Don’t Believe Anything Iain MacIntyre Tells You

[DSVII]

2 hours ago, Wilbur said:

This is also a league where you can't let what other teams do dictate how you run your organization otherwise you'll always be a step behind.  Need to have faith in a plan.  Some teams have had success getting a couple of high picks.  I'd argue that none of them purposely tanked.  What if another team tanks harder than you?  Or worse, what if you lose the lottery? 

Yup. And i believe we're letting the last decade of Toronto and Edmonton dictate what a 'tank' rebuild means (hence the "winning culture / age gap" phrases). And that strawman has steered us away from a proper rebuild and most likely prolonged it.

[DSVII]

17 minutes ago, Team Bagues said:

Man, that's a good response from I-Mac. He is a true journalist.

He echoes what I believe Benning said this past summer; that analytics are a useful tool, but used in and of themselves they are useless.

The quantitative vs. qualitative debate has been going on for some time; now it's spread in to sports.

In my mind both are useful; but only using one in isolation makes for bad science and bad analysis.

He's a good journalist.  Agreed. And much better than Tony Gallagher.  But I always take what they say with a grain of salt. 

 

Access to a club usually comes at the price of being able to express an outright critical opinion of said club.

[Baggins]

3 minutes ago, DSVII said:

He's a good journalist.  Agreed. And much better than Tony Gallagher.  But I always take what they say with a grain of salt. 

 

Access to a club usually comes at the price of being able to express an outright critical opinion of said club.

Mac isn't exactly all rainbows and unicorns in his articles. Can't say I agree with everything he writes but he's typically pretty fair with the good and the bad. As long as you are fair (both good and bad) you'll have access.

[Rocksterh8]

2 hours ago, DSVII said:

He's a good journalist.  Agreed. And much better than Tony Gallagher.  But I always take what they say with a grain of salt. 

 

Access to a club usually comes at the price of being able to express an outright critical opinion of said club.

I think Imac is a huge brown noser for their management, I never hear him say they do anything wrong. Tony Gallagher has his own way's but I think he tells it like it is, but Ed  Willis is the most believable of all of them, and the smartest.

[Dr. Crossbar]

At the heart of this article is "you can't have everything. It's either one or the other." Also the subjectivity of what people perceive as "results."

 

This is also a societal thing reflective of the shift in thinking in recent years, and a byproduct of how the social web has evolved. I see a lot of this same debate in social media. We're so conditioned to instant results online that we often expect the same offline.

 

Technology has made it easier to bypass patience to get quicker results. That doesn't translate well to things like the differences in how people develop their talents or skill and the timeline necessary for change to take hold. 

 

For me this comes down to one simple thing ... you can't demand major change and then not let the process of change to happen. 

 

After 2012, fans wanted change since we couldn't score and our old core became obviously stale. Fans were screaming for change and youth. So, AV was fired, Torts was hired and fired, and Gillis was ultimately fired. We got change. That was a positive result.

 

When TL and JB came in, it certainly appeared most fans understood that in order to get younger, we had to wait not only for the NTC/NMC contracts to expire but also for our youngs guys to develop and get better. And we still had to add more young guys through the draft so naturally the transition was going to take time.

 

We wanted that change and we got it. We wanted to inject youth and we're continuing to see that. We're seeing the results of what we wanted.

 

But there's no escaping "the wait" aspect of our youth development. Demko, Boeser, Juolevi, Dahlen, Gaudette, etc, aren't even here yet. However, Tryamkin, Stetcher, Goldobin, Hutton, Bo, Baer, ARE here. We are seeing results from the change we originally called for back in 2014.

 

Change from 2014 onward? Check. Youth movement that was nonexistent in 2013? Check. 

 

Are we winning now? No, of course not. We have to wait. That was pretty much understood by most fans who wanted our team to get younger.

 

Fans wanted the team to get younger. As related to I-mac's "it's one or the other," most of the fanbase agreed on this "one." 

 

TL and Benning came out and stated that during the transition of getting younger, the goal was also to compete for a playoff spot. As related to I-mac's "it's one or the other," this is the "other" that's been the bone of contention.

