

If, and this is a big "IF", that was the case, we might have those players in AHL or other leagues while the team carried on in NHL, and still end up in similar place to draft EP40. But of course all these are just academic and, with so much variables I don't feel qualified to make an educated guess of where the team might end up for EP40's draft class.

What I posted is no more than my personal opinion, not saying they are right or wrong. The more I think about this the more variables come up and I definitely can't track them all. I'll leave that to someone with much brighter mind than mine.

 

[Megaterio Llamas]

At the end of the day, I think this actually benefits the team more than the first overall would.

I actually posted a poll about a year ago asking if people would replace their GM with Benning and in exchange they would get a top 5 pick as compensation.

The results were overwhelmingly “no.”

Getting rid of him will help this organization a lot more than any one pick.

This is going to sound horrible but....what if Mr Aquilini gathers the senor alumni together for a sit down, and they decide to fire Benning, but....they replace him with someone even worse. Unlikely you say? I'm not so sure. There are lots of awful candidates out there, and this is Mr Aquilinji we're talking about here after all.

And so, a word of caution. This might be the best it ever gets under this ownership. It's quite conceivable.

I'll see myself out

 

[y2kcanucks]

At the end of the day, I think this actually benefits the team more than the first overall would.

I actually posted a poll about a year ago asking if people would replace their GM with Benning and in exchange they would get a top 5 pick as compensation.

The results were overwhelmingly “no.”

Getting rid of him will help this organization a lot more than any one pick.

They would end up with several top 5 picks if Benning were the GM. Why did you offer up just 1?

 

[y2kcanucks]

This is going to sound horrible but....what if Mr Aquilini gathers the senor alumni together for a sit down, and they decide to fire Benning, but....they replace him with someone even worse. Unlikely you say? I'm not so sure. There are lots of awful candidates out there, and this is Mr Aquilinji we're talking about here after all.

And so, a word of caution. This might be the best it ever gets under this ownership. It's quite conceivable.

I'll see myself out

It would be very difficult to get worse than Benning. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I’m willing to take that chance. It’s like saying you might die from getting a heart transplant, but at the end of the day your heart is failing and you’re going to die anyway, might as well take a chance at survival.

 

[Svencouver]

I actually am really fond of the Direction Benning has for the team. He says all of the right things for me and I hardly find myself disagreeing with the decisions Green and Benning make (at least according to how they rationalize/explain them).

What I have my reservations about is their ability to properly realize that direction. Where our managements clearest struggles have been is in development and trading. I think we could probably do better on that front, but as a collective whole, I think our management could probably be a lot worse.

 

[valkynax]

I actually am really fond of the Direction Benning has for the team. He says all of the right things for me and I hardly find myself disagreeing with the decisions Green and Benning make (at least according to how they rationalize/explain them).

What I have my reservations about is their ability to properly realize that direction. Where our managements clearest struggles have been is in development and trading. I think we could probably do better on that front, but as a collective whole, I think our management could probably be a lot worse.

I find myself deeply confused by what Dim Jim and his cronies have been trying to do. It's like he wants the team in both directions simultaneously - compete for playoff AND rebuild at the same time, and the team, as a result, had failed to achieve either objective for most of this management's tenure here. What I saw so far from this management are: mediocre draft (would be much, MUCH worse had it not been BB6 and EP40), disastrous trades, laughable PR, inability to talk without sounding like he's got a boot in his mouth and a stick up his ass, and horrible player evaluation.

And I'm not even factoring in the more obscured draft targets like DeBrincat - I'm talking about prospects that were the consensus BPA by people on this board. Think about it, if a group of random internet keyboarders can out-draft his sorry ass, how bad does he have to be???

I can say that Bergivin, Chiarelli, Dorion, Botterill could potentially out-compete Dim Jim when it comes to finalist for the worst current GMs. This puts him at best in the 20% of GMs in the league, which is quite pathetic.

