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Dazzle

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Dazzle last won the day on August 2 2021

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  • Birthday 11/25/1987

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  1. @Petey_BOI Your thread is a glimpse of how bad our fanbase is.

    1. Show previous comments  16 more
    2. Dazzle

      Dazzle

      @Alain Vigneault Just to point out how illogical your thinking is, if we are reducing the praise we give to GMs for drafting, we have to reduce the criticism/praise we give to GMs for signing free agents.

      Why? Because drafting requires scouts to compile a list for the GMs. If GMs can't get credit for their final decisions on these players, we can't completely blame GMs for signing free agents, which are also identified by scouts. A GM can't be at 200 places at once. That's why you hire personnel to help you.

      So if this is the case, we also can't blame GMs completely for trades, because this requires scouts to identify which players on other teams have been playing well. Again, for the same reason, a GM can't watch hundreds of hockey games per season on TV or in-person. You need people to go watch the games. This is why sometimes you see team scouts show up at an arena.

       

      This in turn means that Benning/Gillis can't be critiqued in any meaningful way at all. How illogical is that, @Alain Vigneault ?

    3. AV.

      AV.

      Sure, drafting under Benning has seen an improvement but we kinda hope it would be better than what Gillis did considering that Gillis never had the luxury of picking in the top 10 of every round for a sustained period of time.  Most criticisms of the drafting under Gillis have come after the fact anyway, because nobody was complaining when he drafted Hodgson/Schroeder/Connauton/Jensen/Shinkaruk.

       

      In terms of signings, there were tons that had great impacts.  Hamhuis, Malholtra, Samuelsson (for two seasons), Torres, Johnson.  Only Luongo's extension and Marco Sturm were bad moves and to an extent, Jason Garrison was kinda meh (but again, nobody was complaining).  In the sea of Beagle/Roussel/Myers/Schaller/Gagner/Del Zotto, who worked out for Benning?  Thomas Vanek?  Ryan Miller and Radim Vrbata for 1 season?  I didn't even include Eriksson because nobody could have predicted his fall-off but you could look at a lot of Benning's other signings and smell disaster with them before even playing a game.

       

      Trades probably favours Gillis, although Gillis had a free ride for a few seasons because he had a fairly strong team that only needed tinkering.   In hindsight, Ballard and Booth deals were awful but there were no complaints to either deal at the time from which they were made. Gillis's downfall came when Kesler wanted out and the tandem of Luongo/Schenider became untenable to manage (though, his returns on both goalies were homeruns).  From the get-go with Benning, he chose Sbisa over Vatanen/Theodore in that Kesler deal, took way too many risks with moving picks/prospects for guys "ahead in their development" (see Vey, Clendening, Larsen), would always add picks to deals (see Prust/Etem/Pedan deals), moved an arm and a leg for Gudbranson (who was already known to be $&!#), Sutter trade, Toffoli trade, etc.  What are his wins?  Getting rid of Gudbranson's contract (one he signed) for Pearson?  Sure, J.T Miller has worked out but he took such a massive risk with making that deal when he didn't have to since Tampa was in cap-hell.  If you mortgage your car or house or your last dollar on a game of blackjack and you win, it doesn't make you a genius; it makes you fortunate to have beat the odds on a risk of that magnitude.

       

      Look, Benning isn't the worst GM but he's severely subpar.  We can rejoice in Schmidt today and maybe Gaudette/Virtanen extensions tomorrow, but it's just a matter of time before the next letdown will happen with this guy.  It's a pattern.

    4. Dazzle

      Dazzle

      @Alain Vigneault Luxury doesn't matter. You could make the argument that Benning didn't "have the luxury" of having prospects to lean on, thus forcing him to sign some stop-gap players, which ended up costing assets/time, rather than a flat out rebuild. Oh btw, the Canucks couldn't really rebuild because we kept throwing away picks under Gillis' regime. To your point "Nobody was complaining about Hodgson/Schneider", because we never had players better than those, so it's easy to gush over the average/above average players.

       

      To be fair, Hodgson/Schroeder had very good WJC championships. Shinkaruk lookedl like he was on the cusp of greatness. He had a Boeser-like shot. Sometimes these picks don't work out. That is life.

       

      It's funny though when you said "nobody was complaining". When you don't have much to work with, nobody complains when you DO SOMETHING. The reality is that very few people, in comparison to the rest of the fanbase, complained about the Eriksson trade. Some had reservations about the NTC/length. Yet for the most part, Eriksson was pretty exciting news for the fanbase. How that's changed now.  People act now like they were against the signing from the beginning (rewriting of history).

      Hamhuis was a good signing in hindsight, but he signed with the Canucks at 27 for 6 years @ 4.5 mill per season. You could argue that Hamhuis fell into Gillis lap. Could we still give Gillis credit for this, in the same way that Benning got Schmidt via trade? Sometimes circumstances benefit you, but it should still be counted.

       

      The rest of the signings are "good" but they were more beneficial in the long-run (speaking specifically about Malhotra/Johnson. They were significantly cheaper signings, so there's less of an expectation for them to perform.  Garrison's signing was a complete disaster. It's not just a "meh". He was not a good fit at all. They were able to trade him to FLA fortunately.

      In terms of signings, most of Benning's FA signings didn't look so good (less impactful), but they were not necessarily "overpaid". Only the Eriksson one really stands out as the bad one. Most of the contracts were removed via trade so they didn't end up really costing the team (aside from Eriksson). Your point therefore is kind of a wash. Gagner was a buyout. Failure of a signing on the same levels as Garrison.

      The Kesler deal was a handcuff, in the same way that Gillis was handcuffed in the goalie situation. Trading Schneider for a 9th pick was a severe underpayment at the time, and many fans MOST DEFINITELY bashed Gillis for that deal. Horvat wasn't also severely underappreciated as a player - seen as "3rd line center at best".

      While you're talking about picks/trading picks, Gillis traded 2nd and 3rd round picks for Steve Bernier, former 8th overall pick. Nuff said.

       

      Miller wasn't a massive risk. Our first round pick was probably not gonna be very high, plus it was lottery protected for the first year. His contract was very reasonable given his previous productions in Tampa. He was the right player for the Canucks. Similarly, Gillis traded away Grabner + 1st for Keith Ballard. That is by far a worse risk, considering Ballard was widely believed to be a cap dump.

       

      I really would expand more on what you wrote but this is getting to be very long. You seem to understate certain things about Gillis. He was very close to bringing the team to the Stanley Cup. There's no denying that. However, Gillis threw away much of the future which was both understandable and problematic for someone like Benning. We also poorly developed a lot of our draft picks.

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