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Everything posted by DownUndaCanuck
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I was a bit skeptical of the Star's moves before, thought they were really making some bad decisions but boy have they come to play in the playoffs and it's all paying off. Seems to be a tried-and-tested way to win Cups though: 1) Big strong forwards in your top-6 2) Good role players in the bottom-6 who can come out and score in deep playoff series 3) Puck moving defenceman x 1 or 2 at the most 4) The rest of the 5-6 defencemen solid physical shutdown guys 5) Veteran players who have won cups or gone deep in the playoffs before to guide the younger guys 6) Hot goalie The Stars have just about all of these. It's a shame because the Canucks are quite close to this as well (really just needed a bit more size up front and some good secondary/tertiary scorers) but I'm sure JB will address this. Regardless, looks like Dallas are going to the Cup final so I'm surprised this award is called before the playoffs are over - when it really counts.
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I think Chris Tierny has to be a guy JB looks at. Not sure about how strong he really is defensively but a big-ish 3rd line center who could slot in to replace Sutter, 30-40 point scorer, would be quite a nice return for say Virtanen + Stecher. Virtanen for Tierny straight up isn't a bad idea, if they wanted a sweetener throw in a late pick. Otherwise we go medium-size package with Virt + Stecher for Tierny + 4/5th round pick Or ideally big re-shuffle, and say Eriksson + Virtanen + Stecher (10M cap space cleared but Virtanen and Stecher help their rebuild) for Tierny and late pick or slight cap dump We re-sign Tierny for 3-4M, 3-4 yrs The extra cap shedded should be enough to sign everyone else.
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I haven't had as much faith in a management group as I have in JB, he seems to watch the games unfold the same as the fans do, and likes what he sees. It's a shame about RFAs like Stecher and Virtanen, they're big character guys in the locker-room but at the end of the day, they just aren't cutting it as much as they really should be. When you've got a guy like Fantenberg playing for 800-900K doing a similar if not better job physically and defensively than the 2+M Stecher, it doesn't add up. I think Stecher's good for what he's worth, one of the best 5-6th defencemen, but we need to cut some cash here and there and he looks like he's sadly going to be a casualty. As for Virtanen, I think JB has just had enough. I won't go into how much of a bad pick I thought this was at the time, that's been done to death, but always did think that if Virtanen can play physically (which is why he was picked over Nylander and Ehlers), then we'll have a hell of a playoff player. The kid played some 16 playoff games and I only really remember him dishing out one solid hit. It's a shame, because I think we're seeing him start to flourish a bit more and he looks like he's right on the cusp of a breakout season, but I don't think JB has the patience for him anymore. His comparison to Tuch is perfect, but more importantly, look at how a guy like Tyler Motte is playing for us. If Virtanen played with that physicality and hustle, he'd be a golden boy on the team. Personally I hope we somehow sign Virtanen and Gaudette to "show-me-what-you've-got" 1-year contracts because they were both scoring at a 0.5 PPG pace last season and these are the types of players you watch out for - young guys who could easily break into a 20-30 goal season. That being said, defensively and physically they haven't brought much and that's how you win in the playoffs. Whatever JB decides though, I'd trust him. I think his first priority will be to move big contracts out to be able to fit everyone in, but if he can't do that I think he'll look at culling the smaller contracts like Virtanen and Stecher sadly.