 

[Svencouver]

I find myself deeply confused by what Dim Jim and his cronies have been trying to do. It's like he wants the team in both directions simultaneously - compete for playoff AND rebuild at the same time, and the team, as a result, had failed to achieve either objective for most of this management's tenure here. What I saw so far from this management are: mediocre draft (would be much, MUCH worse had it not been BB6 and EP40), disastrous trades, laughable PR, inability to talk without sounding like he's got a boot in his mouth and a stick up his ass, and horrible player evaluation.

And I'm not even factoring in the more obscured draft targets like DeBrincat - I'm talking about prospects that were the consensus BPA by people on this board. Think about it, if a group of random internet keyboarders can out-draft his sorry ass, how bad does he have to be???

I can say that Bergivin, Chiarelli, Dorion, Botterill could potentially out-compete Dim Jim when it comes to finalist for the worst current GMs. This puts him at best in the 20% of GMs in the league, which is quite pathetic.

I'm not sure what about our current roster indicates a desire to compete for a playoff spot. We're kinda just playing well. FA signings have much more to do with giving our prospects more O zone starts and anchoring the bottom 6. The Aquilinnis could be just as much to blame, if not more, for keeping the rebuild for going whole-horse, and thus it's hard to really judge our previous moves when we were a playoff team what, 3 or 4 years ago?

Also, putting aside that I doubt the 2014 and 2016 post-draft reactions were really as much of a consensus as you let on (I'm sure the Oilers would have loved Tkachuk at 4 instead of Pulju), you can't just go "our drafting record is mediocre! Except for these two great picks, they dont count for some reason!".

 

[valkynax]

I'm not sure what about our current roster indicates a desire to compete for a playoff spot. We're kinda just playing well. FA signings have much more to do with giving our prospects more O zone starts and anchoring the bottom 6. The Aquilinnis could be just as much to blame, if not more, for keeping the rebuild for going whole-horse, and thus it's hard to really judge our previous moves when we were a playoff team what, 3 or 4 years ago?

Also, putting aside that I doubt the 2014 and 2016 post-draft reactions were really as much of a consensus as you let on (I'm sure the Oilers would have loved Tkachuk at 4 instead of Pulju), you can't just go "our drafting record is mediocre! Except for these two great picks, they dont count for some reason!".

I never said those two picks were exceptions, I along with others gave Dim Jim praise for both BB6 and EP40, without those two picks his draft would be considered an unprecedented catastrophe of biblical scale, instead of mediocre.

Nylander/Ehlers and Tkachuk were consensus picks, and Dim Jim missed both. He also missed Pastrnak and took McCann instead. He picked BB6 and EP40, full credits to those two to him. That makes his draft success rate in round 1 to be either 40% or 50% (if we say Pastrnack was too obscure), that's pretty mediocre for a GM who's boasted to be a draft elder GOD.

If he wanted rebuild, there's no reason to sign the GERBS crew (gugdbranson eriksson roussel beagle sutter) for this long with such overpaid contracts when players of this calibre can be replaced without much difficulty. We basically have 20 million tied to those five players for the next 3-4 years, the kinda players other teams won't take even if we PAID them to do so.

 

[nuck luck]

No, what I'm saying is the trajectory of a team is unpredictable and taking the best possible trajectory as a wistful possibility while discounting every possible factor that would stop it from having taken place is irrational.

It's a good thing that it's a completely unrealistic hypothetical. A team with tkachuk and nylander playing on Bo's wings would never be in a position to draft Pettersson.

If we drafted Tkachuk and Nylander they wouldn't need to play on Bo's wing immediately. Stick them in the AHL and we would still be picking the same exact position.

OJ hasn't played with the Canucks and JV's role certainly could've been replaced with someone providing the same production. bennbrod could have still strived for the Playoffs acquiring the same RFAs and made identical trades.

I understand your point of this being hypothetical, but it certainly could be conceivable. Unrealistic is definitely not correct in this instance because the trajectory of the team would be identical if we only found a replacement for JV's production while Tkachuk and Nylander play with the Comets. Let's be honest, the player benning would've targeted would probably not provide the results expected and be very similar to JV's point totals.

