Jim Benning

[Alflives]

3 minutes ago, Sikhguy23 said:

Linden had no business being in a management role, frankly from what I could tell he had no clue what he was doing. I'm glad he left, and Benning has been steering the ship for the most part. Have there been bumps (bad contracts) on the way ?? for sure, but if you look at his overall body of work since he took over the Canucks are in a lot better shape. He has restocked prospects, and has put together a team that is at this moment competing for a chance to make the playoffs. I take that as a win.... If you took a poll at the beginning of THIS season, most of the posters would have been thrilled if you had told them we would be competing for a playoff spot at this stage of the season. From all that I have seen online; it seemed like Linden wanted to tank this season as well, and I for one am glad that did not happen. We got some games in hand, and a 3 game homestead coming up, all we can hope for now is that the Canucks win more then they lose for the rest of the season... thus basically ensuring they make the playoffs as the standings and the games in hand stand at this time. 

I agree that Trevor was not ready for his role.  However I think Trevor knew needed at least one more elite young guy to go with Petey and Hughes to be a truly top team.  I want us to win, of course, but did getting Miller and then Tofu only serve to make us mediocre?  Now we will draft (if we keep our pick) 10-15 in round one.  The odds of getting another great player to go with Petey and Hughes go way down outside of the top five.  Look how lucky we had to get to draft Hughes!  Add to that losing the guy who is responsible for our good draft work, Bracket, and what does that say for our future?  

[aGENT]

15 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

How is Quinn being inconsistent? He's on pace to shatter many rookie records and could win the Calder. 

16 minutes ago, aGENT said:

No, they really haven't. Hughes maybe but pretty much the rest of our youth (while yes, continuing to improve) is still hugely inconsistent.

This kid's been astounding, he's pretty much exempt.

 

Quote

Gaudette and Virtanen are the ones carrying the 3rd line, not Roussel. Eriksson is the one screwing up our 3rd line, not BO.  Petey is still playing at an elite level even though he's going through a tough patch.  Motte is proving to be the driving force on our 4th line.  It's the kids carrying the veterans for the most part.  Other than Demko being shaky the kids are doing alright.

Roussel's certainly struggling coming back from injury but Gaudette, while improved is not 'carrying' anything. Hugely inconsistent, still struggling on faceoffs etc. Improved and with a bright future does not equal 'carrying'

 

Virtanen is leagues better than previous years but is still not an 'everyday', consistent NHL'er. He still struggles to contribute physically and/or on the score sheet 9 out of 10 games.

 

Petey has been exactly inconsistent this year. Still great and with an extremely bright future ahead of him but he's not doing it every game, all season.

 

Motte's great, I love Motte. He's the engine of that 4th line...but he's a 4th liner and not expected to be the guy to win games for us every night. He's also 24, not 20.

 

Boeser's had an off/inconsistent season and is now injured.

 

Now please don't take these as 'criticisms' or putting these players down. They're all great and improving and I'm thrilled we have them. But the reality is, these young kids, the one's expected to DRIVE and LEAD this team in coming years are still young and massively inconsistent and inexperienced. As they should be for their age.

 

This team isn't going to win or lose based on Roussel, they're going to win or lose based on guys like Pettersson, Hughes, Boeser, Virtanen et al (and more to come) as they learn to be consistent, experienced NHL players. You all expecting them to be there NOW is where the disconnect is.

 

We're an inexperienced, inconsistent team with a VERY young core. This is season, the inconsistent play (brilliant one night, mediocre another, dumpster fire the next) and being a bubble team is what that looks like. It's also what the expectation should be.

Edited March 2, 2020 by aGENT

[theo5789]

10 minutes ago, The 5th Line said:

A young inconsistent bubble team that is selling off assets just to make the playoffs.  Yeah why would anybody be panicking right now...  I'm sure GMJB is nestled warmly and softly in his bed at night.  No stress, no worries, right? 

The assets we sold were for two players on our top line with EP right now. Miller is having the best year of his career and Toffoli has 6 points in 6 games so far. The Markstrom news came after all this, which has hurt, but we will see the resiliency of this team getting through this. We have many players still in our pipeline and there are only so many spots in the roster and for development before it gets watered down. Benning and crew have been doing a fine job finding depth in the latter part of the draft outside the sexy picks. With key roles filling up on the roster, depth is what we will need anyway in the future.

 

It's a tight race right now, but I'd say we are in a better position to make the playoffs with Toffoli than without him at this point. We are not the team that invented "selling assets" for a playoff drive. Whatever criticism is made for doing this could be made towards the rest of the league at some point or another.

[Elias Pettersson]

23 minutes ago, The 5th Line said:

We spent to the cap and sucked?  So we drafted top 10.

 

in 2018 we had 6 picks

 

in 2016 we had 6 picks

 

In 15/16 and now 20 we went into the draft without a 2nd round pick.

 

Tell me what happend the last 3-5 years? 

Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser, Adam Gaudette, Jake Virtanen, Vasili Podkolzon, Nils Hoglander, Nikita Tryamkin, Jett Woo, Kole LInd, Olli Juolevi, Aidan McDonough, Carson Focht, Jack Rathbone, Michael Di Pietro, Tyler Madden, Thatcher Demko, Guillaume Brisebois.  

 

All in the last 6 years.  THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED...

[IBatch]

Man.  JB was one year pre-mature IMO with the way EP and QHs and BB have come in and made huge impacts.  His LE signing was the last re-tool one, Sutter was basically to replace Kesler - and never before had any injury issues...Bear? Well before getting blind sided was a useful player in the middle six and Goldobin - can't tell you how many times I've read praises about him on this site when he was being carried by EP.   

 

Whatever.   If EP and QHs and BB didn't ever come out and surprise the entire hockey universe we'd still be sucking and have no chance of making the playoffs for now, or next year or the year after that no matter who was coaching. 

 

On TG.  He played in an era when every single player finishes their checks.   Calling him soft is actually funny.   Like to see some CDCers get hit by guys like Berube, Probert, McSorely, Ewen, Grimson, McCarthy, Odjick, not to mention the dozens of real power forwards of the time...Just ridiculous.  Best league in the world and he had a decent career in it. 

 

Yes we have wasted cap space.  That said every single one of our "expensive" vets will be up in two more years.   Guess what?  We have some replacements marinating in the minors.   Also we will probably have to buy a few more placeholder ones regardless.   People in love with TT after a few games and ripping on BB should cut it out.   Highly doubt he's going to get better and BB has already surpassed his career PPG by a country mile.  Ugh. 

 

We lose some games.   We won't lose every one of the rest of them.  All we have to do is win around 7 more plus a couple OT losses and we are in.   Take a time out (that means don't watch a few games).  Take a breather.  It not life or death stuff.   Perspective.  We were not expected to make the show by most experts coming into this season.  Really we were not. 

[Alflives]

3 minutes ago, The 5th Line said:

 

nonsense

 

Rebuilding teams dont spend to the cap, they weaponize the cap.  Did we weaponize?  No

 

We haven't made all our top 10 picks count actually.  Juolevi so far has been an absolute bust with not a single NHL game on his resume.  Virtanen is meh,  McCann gone, Boeser dwindling.  Podkolzin who knows.  

 

You're comparing our prospect pool now to 5 years ago?  Okay we were competing for a cup the previous 7 years so yeah our prospect pool is better now, go figure.

 

    

You're speaking like our rebuild is done, we haven't achieved jack.  "All this in 3-5 years"  

 

All WHAT?  We are close to the bar because of all the money we have spent and all of the assets we have given up and we are holding on by a damn thread

 

 

And any decent prospects we do have will need to be used as sweetener to dump the terrible UFA contracts, right?  It’s actually looking bad for us.  Aquiline told JB to go all in too soon.  We needed two more drafts.  Let Petey and Hughes mature before giving up top picks and prospects and signing big dollar UFAs

[Alflives]

2 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser, Adam Gaudette, Jake Virtanen, Vasili Podkolzon, Nils Hoglander, Nikita Tryamkin, Jett Woo, Kole LInd, Olli Juolevi, Aidan McDonough, Carson Focht, Jack Rathbone, Michael Di Pietro, Tyler Madden, Thatcher Demko, Guillaume Brisebois.  

 

All in the last 6 years.  THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED...

Loui Eriksson, Sutter, Guddy, Myers, Beagle, etc and all the picks and prospects out the door also happened.  How many of those nice looking prospects will we have to use as sweetener to dump crap contracts spent on older players? 

[Alflives]

2 minutes ago, The 5th Line said:

Okay you named the players we drafted?  Cool

 

WHO TF is Aidan Mcdonough

And Bracket, who drafted our best guys, is quitting.  IMO he’s following Linden because he too, like Linden, believes we need to continue rebuilding through the draft.  

[Toni Zamboni]

this fan base sometimes, smh.

 

[Elias Pettersson]

1 minute ago, The 5th Line said:

Okay you named the players we drafted?  Cool

 

WHO TF is Aidan Mcdonough

Aidan McDonough is a 7th round pick who currently has 26 points in 29 games in his first year in the NCAA.  He currently sits 6th in rookie scoring in the entire country.  Adam Gaudette had 30 points in total in his first year at Northeastern.  You should probably get familiar with this guys name as he is going to be a player in the NHL...

[Alflives]

1 minute ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Aidan McDonough is a 7th round pick who currently has 26 points in 29 games in his first year in the NCAA.  He currently sits 6th in rookie scoring in the entire country.  Adam Gaudette had 30 points in total in his first year at Northeastern.  You should probably get familiar with this guys name as he is going to be a player in the NHL...

And who in management responsible for these picks?  And he’s moving on.  

[Elias Pettersson]

7 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Loui Eriksson, Sutter, Guddy, Myers, Beagle, etc and all the picks and prospects out the door also happened.  How many of those nice looking prospects will we have to use as sweetener to dump crap contracts spent on older players? 

