UticaHockey

Woods is on an AHL contract with the Comets so he is technically Canucks property via an AHL contract. It is a one year deal so he will be a FA for next year.

Benning confirms that Cull will be back next season.

The trend of a few NHL teams investing more in the ECHL is also a recent one. Time will tell if it will have positive impacts on both their NHL and AHL teams in the long run.

To put some details behind how Vancouver used the ECHL as part of their farm system this season the list below are the players that Ryan Johnson announced last summer as players signed to AHL contracts in the order that they were signed that ended up in Kalamazoo. There wasn’t a single NHL contracted player this year that was loaned to the ECHL. Jagger Dirk: Played 9 games for the Comets and 49 for K-Zoo Brendan Bradley: Played 0 games for the Comets and 29 for K-Zoo Reid Gardiner: Played 21 games for the Comets (3 points) and 36 for K-Zoo Kyle Thomas: Played 6 games for the Comets and 41 for K-Zoo Ivan Kulbakov: Played 25 games for the Comets and 16 for K-Zoo Brandon Anselmini: Played 8 games for the Comets and 45 for K-Zoo So of the above only Kulbakov ended up playing more games for Utica than Kalamazoo and that was due to the injuries to Demko, Bachman and the mess that was created when Benning traded Nilsson for McKenna only to lose him to waivers. And Kulbakov was the only player on that list to actually play well for the Comets. So far this season the Comets have used 13 players on PTOs with three new ones signed for the final three games this weekend. The bottom line is that Vancouver is not one of the more progressive thinking teams that see an advantage of using the ECHL as part of their farm system.

You don't necessarily have to own an ECHL team to make it a bigger part of your development system. The three teams that I see using the ECHL well right now are the Toronto Maple Leafs, Tampa Bay Lightning and Buffalo Sabres. None of those teams own their ECHL affiliate but the Leafs are the most involved with the hockey related decisions as they hired the coach for the Newfoundland Growlers. The Lightning have been assigning some of their own drafted players that they signed to the Orlando Solar Bears instead of having them sit in Syracuse. Finally when the Sabres brought on Jason Botterill on to replace Tim Murray the farm system was a mess and he vowed to invest in it to create a winning culture for development. The Rochester Americans are one of the better teams in the AHL this season and the Cincinnati Cyclones finished with the best overall record in the ECHL. All three of the above teams had players move up and down from the ECHL and AHL all season without a heavy use of PTOs to fill in for injured players. The Comets on the other hand have relied on more PTOs over the past four seasons than call ups from our ECHL affiliate simply because the players that were under contract to the Comets and Canucks assigned to Kalamazoo or Alaska before that have not been as good. It's not great when Pat Conacher has to sign some 24 year old career ECHL guy to a PTO because he is better option than someone that we had loaned to Kalamazoo. To better utilize the ECHL the Canucks have to be willing to send down some drafted players that could benefit from more playing time down there. Palmu is a perfect example of a player that should have gone down to K-Zoo early on. Even Gadjovich and potentially Lind could have been loaned to the Zoo back when there was a logjam of wings before all of the injuries decimated the Comets. They would have received more playing time and would have been called back up soon enough anyway. Finally Vancouver needs to have more skilled AHL veterans mentoring the prospects in Utica instead of an over abundance of plumbers and grinders. Guys like Darcy, Hamilton, Arseneau and Woods who are on AHL contracts would be nice depth guys to bounce between the ECHL and Utica but should not be every day players in Utica all season.

Move the Canucks east.

Your analysis is incorrect because in Utica the Canucks control 100% of the hockey operations where in Chicago they did not. If there is a problem with the staff that Benning hired in Utica it falls on him to make the appropriate changes. So many Vancouver fans either lose sight or simply are not aware that the Canucks have 100% control of the team on the ice and that Robert Esche and his staff only run the business side of the team. Esche has zero say in any hockey decisions.

Linden did stop in Utica two years ago when the Canucks were out east but Benning did not join him. It could be three but I believe that it has been four years since Benning has been in Utica.

It might be three but I believe that it has been four years since Benning has been in Utica will make the trip next weekend. I would have to guess that Cull's job is on the line which should make a lot of posters on here happy.

The Comets were officially eliminated last night.

So apparently we can't disagree about the Canucks management without adding in personal insults?

You asked for one so here is one. Joe Duszak signed a two year ELC with the Leafs starting with the 2019-20 season and an ATO with the Marlies for the remainder of this season. Duszak is considered a higher end prospect than either Teves or Rafferty. The fact is many drafted and understand NCAA players every March and April sign ELCs beginning the next season and play in the AHL at the end of the current season. I'm not just sitting here making this stuff up.

