Convincing John

Finally some exhibition games.

I’ve seen worse ideas on here. I think MacEwen would be good as well because he has good hands. I'm more worried about the PK to be honest.

Israel sees 60% drop in hospitalizations for age 60-plus 3 weeks after 1st shot Israel has led the charge in vaccination, good to see some fruit to their labour.

You just proved my point. (Not having Marky). There was too much roster turnover. That’s why we suck right now. There is nothing wrong with Travis green. Calling for the coaches head is so uncreative and predictable.

Who made bigger changes from last season? The coach or the GM?

No things aren’t as bad as they seem. I think we have a great young core. I just think it’s time for some new ideas. Benning’s weakness is holding back his strength. He has admitted to trying to “stay competitive” while building this time. “Filling the age gap” Now that we can step back and critique his plan and where his plan has taken us, one could argue that his “filling the gap” is detrimental to us today. We are now in the future period he talked about reaching and IMO he screwed up by not giving himself flexibility. A lottery team shouldn’t be signing long term deals. If you want mentors sign guys like Cory Perry to a 1 year twilight a contract.

I’ve used this example before but imagine Benning is your portfolio manager. You give him $70-80M a year for 7 years. Your portfolio is full of great stocks with good upside and some really bad ones that are dragging the gains you made on the good ones down. The economic environment has already decimated your wealth and now your investment is nose diving. How long do you let it underperform before you look for someone else to manage your money? The feel goods or the “awe shucks” kinda disappear when you put yourself in managements shoes.

It’s pretty much the most valuable asset you have. Not only is it completely free, but that pick comes with an entry level contract and nearly a decade of full control. The Benning regime has been pretty good overall in the first round which also adds to the value of the pick. MG didn’t give a crap about his cause he couldn’t draft anyway.

There is some validity to this narrative, however, we let the ones that made a difference walk and kept the ones who don’t. That’s pretty apparent on the scoreboard. If Beagle, Sutter and Myers are that influential then why do we look like a mess out there? Guys like tanev and even stetch competed hard which was infectious. Markstrom gave the team the confidence to take chances. He is also extremely competitive. What we are left with isn’t leadership.

A buy out is as embarrassing as seeing someone you know at McDonalds. This organization doesn’t do that. That should never be something you depend on.

Hang on here a second. When you’re a team who just broke out of multiple lottery ball seasons, the only salary cap issues you should be dealing with is reaching the cap floor. A lot of people predicted the Canucks would be in this position after multiple years of dumb UFA signings and here we are.

Write off? What do you mean by that?

Tanev and Markstrom resigned or not, it still doesn’t change the void left behind. His job is to manage the team. Letting that many players walk, disrupted too much. It’s the only difference from this year to last. To blame the coaching staff for dealing with what they have is unfair.

Seriously think about how stupid the idea is that it’s the coaching staff’s fault we are getting rag dolled. The only thing that changed from last season is what JB had his hands on. Everyone is acting like the coaching staff is trying this radical new system. The only radical new anything is a dressing room without ole dad Taney, a Net without Markstrom, TT on the other team who we let walk for what we pay our bottom 6. We gave up big assets for him, the guy wanted to finish his career here at an extremely reasonable price but we couldn’t sign him because JB couldn’t unload any of the dead weight he crippled this team with. With that being said, we could still turn this around pretty quickly. I actually thought we played a lot better tonight. I think they should just ride this out till the off-season and start over fresh then.

I don’t care if you’re 1996 Dominic Hasek, you cannot be hung out to dry like this and expect your goalie to win a Vezy.

Yes with game stealing, goaltending from a goaltender who walked to make room for his July 1st brain aneurisms.

He has done a good job but imagine if he was your portfolio manager and this was your money performing like this.

That was the most canucks thing ever

This isn’t entirely true. Most refineries in the US need a heavier crude to refine into product. Mexico, Canada and Saudi crude are still the most suitable grades. The production surge in the lower 48 is a very light grade. It’s condensate. It already looks like gasoline. This stuff can’t be refined on its own so they mix it with heavier grades and refine the larger volume. Canadian crude is actually very desirable because of its SG and discounted price. It has a high surfer content so not a lot of refineries can make it into gasoline but they do make it into coke for steel products and asphalt right out of the pipeline. The bottom line is the world isn’t in a oil/ gas production vs consumption crunch anymore. That is where this era of wealth came from. Where oil is today is pretty average historically. The root cause of the rise and fall of Alberta isn’t due to a lack of pipeline expansion, it’s due to lower oil prices cause by a surge in production. The more market share Canada takes the more oil will be on the market and the lower the prices. Alberta was booming at $100 oil without pipelines and if oil jumps up again which I believe it will we will see Alberta rebound. Another alarming trend is the premature move from FF energy infrastructure that feeds basically everything that keeps us alive in today’s world. The inevitable switch to clean energy is going to require a nearly completely new global power grid. Everyone talks about Tesla taking over the world but they sold less than 500k units last year. It’s huge growth but it puts into perspective how much further we have to go. California already has rolling blackouts during heat waves. How on earth are they going to be able to support a huge surge in EV’s with a clean energy power grid? It’s simply not possible right now. For the time being, and there will be some time. North America should keep the oil on the continent and off the ocean. We should become energy independent, use that revenue to invest in a power grid and things to help transition.