 

But we are seeing results ... more young guys in the line-up, Bo, Baer, Stetcher, Tryamkin, Hutton, etc are emerging, two more old core gone, it's March and our guys have been competing hard, not giving up, and we're in the hunt for the playoffs (mathematically). 

 

The goal to compete or be in the hunt for a playoff spot is actually a standard for players to strive for while they gain experience and learn from vets. 

 

Had management said from the beginning that the goal was just to rebuild this team, with no higher standard, there wouldn't be any reason for players to compete each night.

 

The "rebuild or retool" is the process of larger change while the "compete for playoffs" is actually the standard to live up to within the process. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

 

Also, you just can't gut a team of veterans. Our young guys have been consistently grateful for guys like Burrows, Sedins, Hansen, etc. They've admitted how grateful they are to learn from and play with them. Our vets take the pressure off to carry the team when they're not ready.

 

Even though they have the talent and potential to develop with more minutes, that doesn't mean all of our guys can put it together at the same rate mentally. Look at Tryamkin as compared to Stetcher. Tryamkin needs veteran leadership from a guy like Edler. Stetcher is more physically and mentally ready who obviously puts it together quicker. Also, there's no doubt that Gaunce has needed Eriksson and Sutter in the line-up so he's not way over his head. 

 

Try telling any player on our team, hey, we're rebuilding for the next ten years, you won't have vets to learn from, so don't worry about competing each night. That's just not realistic to expect. 

 

And just imagine if each player on our team was cool with that, there's absolutely no way the fanbase would be cool with that at all. We're only three years into the change we wanted from 2014 and fans are already calling for heads.

 

Right now there is no way to bypass the patience required for that change to take hold. 

 

In the not too distant future, though, fans won't have to worry about this. This is exactly why we're seeing the shift to playing more young guys at 19-20 or straight out of the draft while pushing out the 30+ year old vets.

 

Soon fans really will be able to have everything both ways. They won't have to wait to see star prospects because they'll go straight to the NHL where teams will be younger and their arrival will make it easier for teams to win now while the development window is shorter. Rosters will be filled with guys 19-27 instead of 25-32. Rebuilds will be much shorter in length. 

 

This radical shift in the league is matching the shift in thinking in society and what fans want. This is bypassing the need for patience. 

 

Ultimately, this is really at the heart of things underneath I-mac's article. A new era of fans just don't want to see aging vets try to carry teams when there are younger, more exciting options available. This leads to the clash of subjectivity around what produces the best results and one of the reasons why there's such a culture of criticism.

 

From my view, we're locked into what we wanted immediately after the Torts season, which is the injection of youth, transitioning out the old core, developing from within, etc, and need to see that through.

 

There's so much criticism around this transition when a huge portion of our future isn't even here yet. IMO, we need to allow our upcoming Top 5 pick, Boeser, Juolevi, Demko, Dahlen, Goldobin, Gaudette, etc, to take over this team along with our current young guys in order to complete the process. 

 

With the Sedins and Edler almost out the door, we really are about to "have everything" that we wanted from 2014, which is a young, exciting new era of youth that will be injected into an already young roster competing for the playoffs. 

[Team Bagues]

6 hours ago, DSVII said:

He's a good journalist.  Agreed. And much better than Tony Gallagher.  But I always take what they say with a grain of salt. 

 

Access to a club usually comes at the price of being able to express an outright critical opinion of said club.

Good point. He does need to tread lightly. Same with Murph; they both have unequaled access, and need to walk that line.

I am sure the players would appreciate a certain amount of honesty - and that their BS meters are probably pretty sensitive to sycophants blowing smoke up their back-sides.

Mac questioned the Sedins skating when they were drafted, and people jumped on him.

[Crabcakes]

On 3/12/2017 at 2:08 PM, stawns said:

I said it was almost done.  They may be able to use Tanev or Edler to get another top 6 fwd, but beyond that, they are more or less out of chips to play.  From here on out it will development from within.  

 

Many good teams are successful without an elite superstar first line, As there are very few of those types of players.  I expect that will be the case in Vancouver........they are building scoring depth and that is just as effective, imo.