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Strengthening 3C - A Different Approach
DownUndaCanuck replied to MrCanuck94's topic in Canucks Talk
As much as I love Gaudette, he's not strong enough defensively yet. It doesn't really fit his game play style either - this kid could easily end up being a top-6 scoring winger with his speed and stick-work but he's not that physical or solid defensively. Sutter has been the perfect 3C his entire career - great at faceoffs, great on the PK and can play 12-15 minutes of hard shutdown hockey. We really don't have anyone in the system to replace him quite frankly, and most importantly he takes a TONNE of pressure off Horvat. If we lose Sutter, a lot of pressure falls on Beagle to shutdown opponents but also Horvat, and then we get the trickle down effect of our 2nd line being a shutdown line, not producing enough offence, and then our 1st line has to carry the entire team and even more pressure's on them. Say what you want about Sutter but there's a reason JB wanted him. If we get rid of him or don't re-sign him in the future, we really need to go out and find a replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if JB looks at a Virtanen trade to bring in a shutdown 3C, but they're more valuable than we all think. -
[Discussion] Prediction on 2020 Free Agency
DownUndaCanuck replied to Patrick Jane's topic in General Hockey Discussion
Absolutely no need to overpay free agents anymore, JB just has to focus on keeping this solid team together now because it'll get better internally. I think it could certainly do with some Trade Deadline trades to bring in tertiary scorers because our bottom 6 really lacked scoring. Sadly Virtanen and Gaudette, while they produced around 0.5 ppg in the regular season, didn't do anything in the post season. I'd expect these kids to get better with time and add in a healthy Leivo to our bottom 6. We tried with Ferland but proved we don't need him. JB has to prioritize fitting everyone back in now and if he does lose a contract here or there, it should be replaced internally. For example, lose Virtanen and gain Lind in the future, or Stecher out for Rathbone. The only thing I think JB will have a look at are decent similar salary/player hockey trades, and Virtanen and Gaudette are sadly in the mix there. If we can swap them for a more physical guy I think JB will do it because that's what he wanted out of Virtanen and he hasn't gotten it. On the whole, I don't think anymore UFAs are coming to Vancouver, we've got our fill. -
The only difference betwern Dallas snd Vancouver has been depth scoring, a PP that scores when it matters and physical big boys on the top line. While we can't change how big and strong Petey is, Miller can certainly play with more grit the way Benn is and I'm fine with our top line. We had no contributions from our bottom 6 jn the last few games where literally just 1 goal would have made the difference. Most importantly is that PP. 5 minute major and we should have won Game 7. Meanwhile, Dallas get 2 late powerplays and score on them both to take them to the Cup finals. Apart from that, our team is very similar to Dallas. Both have solid scoring lines, our goalies are much better and defences are very similar (one solid PMD and strong physical defensive defencemen). JB just needs to tweak our team and we'll be there soon enough. I think also having guys like Perry and Pavelski in their lineup really helps in the locker room more than on the ice when it comes to these situations.
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[Report] Flames name Geoff Ward as head coach
DownUndaCanuck replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in General Hockey Discussion
Financially related or not, they need to have a think about changing their core because it's clearly not working. They had some nice secondary defenders and obviously a couple of nice forwards, but their forwards aren't big/strong enough or play good enough defence and their goaltending is suspect at times not to mention sub-par tactics and special teams. They're a long way off sadly, starting to look more and more like a dangerous bubble team that will always just make the playoffs or just miss out. -
Not sure why you'd sign a 30 year old goalie long term who only has a few good years left when you've got Demko at 24 just about to start getting good and could have a decade of solid goaltending in him. This isn't the same as the Lack/Schneider/Luongo fiascos, this is simply out with the old and in with the new, with a 1 year transition where they both play 40 games. Demko is ready for 50 games the year after the ED, we just have to go out and sign a solid backup for him. If we sign Marky to a 5 year deal or something silly like that we're going to end up with a 5M backup in 2-3 years time. Yes, he's great now, but we need to start looking forward and this future core revolves around Petey, Hughes, Bo, Brock and Demko.
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I do hope Stecher is happy to take 2-2.2M to re-sign with the team, he's a heart-and-soul kind of player and liked amongst the guys. For a 5th-6th defenceman he's pretty solid, nothing flashy, and surprise-surprise had the best +/- on the team in the playoffs. You're not going to get much more from a bottom pairing defenceman, I think Fantenberg is very similar but a bit more physical but both are more sound defensively than Benn.
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[Discussion] Demko, shall we trade him?