Columbus is actually one of the most surprising beautiful cities I’ve ever been too. I don’t understand why it’s always so undesirable for players. Downtown where the arena is amazing. Everything is red brick with cool restaurants and Archway park I think it’s called in the middle of downtown. The city is super clean. It’s full of parks, your right in the middle of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh. The OSU district is awesome if you like to party. They have the second biggest state fair in the country. I honestly believe that if they started winning down there it would become a very desirable place to play. Winnipeg at least has Grand Beach so it’s still ahead of Edmonton but it’s wayyyy worse than Columbus.

I’m not trying to disrespect you here but I’ve watched these boards and you for many years and you always stick out as one of the most dogmatic Benning supporters anywhere on the internet. You’re very intelligent and your humorous at times but it’s really too bad your blind adulation for Jim Benning impairs your ability to constructively criticize. You remind me of Ben Shapiro defending Trump. A great debater that overwhelms with condescending walls of one way conversation. I enjoy reading your posts whether I agree or not though just like I find Shapiro entertaining. Jim has done some great things, he has built one of the best young cores in the league. I’ll never dismiss that. However, he has also built a pretty average bottom 6 with an above average amount of dollars. Bringing up contracts signed by GMs that have been fired for like 10 years isn’t going to dismiss that either. Jim’s biggest weakness is an inability to predict a players downward curve. UFA’s are a tricky game. By the time the majority players become UFA’s there is absolutely zero upside. You end up giving contract to players based on what they’ve accomplished in the past. A $30M contract over 5 years for a 29 year old Myers isn’t a progressive move, it’s a stagnant move there is no progression in that deal. Yes, the first few years of that deal might marginally make sense but as that contract goes on you’re not going to get much return on investment. On most contenders Tyler is a fringe #4. We have a lot of swamp water in our salary cap. I wouldn’t quite put him in that category yet, but it’s coming.

It’s ok to be critical lol. It doesn’t mean you’re blindly throwing him under the bus. You make some good points. I just think there needs to be some accountability for some of these July 1st blunders. We are also going to find out how much influence Bracket had on the drafts here in the future. I’m not saying he deserves all the credit. I think Jim and his scouting staff collectively made most of these decisions but you can’t deny that Jude helped. The ownership group basically invests money into Jim like me and you would invest money with a portfolio manager. They trust him to make the right decisions with their money to see a profit. He has some pretty promising and pretty brutal looking stocks in his portfolio right now and you know FA can flip in a heartbeat. We’ve seen it. If we take a nose dive this year, he will be chopping heads.

I am just trying to look at things from a neutral point of view. I think Jim is great at drafting, he has gotten substantially better at trading but his cap management is sub par. Even we got a new president that could support and take some of the pressure off that might make a difference. Having a down year is fine, the Avs were up and down and got rewarded for that so I’m confident that if we do get another top 10 pick he will make the most of it.

I would have to disagree. Nonis to Gillis was a great transition. It was a new unbiased set of eyes that took this team within a win of the Stanley Cup. That was the best team we’ve ever had. Then.. he became stale too. Like you said, NTC’s trading away draft picks. Never was good at drafting. Then Jim Benning came in and did a great job. This core has the potential to be a better one then Gillis inherited. IMO Jim is starting to falter a little. I don’t know how anyone can ignore the fact that we are a little handcuffed with this cap situation. He had to let some key pieces leave to make room for some bad contracts he accumulated. Look what we gave up for TT and look how stupid not signing him looks right now. If Jim kept his pen in his pocket on UFA day, we’d be in much better shape then we are today as well. I’m by no means a Benning hater, We just we need a new set of hands on this.

I know it’s super cool and fashionable to freak out and say how ugly this is going to be but I’m going to be a troll here and say it’s going to be a good bounce back game by the boys.