Post-Game Talk: Training Camp Over. Negativity and infighting stalk the forum like two giant stalking things.

[Dissonance Jr]

This season would be a lot easier to bear if we had our own insane meth-addled mascot like Philly does.

Will someone please get Fin hooked on hard drugs?

 

[DonnyNucker]

I think it’s the fact that nothing drastic has been done with this losing team. There’s just no accountability, how do you justify having the exact line up (minus the Sedins and Vanek) with the same D-core that got us to the bottom of the league last year.

People should be losing their jobs, trades should have been made. People are all pessimistic because we lost all believe that this management team is able to manage a NHL team.

The Vancouver Canucks should just hire Grub as general manager if the standard was just to draft a player and keep everyone else the same. Just give me Bob Mckenzie’s mock draft and I’m sure I can grab a solid player with a top 7 pick.

Losing sucks.

Don’t most on here want a tank season? It’s coming. Management did nothing to address our two largest concerns. Scoring and D. Make no mistake about it, this is a shameful tank for Hughes which I can’t stand

 

[DonnyNucker]

First the coach (Willie)
Second the President

Does Jim survives Xmas or not

100% Jim survives Xmas. He is Aquilinis puppet

 

[DonnyNucker]

Why wouldn't he report?

Because many people on these boards view playing in the A/ Utica as a death sentence. I think Utica is a great place for the kids to develop

 

[Fire Benning]

Don’t most on here want a tank season? It’s coming. Management did nothing to address our two largest concerns. Scoring and D. Make no mistake about it, this is a shameful tank for Hughes which I can’t stand

Of course you can’t.

 

[Peter10]

Don’t most on here want a tank season? It’s coming. Management did nothing to address our two largest concerns. Scoring and D. Make no mistake about it, this is a shameful tank for Hughes which I can’t stand

It wont by a tank on purpose but rather yet again a tank caused by gigantic incompetence.

 

[krutovsdonut]

This may be the worst Canucks team I've seen since the expansion days

before training camp i would have called that over the top. now it's within the realm of what we are seeing i guess. although i do not normally put too much weight on results in training camp, these games have been sounding just about every alarm.

i guess i am left hoping a bunch of guys find their game in the ahl and we see a series of successful call ups all season slowly strengthen a gritty resolute bunch. but right now indicators are the reality is more likely to be something like the last three seasons after the trade deadline from the get go.

one observation i have is that if they got beagle to replace dorsett in the room, as i assume was the intent, we have not seen any results yet. with no veteran captain for him to play off, i wonder if he will have an impact. maybe they will give him the c.

 

[JT Milker]

It wont by a tank on purpose but rather yet again a tank caused by gigantic incompetence.

I think this time it may really be on purpose. These guys are probably drooling at the idea of drafting a family friend and brother of our last draft pick.

 

[DonnyNucker]

It wont by a tank on purpose but rather yet again a tank caused by gigantic incompetence.

Meh. Disagree. Last couple of years were tanks due to incompetence but this year they did absolutely nothing to address any weaknesses. They are aiming for Jack Hughes

 

[MS]

If we were going to be really bad by playing kids and filling out the roster with short-term transitory assets and it was part of a plan, I'd be ok with it.

It's that we're going to be really bad with 1 rookie on the roster and a whole crapload or really bad veterans who all received money and term from this trainwreck of a management group.

__________

There hasn't been nearly enough talk about the system-wide flop of our allegedly top-5 prospect pool this preseason. This was the worst showing ever from a prospect pool in a preseason for this organization. What the hell did they do to get these guys ready and put them in positions to succeed? Because this has been a disaster.

 

[DonnyNucker]

Of course you can’t.

Correct, I prefer winning

 

[Nucker101]

It wont by a tank on purpose but rather yet again a tank caused by gigantic incompetence.

In the past I’ve said this multiple times as well. An accidental tank is the lowest of the low in pro sports, it reeks of incompetence.

But Benning did have a radio interview this summer where he sounded like he was expecting a bad season this year, he just had a different vibe than in years past.

IIRC he even mentioned that they would’ve signed someone like Neal if they wanted to make a push for the playoffs.

That being said, I 100% disagree with signing 30+ year olds to 3 or 4 year contracts if you’re expecting your team to suck but I don’t think Benning has any illusions about being in the playoff race this year.

 

[CanaFan]

Meh. Disagree. Last couple of years were tanks due to incompetence but this year they did absolutely nothing to address any weaknesses. They are aiming for Jack Hughes

Is there anything they could have conceivably done to avoid being this terrible?

Feels more like just accepting your fate than an intentional “tank” (i.e. selling off assets to deliberately be worse).

 

[CanaFan]

In the past I’ve said this multiple times as well. An accidental tank is the lowest of the low in pro sports, it reeks of incompetence.

But Benning did have a radio interview this summer where he sounded like he was expecting a bad season this year, he just had a different vibe than in years past.

IIRC he even mentioned that they would’ve signed someone like Neal if they wanted to make a push for the playoffs.

That being said, I 100% disagree with signing 30+ year olds to 3 or 4 year contracts if you’re expecting your team to suck but I don’t think Benning has any illusions about being in the playoff race this year.

My guess is they realized that outside of signing Tavares and acquiring Karlsson for a song, there is nothing that would have prevented this year from being a disaster. Signing James Neal would have done nothing to stop a disasterous year plus the optics of another Eriksson contract would have cost them points with the rebuild-crowd.