DownUndaCanuck replied to tan's topic in Proposals and Armchair GM'ing
I think JB will have to protect Demko - he's the goalie of the future. Yes, Marky was a star for us but he's 30 and will be 31 at the time of the Seattle draft. He might have say 3 years left of quality goaltending. Demko on the other hand is probably the second best young goalie after Hutton and has some big potential. I'd sign Markstrom, keep them both to play 40-40 in a likely very dense season with lots of back to backs, roll whichever one is hottest in the playoffs (this is no longer a 70-game goalie world anymore) and take it from there. Next season, protect Demko, expose Markstrom or trade him in the off-season to a team who needs him and will protect him. -
[Discussion] ditching Eriksson plus others
DownUndaCanuck replied to Provost's topic in Proposals and Armchair GM'ing
Hughes, Demko and Pettersson are probably going to eat up 20M of our cap. That's about a quarter in 3 guys, not to forget Bo and Boeser's over 10M. Edler, Sutter and Pearson's caps will come off the books (around 13M) and who knows if the cap will really go up much. It's only going to get tighter and tighter. I think if we have some real success next season and are in the top-2 of the Pacific, JB should consider throwing our 1st rounder away. You hate to go the way Pittsburgh has, but desperate times call for desperate measures and a 25th overall pick is worth shedding 6M of cap space to be able to not only sign all our kids but perhaps get a tertiary player/scorer/defender for a trade deadline Cup run. If JB can get rid of that contract in any way, shape or form, he deserves a statue. All the GMs know it's garbage and aren't going to help us out unless we sweeten the deal. I wonder if Gaudette or Virtanen would be sweet enough. It'd be risky, both these guys are on the cusp of potential breakout seasons, but maybe mid-way through the year if either are struggling I'd see if any team would bite of Gaud/Virt + Eriksson for a 6th round pick. -
[Discussion] Shedding Cap Space
DownUndaCanuck replied to Daniel+Henrik2237's topic in Proposals and Armchair GM'ing
JB is going to be busy, especially if he's trying to snag Marky and Toffoli. Motte deserves a bit of a raise as well. I think Eriksson is just the immovable object at the moment unless we package him with a prospect or pick. It's tempting but I'd give u a 2nd + Eriksson for fodder (eg. 6th rounder) just to free up cap space but wouldn't give a 1st. Virtanen + Eriksson on the other hand would be interesting...free up 8M in cap space, lose a decent young player but then free up space to sign our main core from this last playoffs. Looking forward we're going to lose one of our goalies but JB has to sign Markstrom and protect Demko. Marky's 30, who knows how many more good years he has and surely Seattle will pick him, leaving us with a Demko starting to hit his prime. Goalie-wise that works out quite well timing-wise. As for the 3rd and 4th line plugs, I think we have to keep Beagle and Sutter until we have a solid couple of bottom-6 C's and I don't really see many coming through our organization (apart from Gaudette but he's still a while away and he's not as good defensively). We need some veteran presence in this youthful team so I'm happy to keep these guys around, plus their contracts will expire soon enough and they'll likely be replaced by similar player types. Someone we can really afford to shed is Roussel who was just garbage in the playoffs and didn't bring anything we needed but bad penalties. If JB can somehow trade Baertschi or move his cap hit somehow that would obviously be great and then he's free to re-sign Marky, Toffoli, Tanev, Stecher and Motte. -
People keep wanting to give Jake excuses but I hate to say it, JB sees what's going on and wasn't too impressed in his post-season press conference. Yes, he put up a nice 20-goal-pace, 40-point-pace regular season but was pretty invisible for most of the playoffs despite getting some quality minutes on our top line. I do wonder if JB gives him one last chance to prove himself - a bridge contract - or tries to trade his rights. Personally, as much as I have displayed how much I think it was a stupid pick compared to Nylander at the time, he is on the cusp of breaking out next season and could score a good 20+ goals for us so I'd be inclined to give him one last chance. One bridge contract, one year deal, 2-2.25M deal, show us what you've got or you're out. The thing is, he still has some value being so young and might be quite tempting to package or trade for a prospect defenceman as we look in the future to try and replace Eddy and Tanev. I hope JB gives him one more year's worth of a chance but he's not going to get anymore than that. We drafted him for physicality and since the McDavid pre-season hit ages ago there's been almost nothing.
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People forget he's only 25 as well, the guy's got a lot of potential yet and may become an offensive contributer as well. If we can get a Tuch-like player out of him then it's a nice diamond in the rough finding by JB. I do hope JB locks him up long-term, something like 2M 5 year deal would be brilliant. He'd basically be a 3rd line player at his rate, play around 12-15 minutes and be the heart and soul of our PK as it evolves.
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Canucks End of Season Media Availability @ Noon
DownUndaCanuck replied to Rush17's topic in Canucks Talk
JB's got to be careful now, there's a lot of bubble players who might have big breakout seasons. Virtanen and Gaudette are young, fast skaters who could break out and have 50+ point seasons, or they could completely flop. That being said Toffoli is a guaranteed producer. Hard decisions, he will be crucified no matter what he does because he'll have to cut someone and everyone's doing well. -
I think unfortunately Toffoli is not going to fit cap-wise, and JB will do what it takes to sign Marky. The other big question-mark is Tanev, you'd hate to see him leave and hope he takes a bit of a cut to stay in the fold. 5M for Marky, 3.5-4M for Tanev and JB can squeeze some guys in together to try and save Stecher too, otherwise we're going to have to lose one or two guys and have some kids play in the holes in case of injuries.