We flipped Guddy for Pearson who's having a career year.  Did you forget that?  Sutter only has one more year on his contract, I don't think Benning is the one that caused him to be injured the last 3 years.  Beagle is one of the better 4th line centres in the league.  Eriksson at the time of his contract was a 30 goal scorer.

 

It's nice to play Monday morning quarterback like a lot of other people in this thread.  Hindsight is 20/20.  

Edited March 2, 2020 by Elias Pettersson

[Hockey God]

Benning made a few bad decisions in free agency, but overall he has done a good job to get the team back to respectability, and that's why he has the contract extension.  Where I have a problem with Benning is the decision, with ownership's blessing, to stay loyal to Green and to extend the other muppets behind the bench.  Green and co have done nothing to adapt to the strengths and account for the weaknesses of his players.  He seems to have a one size fits all approach to the game, and the players have, based on their recent play, tuned out to his messages and game plan.  The only thing holding them in the playoffs right now is the game or two less which they have played relative to other teams.  Lose those games in hand, and other teams get on a roll, and we will be out of the playoffs.  The way they are playing, they might get a win against Arizona, but then they may lose the next three before seeing Arizona again, and even the Coyotes are no guaranteed win given they are close behind the Canucks.  Fire Green now, take the loss against Arizona, and work to getting back on track with a new coaching team for the game after against Colorado.  If they don't make a change, it will be too late this time next week.  They can't afford to waste a great opportunity to give this team playoff experience.     

[Devron]

50 minutes ago, JayDangles said:

This doesn't hold water IMHO. The team was playing shaky and inconsistent well before Markstrom was injured. So that's a moot point.

 

In regards to the young core statement, this implies that the primary issue is inconsistency. i.e when the young core is struggling, so is the team. This is incorrect.

Hughes, Petterson, Bo, Gaudette, Virtanen are all on pace for career years, in Huggy's case, record breaking years. Our young core is not the issue. They have been very consistent, despite their colleagues. The issue is not our young guys, its everyone else.

Green has options, my issue is we have an extremely stubborn coach who takes zero risks, repeats obvious mistakes, and makes excuses when he should be learning. He is a first time NHL coach, who is acting like he has coach 1000 games. 

 

Offence and Winning are 2 different thing  unless you want to be the Leafs 

[Elias Pettersson]

Just now, The 5th Line said:

So i asked what we have accomplished and you gave me the name of a 7th round draft pick who you have a crush on.  It doesn't work like that

Yes it does work like that.  What have we accomplished with those draft picks?  Two of them are literally generational talents the likes of which we haven't seen since Pavel Bure.  Most of the others haven't even played a game in the NHL yet.  Did you expect, every draft pick from the last 6 years to already be with the big club?  

[spliced]

I find it concerning how slow the Canucks have become. The Canucks now have a hard time getting in on teams and forechecking them hard and forcing them into mistakes because of all the old and slow guys. I'm hoping next season they can improve in this area.

[Alflives]

Just now, Elias Pettersson said:

We flipped Guddy for Pearson who's having a career year.  Did you forget that?  Sutter only has one more year on his contract, I don't think Benning is the one that caused ho to be injured the last 3 years.  Beagle is one of the better 4th line centres in the league.  Eriksson at the time of his contract was a 30 goal scorer.

 

It's nice to play Monday morning quarterback like a lot of other people in this thread.  Hindsight is 20/20.  

Rebuilding teams, imo, shouldn’t be trading prospects and picks or signing expensive long term UFAs during their rebuilding years.  Yes we need experienced vets to insulate the young players, but not at the cost of cap and term.  Plus, if we kept our picks and prospects we would have more than just Petey and Hughes as our only elite U24 players.  

[Shirotashi]

Good laughs in here. Seriously though once the rage from the road trip settles you take a look at the bigger

picture and you can see that we are steadily improving so in reality all is as it should be. It was only the

unexpected success from this season that had everyone raising their expectations. No one expected us

to make the playoffs as I recall and here we are in the mix. What is troubling is that JB sorta went all in

on the playoff bet so he and green would definitely be in the hot seat if we dont make it in.  

[Elias Pettersson]

Just now, Alflives said:

Rebuilding teams, imo, shouldn’t be trading prospects and picks or signing expensive long term UFAs during their rebuilding years.  Yes we need experienced vets to insulate the young players, but not at the cost of cap and term.  Plus, if we kept our picks and prospects we would have more than just Petey and Hughes as our only elite U24 players.  

We basically got Pearson for McCann.  Would we be any better with McCann instead of Pearson?  In the Sutter deal we flipped a 2nd to get a 3rd so we didn't actually lose a pick.  Would Bonino be helping us more than Sutter right now?

[Elias Pettersson]

3 minutes ago, The 5th Line said:

Ummmmm no, just no.  

 

Bye

 

Are you leaving already?  The fun has just begun.  Even Alf is around.  Please come back...