Ray_Cathode
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Oh, there’s another way to play that trick, why not look at 20 goal scorers in the AHL who became twenty goal scorers in the NHL? I can think of four Canucks right off the top of my head who scored at better than 20 goal a season pace in the AHL that repeated that feat in the NHL: Michael Grabner and Kesler scored exactly 30, Jannick Hansen, and Alex Burrows who scored at an over 20 goal pace in his last half season in the AHL.
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The Canucks didn’t have to sit Kesler out, he sat himself out by refusing to report while term remained on his Vancouver contract - thus violating the terms of his contract. So the Canucks are supposed to honor the terms of a deal that the player does not, that he in fact has broken? I think not. You break your deal and don’t show up to work? Then rot - it is what you chose to do, so do it. When we get around to making a deal on our terms, we’ll do it.
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I am most impressed with Lockwood and Teves, tonight. Lockwood gains confidence by the minute - man, talk about an energy guy with a willingness to engage and an amazing skater. He also defends well, maybe this guy is a fourth line player as soon as next year. Teves is our best defender so far tonight, outplaying a Rathbone in both ends of the rink - so far. Of course, Rathbone is the kind of player that can change that in a single shift. Gadjovich is a beast out there, even getting a shift on the PK! Gadjovich has his 8th goal and 9th point in 9 games so far tonight.
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Are you referring to the three picks in 2015 that they traded for? If so, Debrusk was hardly a whiff, and those picks took place after a Benning had left for Vancouver, where he plies his trade as an astute evaluator of young prospects. But that hardly disproves the value of the general strategy - it just establishes that Boston had lost their best evaluator of draft eligible prospects. In any event, I don’t criticize Benning for his draft record, quite the opposite, I wish he had had more picks, especially early on where those extra picks might have been ready to help us by now. It is Benning’s pro trades and free agent signings - until the Miller and Myers signings that I criticize. Overpaying marginal third and fourth liners is not good practice, especially when it leads to being unable to re-sign valuable assets and thus being able to realize their value in trades for other assets or picks.
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I already said. Let him sit until he relents on his demand to only be traded to one team. It is to be realized that it is not the Canucks alone who are under time pressure - so is Kesler. If the Canucks refuse to deal under Kesler’s demands, he too is under pressure - his problem is how long will Anaheim hold out until they seek someone else. At this time, Kesler is a very valuable property, worth a lot more than Bonino and a 24th overall pick. Anaheim also helt the tenth overall pick that year. Forcing the hand of Kesler and Anaheim by threatening to hold out forever, could have freed the higher pick, or open up the market to other teams if Anaheim walks. In either case, opening the market to more teams permits a better return. Sure, Kesler has the right to make demands and use what he thinks is his leverage, but the team has an equal right to do exactly the same. Benning panicked, feeling the need to fill the number two centre slot, which Bonino was not - and neither was Sutter, the best he could get for Bonino. Bonino finally proved his worth in Pittsburg as a number three centre, behind a Crosby and Malkin - he had reached his appropriate level. Sutter came here as a number two centre, something he clearly was not - Pittsburg used him as a number three centre, but considered a Bonino to be an improvement - which he turned out to be in their context, contributing to a Stanley Cup as a number three centre.
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You realize that what you are proposing is having players dictate to the team where they can be traded, under what conditions and for whom? When being blackmailed, one should not just roll over and surrender - which is what Benning did. If players are unhappy, then they should not play - it just brings down the entire team. If a player wants out, it should be on the terms of the team that has invested so much in him - not just to be bandaid to some spoilt brat's 'feelings'. The real world does not give a damn about one's feelings, nor should it. There is nothing in a team's 'written' word that says how it should bow to blackmail from players. Not playing players who are unhappy is not 'destroying' them - they are destroying themselves by being unwilling to play. It also does not 'destroy' a player by being unwilling to acquiesce to his demands - is the average Joe being 'destroyed' because his employer won't pay him more than he is worth? One maximizes return on players by increasing the number of teams available to bid for his services, rather than being forced to only deal with a single team, as in the case of Kesler.
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The Canucks have been playing sound defence of late, even more so since Miller has been moved to centre. Pettersson played as a winger when he was drafted - perhaps that is what he really is. Either that or we have suddenly got great depth at centre when he returns. Hoglander Miller Boeser Pearson Horvat Virtanen Motte Pettersson Gaudette Roussel Beagle Sutter Hawrilyuk Michaelis
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I guess, but he played like this in the playoffs, too. Too bad it took this team so long to find itself, have to wonder how much of that is too many personal changes to start the season combined with the busiest schedule of any team, and no time for practices to get the parts working together. In range of Montreal, but they have five games in hand. Very tough task to pass anybody for a playoff spot.