It's never done.  That's the mistake Gillis made.  I agree, Benning has gathered many of the pieces that will one day mature into a competitive team (I hope) but before those players even get there, he had better be drafting players to succeed them.

[Crabcakes]

8 hours ago, DSVII said:

He's a good journalist.  Agreed. And much better than Tony Gallagher.  But I always take what they say with a grain of salt. 

 

Access to a club usually comes at the price of being able to express an outright critical opinion of said club.

The job is to report news and to comment on said news.  When members of the media start throwing stones at each other, they've crossed a line.

 

Thing is, some of the media knows this and others are just kids with no training at all.  If you know how to attract internet traffic, you too can have a job.  It's pathetic that these clowns are taking the jobs away from professionals.  But then, they work cheap.

[stawns]

34 minutes ago, Crabcakes said:

It's never done.  That's the mistake Gillis made.  I agree, Benning has gathered many of the pieces that will one day mature into a competitive team (I hope) but before those players even get there, he had better be drafting players to succeed them.

I agree it's never done, it's a fluid thing

[stawns]

22 minutes ago, Crabcakes said:

The job is to report news and to comment on said news.  When members of the media start throwing stones at each other, they've crossed a line.

 

Thing is, some of the media knows this and others are just kids with no training at all.  If you know how to attract internet traffic, you too can have a job.  It's pathetic that these clowns are taking the jobs away from professionals.  But then, they work cheap.

I agree completely.  The difference is editorial accountability, imo.

[Baggins]

9 hours ago, stawns said:

I agree completely.  The difference is editorial accountability, imo.

Blog sites could care less about such things. If you can write a half decent blog you can write for them. All they care about is generating enough clicks to attract advertisers. Accountability, accuracy, integrity....who cares. Click, click, click...cha-ching! The real clowns are those that actually see these random bloggers as "journalists" writing "articles". When in truth they'll little more than a CDC member posting their thoughts on a message board.

 

^ Hey, I just wrote an "article" therefor I'm a "journalist".

 

 

[Crabcakes]

I-Mac was a guest on the Sekeres show yesterday and he was asked about this issue right off the hop.  There was a long pause before he responded.  He did not sound impressed.

[PhillipBlunt]

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 4:36 AM, Baggins said:

Blog sites could care less about such things. If you can write a half decent blog you can write for them. All they care about is generating enough clicks to attract advertisers. Accountability, accuracy, integrity....who cares. Click, click, click...cha-ching! The real clowns are those that actually see these random bloggers as "journalists" writing "articles". When in truth they'll little more than a CDC member posting their thoughts on a message board.

 

^ Hey, I just wrote an "article" therefor I'm a "journalist".

 

 

[RU SERIOUS]

On ‎2017‎-‎03‎-‎12 at 2:14 PM, stawns said:

I don't like WD as a bench coach, but don't hold your breath that he's getting canned.  I would say it's unlikely.

As I said on March 12th, WD was destined to be fired and the 1040 homeboys would eat their last lunch - and both my predictions were once again 100% accurate !

[oldnews]

I can see how some posters mistook that wall of text for an OP and not a quote of an 'article'.

You have to ask yourself - 'who would publish this crap?'  An article titled 'Don't believe anything so and so says..."?

Really?  Right of the start it sounds like a he said/she said squabble.

We already had the Province and the Sun.  This market really doesn't need any more hack media - but to their credit, CA is fitting right in.

[Provost]

Macintyre is a knob on the radio.... but he writes pretty well and is right about fans being unrealistic and crazy, it is kind of the nature of the beast.

 

We see scads of folks on here losing their marbles because we aren't winning... while at the same time advocating a rebuild.

 

We see post after post about needing to give the young kids ice time and how awful management is for not doing so... when there are 15 players in the game that night under 24.

 

Half of "tank-nation" posts here with all these theories about how if we lose, we are guaranteed to be a Cup contender in 2-3 years.  Yet here we are getting our 2nd consecutive lottery pick and things haven't been so bleak in decades, with no realistic end in sight.

 

Ticket sales have plummeted, and they stayed awful even with a ton of young kids on the ice.  TV ratings have tanked as well.  That is a pretty darn good indication of fan support, or lack thereof.