*edit - If you're going deeper with your meaning, JV's replacement could have underperformed and given us a higher pick and we still get Pete. Conversely, he might have perfomed better and we moved down a couple spots, but still got Pete. I know there's been talk that another team had him ranked high, but that could've been a team picking in the late top 10 or after.

 

[Svencouver]

If he wanted rebuild, there's no reason to sign the GERBS crew (gugdbranson eriksson roussel beagle sutter) for this long with such overpaid contracts when players of this calibre can be replaced without much difficulty. We basically have 20 million tied to those five players for the next 3-4 years, the kinda players other teams won't take even if we PAID them to do so.

We're going to be on our key players ELCs until those pretty well expire, with more money coming off the books over the next 2-3 years. Not worried.

 

[valkynax]

We're going to be on our key players ELCs until those pretty well expire, with more money coming off the books over the next 2-3 years. Not worried.

Cap space can and should be utilized with more efficiency. Without having signed those plugs, the cap space could be used to take on other teams' bad contracts in order for us to obtain assets. Plenty of teams got contracts they want to unload, such as Tampa Bay's Callahan (seriously, almost 6 mil a year for THAT?).

Then again, Dim Jim seems to hold the belief that acquiring draft pick will cause an outbreak of Bubonic Plague so...

 

[nuck luck]

Cap space can and should be utilized with more efficiency. Without having signed those plugs, the cap space could be used to take on other teams' bad contracts in order for us to obtain assets. Plenty of teams got contracts they want to unload, such as Tampa Bay's Callahan (seriously, almost 6 mil a year for THAT?).

Then again, Dim Jim seems to hold the belief that acquiring draft pick will cause an outbreak of Bubonic Plague so...

Fully agree. The objective should've been draft picks from day 1 and it should be this draft too.

 

[Svencouver]

Cap space can and should be utilized with more efficiency. Without having signed those plugs, the cap space could be used to take on other teams' bad contracts in order for us to obtain assets. Plenty of teams got contracts they want to unload, such as Tampa Bay's Callahan (seriously, almost 6 mil a year for THAT?).

Then again, Dim Jim seems to hold the belief that acquiring draft pick will cause an outbreak of Bubonic Plague so...

You realize that most bad contracts in the league are bad because they also include NMC/NTCs that prevent us from doing specifically that? Including Callahan, for that matter.

 

[valkynax]

You realize that most bad contracts in the league are bad because they also include NMC/NTCs that prevent us from doing specifically that? Including Callahan, for that matter.

You don't know for sure that deals like that won't work out. The NMC's up to the other GM to handle, our GM's job is to make the opportunity available. If so, Yzerman (at the time when he still was the GM, that is) would go to work and try to get a deal done. If the deal falls through because Callahan won't waive his NMC, I won't blame our GM because of it because hey, we did our part and this truly was out of his control. Although to tell you the truth I'm fairly certain that Yzerman can get it done, as this guy seems to enjoy chewing up crisis situations like bubble gum.

There are also bad contracts without NMC, or modded NMC, or NTC, or no restriction at all but they are so bad no one would want to take them. By signing these awful contracts, Dim Jim effectively blocked himself from opportunities to obtain assets.

 

[Svencouver]

You don't know for sure that deals like that won't work out. The NMC's up to the other GM to handle, our GM's job is to make the opportunity available. If so, Yzerman (at the time when he still was the GM, that is) would go to work and try to get a deal done. If the deal falls through because Callahan won't waive his NMC, I won't blame our GM because of it because hey, we did our part and this truly was out of his control. Although to tell you the truth I'm fairly certain that Yzerman can get it done, as this guy seems to enjoy chewing up crisis situations like bubble gum.

There are also bad contracts without NMC, or modded NMC, or NTC, or no restriction at all but they are so bad no one would want to take them. By signing these awful contracts, Dim Jim effectively blocked himself from opportunities to obtain assets.