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[Discussion] Off Season Moves Post-Playoffs
DownUndaCanuck replied to HKSR's topic in Proposals and Armchair GM'ing
I have a feeling JB can keep it all together if the boys buy in and take some cuts, but he'll need to do some serious negotiations: 1) Toffoli - scored 10 points in 10 regular season games but wasn't that great in the post-season, only 2 goals and 4 points in 7 games. Based on that performance he only really deserves 4.5M IMO especially considering the Covid-cut that players should be willing to take. Yes, 5M before Covid and the playoffs, but drop that to 4.5M. He is the type of player who could try and make a big splash somewhere and get stupidly over-paid and if he's asking for 5-6M then JB should let him walk. I hope he enjoyed his time here and is willing to stay for 4.5M medium-term (say 3-4 yrs?) 2) Virtanen - Basically scored during the regular season at a 20-goal, 40 point pace which is pretty decent from a top-9 forward but was invisible in most of the playoffs sadly. Deserves a raise and honestly should be in the 2-2.5M vicinity but I hope JB gives him a bridge contract with the vision to extend after Sutter and Pearson's contracts expire. 2.25M contract 1 year let's see what happens, he has the potential to break-out still. 3) Motte - man deserves big bucks, only 25 and he was the heart and soul of this team in the playoffs. You hope to lock him down and quite frankly he does deserve 2M for all that hard PK time he puts in. Might be an overpayment for most 4th liners but Motte has proven he consistently deserves it. If I were JB I'd try and lock him up long-term, say 2M x 4-5 years. 4) Gaudette - deserves a qualifying offer for sure, invisible in the playoffs but 30-odd points in 50-60 games is pretty decent for basically <10 minutes a game. I'd give him one of those classic qualifying contract, bridge-type things say around 900K-1M for 1-2 yrs and see what he can prove. Him and Virtanen could have big raises if they really explode but we'll shed a lot of veteran baggage by the time their contracts expire. 5) MacEwan - deserves an 800-900K contract, short-term. 6) Tanev - difficult one, he's still got a couple of good years of 20-minute, top PK man ability and you'd hope he plays it with Vancouver. Hope he takes a pay-cut as he can take some slightly reduced minutes and sign for 4M. If it weren't for Covid, he deserves 4.5M to be fair. 7) Stecher - again, I do hope JB keeps Stecher as he's such a big character in our locker-room and a warrior, and that's the sort of player JB wants to keep and build around instead of just getting some random 5-6th defenceman UFA to fill the hole. I think a contract similar to his last would be perfect - 2.3M is great for a bottom-pairing defenceman 8) Fantenberg - Similar to Motte, I thought he was brilliant in the playoffs, especially when called upon to play bigger minutes. A bridge contract would be nice at around 1.5-2M for 2 years to take him to 30 years old. 9) Markstrom - Lights-out of course for us but turning 30 so who knows how much good hockey he has left. You'd like to see a 4.5-5M contract for 3 years but you just know he's going to get picked by Seattle, but at least we'll have him for another year to slowly hand the reins over to Demko. Give the two 40 games this season and whoever's hotter at the end of the year takes the playoffs, but with so many crammed back-to-back games this coming season, Marky will have a huge impact in this team in what may be his last year. Considering we have just over 17M to play with we basically have to shed around 6.5M to make this all happen. Quite frankly, I'd honestly consider trading Eriksson + 1st rounder next year (or 2nd round + prospect) just to clear that space to fit everyone in because it'd be worth it (especially if we pull a 25-30 overall pick). Sadly I think Toffoli will be the odd-man out and Stecher might get squeezed out as well if he asks too much, and we just try and roll in some of our young guys to fill the gaps. -
I think we have to sign Marky but it can't have an NMC because we simply have to keep Demko - he might be in his prime the year Seattle pick. Have 2 solid goalies for an intense season next year with lots of back to backs to try and cram games in. Marky and Toff will want and deserve 5M, Tanev will hopefully take a cut and take 3.5M as he gets older and less minutes, then we need to keep Virtanen and Motte for a combined 3.5M. That just about keeps our main secondary players together, leaving guys like Stecher and Gaudette etc. to sort out. Realistically if we want to fit everyone in, someone's going to have to take a cut (eg. Toff or Marky) or we need to get rid of one of the many wasted veterans (Roussel, Sutter, Eriksson). I worry that Motte's going to ask for 2-3M and to be fair he deserves it.