I credit them for seeing and accepting reality this time, whereas in the past I think they’ve been pretty delusional about their true chances to be competitive.

 

[Hodgy]

If you are intending to tank, you don’t sign bad veteran players to four year deals at relatively large cap hits. You just don’t. What you actually do is sign decent players to short term deals at the market rate and trade these players at the deadline. See Toronto a couple of seasons ago. This isn’t rocket science.

 

[DonnyNucker]

Is there anything they could have conceivably done to avoid being this terrible?

Feels more like just accepting your fate than an intentional “tank” (i.e. selling off assets to deliberately be worse).

Well they could have gone after James Neal or other top 6 options. Or replaced our atrocious goaltending. But you are probably right, I suspect part of it is accepting their fate that they would suck regardless of what UFA they brought in

 

[m9]

If we were going to be really bad by playing kids and filling out the roster with short-term transitory assets and it was part of a plan, I'd be ok with it.

It's that we're going to be really bad with 1 rookie on the roster and a whole crapload or really bad veterans who all received money and term from this trainwreck of a management group.

__________

There hasn't been nearly enough talk about the system-wide flop of our allegedly top-5 prospect pool this preseason. This was the worst showing ever from a prospect pool in a preseason for this organization. What the hell did they do to get these guys ready and put them in positions to succeed? Because this has been a disaster.

It's unfortunate, but many of our prospects played/progressed at the very bottom of their range of outcomes.

Juolevi looked like a mid-first round pick that was overdrafted and is coming off an injury. Dahlen and Goldobin looked like players that other organizations were comfortable moving on from. The new 2nd round pick who fell in the draft due to injuries was injured. The rest of the low-pedigree defensive "prospects" with low-percentage chances to make the NHL looked like what they were. None of the home-grown forward prospects did anything.

The one guy who I think was even lower than his worst expected outcome was Thatcher Demko. I'm not necessarily worried, I just thought we would be having a different conversation about him right now.

 

[Fire Benning]

The Canucks aren’t trying to be bad. They are still going to suck total ass though, by incompetence. That’s arguably worse than being intentionally bad, that’s the problem here.

 

[timw33]

It's going to be a long, painful season.At least they'll be in on the Lottery pick.I just don't want to see them pushed around this year,a little more grit at least.

Did this team in preseason show *any* jump or grit?

 

[timw33]

There hasn't been nearly enough talk about the system-wide flop of our allegedly top-5 prospect pool this preseason. This was the worst showing ever from a prospect pool in a preseason for this organization. What the hell did they do to get these guys ready and put them in positions to succeed? Because this has been a disaster.

Here we were being completely cynical that our kids would show up, deserve spots, and lose them to mediocre gunk. Complete opposite—they couldn't beat out some of the worst roster NHLers in the league for a spot and looked completely lifeless. A guy like Kole Lind didn't even look good at the prospects tourney.

Then we look at a team like the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have drafted no higher than 14th (with no first in 2 of 4 drafts) in the same drafting span as Benning, and they have multiple players pushing themselves onto the roster *and* have a deep AHL squad where young players actually excel.

 

[Tables of Stats]

I think the biggest thing we need to ask after this camp and preseason is, would any reasonable level of free agency signings and ditchings of certain problematic players have been enough to make us into even a bubble team? Given our holes, our position in the standings, and just general problems with attracting free agents I don't think so. Sure we could have shuffled deck chairs and looked for a UFA lottery ticket to pay out, but really I think we were always doomed to suck this season unless something very unlikely happens or happened this offseason.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that most of the kids won't be hurt by some AHL time this season so our vet problem is delayed by another season. The tank will be real and if we don't get unlucky in the draft lottery the third year running we should have a top three pick in a year where over half the top ten picks could be high-end centers. That's not the worst place for our team to be this season even if watching and following the NHl club will be painful.

 

[Nucker42]

 

[Nucker42]

I want so bad to be positive, but the contradictions with this team are becoming sickening.

One moment, management talking about players earning their spots. The next moment you have Eriksson on the 2nd line. He's been terrible.

Motte as the best pre season player sitting out. How does this reward players?

 

[VanillaCoke]

Looks exactly like a younger team that's not quite sure what to do now that they're on their own.

 

[JT Milker]

If we were going to be really bad by playing kids and filling out the roster with short-term transitory assets and it was part of a plan, I'd be ok with it.

It's that we're going to be really bad with 1 rookie on the roster and a whole crapload or really bad veterans who all received money and term from this trainwreck of a management group.

__________

There hasn't been nearly enough talk about the system-wide flop of our allegedly top-5 prospect pool this preseason. This was the worst showing ever from a prospect pool in a preseason for this organization. What the hell did they do to get these guys ready and put them in positions to succeed? Because this has been a disaster.

I think it’s mostly due to overrating the prospect pool, most of these PROSPECTS!!!1 will bust obviously, and Jim will hopefully by left with his dick in his hand. At least the one guy that really should perform did.

If you are intending to tank, you don’t sign bad veteran players to four year deals at relatively large cap hits. You just don’t. What you actually do is sign decent players to short term deals at the market rate and trade these players at the deadline. See Toronto a couple of seasons ago. This isn’t rocket science.

Problem is your comparing our management to competent management. Didn’t Linden say that we were rebuilding like Toronto last year? These guys probably think they’re doing exactly that. Draft super good? Check. Fill roster with vets? Check. Put prospects in AHL? Check. The details like acquiring picks, contract value, and whether the prospects are actually ready to play in the NHL be damned.