TheCustodian

Schmidt is just like other guys we acquired ... good but then we play them way too many minutes. He's not a top-pairing guy.

This series of events was all pretty obvious, I think. Aquilini is driving the bus on this whole "avoid the rebuild" thing to preserve revenue via playoffs. If you get in the way of what he wants ... you're fired. Linden flipped, clearly he was on board with everything at the beginning and then his buddies in the PA get in his ear about how retooling on the fly was stupid. Gillis was also fired shortly after recommending a full-scale rebuild. Benning and Weisbrod have taken a knee to the master throughout, so they get to stick around. Ironically, they were given basically an impossible task and will likely get fired regardless.

Tanev should have been captain.

I agree there seems to be something systemic that is wrong with the team at this point; they are for whatever reason ridiculously under-performing with the same coach and same system. The people at the top must answer for this. There is no explanation for the difference between the playoffs and currently; I don't care what players we lost.

Regardless of those players' impact the remaining core is playing way, way below it's level last year.

Something is way off here as the moves this offseason do not explain the team playing this badly.

MacEwen actually has played relatively well. I don't know know why Roussel continues to be in the line-up over him.

I think ideally you make the Schmidt trade to replace Tanev, keep Toffoli and keep Stecher. As mentioned, I see absolutely no chance we'd have given Markstrom that deal and movement clause unless we had a massive amount of cap space to assure room for the young players (which we don't). It would have been nice to get some of the cheap, effective forward depth that was available on the market this year, but the contracts in the bottom six would not allow that. There was also some nice mid-pairing defensive depth that could have been had for cheap, but that's also not worth discussing since we have no cap room. Management also clearly underestimated some of these players impact on the dressing room.

I don't think there is a reality where Markstrom is kept on that deal ... right or wrong, I don't think we would offer that term. Toffoli was a no-brainer to keep and is a massive error, while one (or both) of Tanev/Stecher should also have been retained. Also Holtby has not been good for a while, and assuming he would miraculously re-discover his game never had much legs. At the end of the day, whoever you want to blame, a correctly run organization does not have this much useless salary both on and off the ice in terms of player personnel.

Brutal roster management. Seems like a guy who would be a legendary GM if there was no salary cap and he had unlimited money. You'd probably have a farm team with $50M in salary in the AHL, but whatever. I said originally, Markstrom, Tanev and Stecher were two of the true leaders on this team ... bringing in mercenary leadership in the form of all these terrible bottom-six players at the expense of our homegrown leadership was truly stupid. Toffoli was probably a more valuable part of the dressing room than Beagle even though he was here briefly because he at least provided some swagger.

With the top-end guys struggling we're toast this year since we don't have Markstrom to save the day (as he did regularly last year). This looks like the team that was projected to miss the playoffs last season before the pandemic hit and gave them a free pass. Very concerned about the make-up of the blueline as Myers is playing poorly, Juolevi is barely NHL calibre and Hamonic looks pretty done. Time to try some of the younger guys down there, imo. Big issue, as predicated, is that depth is non-existent. Thank God for Hoglander or we'd be royally screwed in the top six.

I don't agree with this idea it should be a "wasted season". We have great young players. No season should be wasted. It's very frustrating but I guess it's hard to foresee a flat cap.

I still can't really talk about this one. Will feel similar when Edler leaves or retires. Love these guys.

We're in a bad spot now. You could have brought back Tanev, Toffoli and Stecher for probably $10M in combined salary. These were great players for us. I get the issue with Tanev on term, but I'd way rather have these guys than Sutter, Beagle and some of the other gents in the bottom six at similar cap hits. Also if we hadn't signed Myers we could well be in the Pietrangelo sweepstakes. Very hard offseason. I'm probably too attached to our guys, but couldn't we bring some of them back? I would rather have Markstrom back on the same contract versus Myers.

Yes, I was basing it on those awesome "inside the locker room" videos they were producing during the run. I still think Tanev should have had more actual consideration for the captaincy here, but I guess everyone sort of knew he was on his last deal. I just think those homegrown guy, along with Bo and Miller, were basically very core members of our locker room culture and leadership. I may be too big of a Tanev and Markstrom fan though, and I am gutted.

Did you not watch the playoffs? Those three guys, along with Miller, were the one's rallying everyone in the room. Tanev, or "Tequila", I'd argue could have been captain here. Pettersson calls Markstrom his "big brother".

The homegrown leaders we just lost in Markstrom, Tanev and Stecher were far more important to the room than any of the overpaid veterans brought in as FAs. These guys were just massive inside the bubble.

I suspect if we had reasonable salary room, they would have signed that Markstrom contract. Or at least something close enough to convince him to stay in Vancouver. In an ideal world I bet we'd have kept Toffoli and Markstrom. But I think letting all these defensemen walk was always the plan. We've been hearing about changing up the blueline for a while now. Unfortunately, a lot of those plans seem to have fallen through and we don't have a lot of room to maneuver given the cap.

Great value contract.

You are correct. Management was basically in a lose-lose situation this off-season due to the financial landscape. There was really nothing they could have done. It is nearly impossible to move truly bad salary at the moment and we are absolutely tapped out for cap space. I also suspect ownership has basically said "no buyouts." Next season is just about keeping our heads above water so we have room for the big EP and Hughes extensions.