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This team is close, they are growing together and it's lovely to see - this is how you win cups, get some bonding and experience together, then when your core's in it's prime, flesh out by trading picks/prospects for some decent tertiary players. I think if you're JB, no more big trades, just try and keep as many guys together as possible. Edler and Tanev cop a lot of slack but without them this defence is shocking. We need solid defensive veteran guys like them, just at reduced minutes. You hope Hughes, Myers and ideally someone else can come in and log 20+ minutes so Eddy and Tanev play in our bottom-4. They're still vital for our PK but we need to think about replacing their defensive capabilities. Hughes and Myers aren't quite as solid defensively, Fanta IMO is one of the best 6th D's in the game and Benn gives us a lot too but we need someone who can play 22 minutes of hard defensive game the way Edler and Tanev had for years. Up front, you just hope JB keeps it simple. It'd be nice to squeeze Toff in but he's got to be the odd man out if everyone asks for too much money. If some guys take little cuts here and there we can keep this team together. Tanev at 3.5M, Marky at 4.5M and Toff at 4.5M and we can get everyone in. Virtanen and Motte deserve around 1-2M (combined 3.5M) and then we've got our key guys sorted.
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When you look back at all the cup winners, in particular LAK, PIT and CHI, they all started off with two mid-to-deep runs before winning the cup. Hopefully this is our first, next season hopefully again we're in the middle of the pack to higher up (we can win this division once Vegas start to slip) and make another decent 2-3rd round run but it'll be the following season that we'll go deep and win a cup. Hopefully by then we've got some good tertiary players as well (eg. people more useful than Roussel and Eriksson).
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I did say it at the start of every game, the Canucks could win against any opponent if they just stick to their strengths - powerplay, goaltending and faceoffs. We only really had one tonight. I don't think it was a PP issue as much as it was an exhaustion issue though so wouldn't go blaming Brown for this loss. Whatever Vegas did, they were much fresher than our guys tonight. Not many teams have had to play so many playoff games in such quick succession so whoever is the fittest and freshest is going to end up winning the Cup this year. Sadly for us, we really didn't have our legs going in the back-to-back games.
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Sadly the better team won, these back-to-backs really killed us but to be fair, they're quite a good way of separating the stronger teams from the weaker teams quickly. Had this had been a normal series with more time in between, I honestly think we would have won - we would have been competitive in the first game for sure and much stronger in the couple of back-to-backs. All things aside, it was good to see the Canucks with a bit of jump at the end of the game - shame that didn't come out at all during the game, especially during the 5 minute major. I don't think tonight's loss was a systems-problem at all, we just had no energy going forward, stopped skating and our passes were all missing whereas Vegas were skating well, clicking with passes and did an excellent job with layered defending. We were never going to score in this game to be honest. The Boeser chance could have really opened up this game but sadly that was it for this team, no puck luck at all but we didn't generate anything to generate luck. Sad to see the boys completely gassed but you can only hope that they build off this going forward. Very quickly, was impressed by guys like Fantenberg, Myers, of course Demko and our entire defence to be fair for playing a tight but scrambly D at times, and up front Boeser, Horvat, Pettersson and Miller all had solid games in patches at time. I was disappointed by Toffoli and Pearson, and our bottom-6 couldn't really string anything together. Going forward, Benning has some big decisions to make which will certainly be controversial. This playoffs, you'd expect Toffoli and Pearson to really light it up but after the first few games they went extremely quiet. I don't care what anyone says, if it's a choice between Toffoli and Boeser then you have to go with Boeser - the kid played with real heart in the last few games whereas Toffoli looked a bit disinterested. As for the goalies, of course we need to sign them but you have to protect Demko as our future and expose Marky unfortunately - he's in his prime now on the way out whereas Demko is only just beginning and looks much more promising in all honesty. Big decisions to make, JB will get shredded either way but you have to stick by him because he's turned a team full of rookies and kids into a pretty decent playoff-warrior-type team.