You guys are putting way too much thought into my comments about Rafferty. This isn't specifically about Rafferty, it's about Benning always being on the side of negotiating from a position of weakness. It's about going 4 years to get Beagle signed. It's about having to throw in a 2nd and a 4th along with McCann to get Gudbranson. It's about never convincing a player to waive his no trade clause. Let's not forget that he was paying Sam Gagner over $3M a year to play for the Toronto Marlies against his own AHL team in a concession to his agent when sending him to the minors. This is a small list of examples of weak negotiating skills and I'd like to hear some examples of where Benning showed strong negotiating skills. I get that hfboards is primarily filled with Benning haters just as this board has a lot of Benning supporters. But I don't get how anyone can objectively think that Benning is good at negotiating contracts and trades and why so many give him a pass on that.

Benning is like a sales rep that is not capable of negotiating on the added value that his company can bring to the table and automatically resorts to offering the lowest price each time to make that sale. Every procurement manager knows it as soon as he walks in their door and starts salivating.

At some point the Canucks need to be viewed as the team that doesn't always give up everything in a negotiation to get a free agent signed. This goes from throwing in a fourth year to guys like Beagle and Roussel to burning off ELC and waiver years with every college player they sign. That reputation is used against them by agents in every negotiation with the current management and will not change until there is new management. Other teams can get free agents signed without giving away the store so why can't Vancouver?

I'm going to borrow a thought from Bad Goalie on hfboards. Last night during the between periods interview with Dan Murphy and Ian MacIntyre, iMac stated that the reason why so many NCAA free agents were interested in signing with Vancouver is that they see the young core of talented prospects in Vancouver and they want to be part of that future success. So if that statement is true why does Benning have to add in the extra incentive of playing in one NHL game this season to burn off a year of waiver exemption to get these guys signed? There are plenty of college players signing contracts signing contracts that don't start until July 1st for the 2019-20 season that do not burn either a year of their ELC or waiver exemption. If Vancouver is a good destination for these college free agents based on the current state of the rebuild then Benning should be negotiating from a position of strength not a position of weakness.

Because of their age Teves and Rafferty can not have their ELCs slide and they had to be signed to one year contracts so they burned off their ELCs as soon as the ink hit the paper for a contract in the 2018-19 season. They never had to play a single game to become RFA on July 1st of this year. That is how the ELC rules are in the CBA but the waiver rules (as capfriendly describes them below) are different. The first year for the number of seasons played kicks in when the player plays in his first professional game. For players whom are 20 or older, the year in which they play their first Professional Game (e.g. NHL, AHL, ECHL, KHL, European Leagues) is the year which is considered their first year towards the waiver exemption; however, the player must be under an NHL contract. So by playing in one meaningless game both Teves and Rafferty burn off one full season of waiver exemption which is poor asset management. Who knows if this will be an issue two years from now but there certainly is a possibility that we will look back and regret it. I haven't read a single scouting report that would indicate that either one of these players projects into a near term every day NHL player so a NHL/AHL tweener depth defenseman is a real possibility. For an organization that never has enough depth in the system to cover all of the injuries in both Vancouver and Utica protecting assets into the future should be a priority. It is rare that burning a year off of waiver exemption comes back to hurt you but it does happen. The Canucks burned a year off of Frankie Corrado's waiver exemption by playing in a total of 7 games at the end of the season which burned a year off. If he played in one less game he would have kept that year of waiver exemption and he would never have been claimed by the Leafs only to sit in the press box for almost an entire season which killed the development of a young defenseman.

They are keeping Eliot from playing any games with the Comets so they don't burn off a year of waiver exemption which is a smart asset management move. And with one single game they do burn off a year of waiver exemption on Rafferty (and Teves) which is poor asset management.

I have been saying for some time that the Canucks should use the ECHL more often for some of the prospects that are having a tough time adjusting from juniors to the AHL. Tampa Bay and Toronto both utilize their ECHL affiliates for prospect development.

Based on what exactly? I know the click-bait Vancouver media has been promoting the narrative that nobody develops in Utica and there are plenty of Canucks fans that buy into this train of thought but do you have any specific reasons for your statement? I think there is a strong chance that Cull and his staff will be replaced and I don't have a strong opinion either way if he stays or if he goes but I do think he has been unfairly blamed for the lack of development of certain prospects in Utica. Since this is the Kole Lind thread let me start out by pointing out that he has been in and out of the line-up this season with multiple injuries and will miss the games this weekend with another injury. But one common theme with the prospects in Utica this season that seem to generate the most "clicks" (Dahlen, Gadjovich, Palmu and Lind) is they are all average to below average skaters and that weakness has been exposed playing in the AHL. All four of these prospects are going to be long term projects and all will need to improve their skating and possibly re-invent their games before getting to the next level if they get there at all.

The update from yesterday was that it is a lingering lower body injury suffered in juniors. Must have re-aggravated it in practice. Cull ruled him out for any of the games this weekend so if he is going to get into any games for the Comets it will have to be the final weekend April 12-14.

So Eliot will practice with the Comets but not play.

And Woo left practice early today with an apparent injury. Welcome to Utica!