Right, but you'll never know whether or not these calls are happening because most of the possible deals never see the light of day. I would wager most, as you said, fall through. How many trades do you see where teams take on cap in exchange for picks? Not really that often, in my experience, although I haven't been following the league-wide market for very long, so I'm open to correction. How many trades of that nature do you see happen where the player willingly waives their NTC/NMC to go from a contender to a basement rebuilder? With those conditions and that context in mind, I think the list of trades of this nature will be rather slim.

 

[valkynax]

Right, but you'll never know whether or not these calls are happening because most of the possible deals never see the light of day. I would wager most, as you said, fall through. How many trades do you see where teams take on cap in exchange for picks? Not really that often, in my experience, although I haven't been following the league-wide market for very long, so I'm open to correction. How many trades of that nature do you see happen where the player willingly waives their NTC/NMC to go from a contender to a basement rebuilder? With those conditions and that context in mind, I think the list of trades of this nature will be rather slim.

I'm not saying picks is the only thing, I said assets - this could be young players of value, current players of value, or...anything of reasonable value, really. Because by taking in any bad contracts, we're essentially doing a favor, which should rightfully be paid for in some format as incentive. As for whether players would waive or not, I'm no expert, I know Dim Jim tried this three times and only succeeded once (success on Kesler, failed on Hammer and Edler). There are also success stories from other teams, such as how the Leafs could trade Kessel and Phaneuf.

Again, all I'm saying is that our team should have at the very least kept the option open, instead of signing these useless players who are easily replaceable. Contractual restrictions to a deal is up to the other GM to resolve, we just gotta keep the line open.

And as a side note, I think we should steer the discussion away from "this is too difficult", because Dim Jim isn't the first GM in history to deal with difficult situations - this is what separates bad GM from good GM, and good GM to outstanding GM. Lamoriello dealt with 2 huge contracts and put Leafs rebuild into warp space in his tenure, Yzerman turned that whiny little turd Drouin into a possible Norris level defense man. These tasks (and many others) are NOT easy to complete, yet some people can get it done, some can't.

 

[pgj98m3]

I actually am really fond of the Direction Benning has for the team. He says all of the right things for me and I hardly find myself disagreeing with the decisions Green and Benning make (at least according to how they rationalize/explain them).

What I have my reservations about is their ability to properly realize that direction. Where our managements clearest struggles have been is in development and trading. I think we could probably do better on that front, but as a collective whole, I think our management could probably be a lot worse.

That’s true....so far we haven’t finished dead last under their leadership.

 

[krutovsdonut]

so i see a post i made here yesterday was deleted by a mod because it was interpreted as flaming.

for the record for any offended it was intended as a genuine compliment. i like the thread title.

carry on.

 

[y2kcanucks]

I actually am really fond of the Direction Benning has for the team. He says all of the right things for me and I hardly find myself disagreeing with the decisions Green and Benning make (at least according to how they rationalize/explain them).

What I have my reservations about is their ability to properly realize that direction. Where our managements clearest struggles have been is in development and trading. I think we could probably do better on that front, but as a collective whole, I think our management could probably be a lot worse.

This has been the worst team in the NHL over the last 3 year period...it's pretty much as bad as it gets.

Whenever I listen to Benning talk I feel like I get dumber because the things he says are so incredibly stupid. I don't know what to say to someone who listens to Benning and actually agrees with what he says. Finally, if you think management has done a good job despite all this....wow. That's a really low bar.

 

[xtra]

How is signing beagle/rousell and scheller to 4 year contracts not pushing for the playoffs.

If you were rebuilding and wanted to insulate your young players you can sign a bunch of veterans to play those mins with out overpaying for 4 damn years

 

[y2kcanucks]

How is signing beagle/rousell and scheller to 4 year contracts not pushing for the playoffs.

If you were rebuilding and wanted to insulate your young players you can sign a bunch of veterans to play those mins with out overpaying for 4 damn years

It's another on the long list of nonsensical, illogical defenses that certain people come up with to defend the stupid things Benning does.