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You are pointing only to the things they didn’t do, not to the things they did do in rebuilding their team. You do realize that they have returned to the Stanley Cup final since we lost to them, and you do realize that teams find their way around no movement clauses. You also seem to ignore Benning’s awful signings of Eriksson and Ferland, and his spineless acquiescence to Kesler’s demands, then overpaying of Sutter, Roussel, and Beagle all in a pointless desire to not confront ownership on the need to rebuild.
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No need for creating strawmen, using things I never said. Who said to rush the prospects? Accumulate prospects by not trading away picks for guys like Dorsett or Vey, or surrender cap space in long-term, expensive deals when you can fill with short term deals to less expensive free agents. Overpaying old farts to play here on expensive, long term deals is not the way to preserve assets. Trading our old guys for picks and prospects is. Bennings first move should have been to move out the Sedins for something - give them a chance to play on a contender - when he first got here they were worth something. When Kesler tried to handcuff us by only being acceptable for a trade to Anaheim, he should have told him to rot then, stay home till hell freezes over. If you give in to that kind of blackmail, it sets a bad example. See who gives in first, a guy who has a limited career, or a team that lasts basically forever - see who can wait the longest. Edler, too, should have been moved while he still had value in a trade. Moving aging assets for young ones is what well run teams do. The reason Toronto is rich with assets is because that is what they did. The reason the Bruins are perennial contenders is because they are not afraid to trade aging assets - they are in a constant process of renewal. When you have a rich core and a preserved cap, you can target quality free-agent assets to acquire to fill one or two spots - but the rest is built internally or through judicious trades and always demanding and never giving up picks.
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Time for what? To be mediocre? To make a mess of our cap space and lose players we wanted to keep? To end up two spots higher in the draft so we end up worse draft position? So that we can trade picks to get players to make us marginally better now, but at enormous cost to the future? Do you really enjoy watching the likes of Beagle, Roussel, Sutter, Benn, Fantenberg, Vey, Kassian, Dorsett, Megna, and the like so much that you were willing to sacrifice picks, cap space, draft position, development time, in order to watch finish where they finished? How did that ‘buy us time’? It made real progress SLOWER - short run ‘solutions’ always do. It’s like the kid who spends every nickel he makes smoking and getting drunk instead of getting an education, telling you it bought him time to improve his lot in life.
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I need to see a bigger body of work from Rathbone, but from what I have seen, this kid makes great defensive reads and is mobile laterally to a degree unmatched in this organization short of Hughes. This kid anticipates developing plays and jumps up to attack forwards at their most vulnerable time, just as they are turning the head back to receive the puck. So far, in this limited opportunity to see him, his timing on those plays has been impeccable. Three times in the last game he arrived at the pass receiver just as he was receiving the puck, all three times the puck turned over and he transitioned the play back into a Comet offence. We do not have another defender who does that - Edler used to when he was younger, and there would be some massive collisions with opposing forwards who after thought twice about looking back to receive a pass. That reaction time and timing is rarely there for a Edler anymore. Now Jack is not big at 5’11 190, but I have read that he is a workoutaholic - he reminds me of the kind of physicality that Stetcher brought, but Rathbone prefers to use his skill and anticipation to spring pucks loose. There are no flies on this kid defensively, but he may be vulnerable to bigger, stronger players in the NHL. But from what I have seen here, he consistently gets inside routes, very slightly ahead of the attacker and keeps them off balance to the outside. At this early point, I don’t see that he will be victimized defensively in the way that Hughes is too often. So, I don’t see his minutes diminished for defensive insufficiency.
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If all these old, overpaid has beens are so great, why are we where we are? We have to improve a long way to be a legitimate contender, so where are we going to do that? Is Miller going? Pettersson? Boeser? Horvat?, Hoglander? That is five out of the top six. If Podkolzin adds to that mix, that leaves six forward spots that we have to improve dramatically. Keeping old dogs around stands in the way of that. The old guard, the guys of diminishing worth and high financial expectations has to go or we never get better - and we need to more than just get better to contend, we need to get dramatically better deep into the lineup.
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Yeah, this is definitely the kind of winger we are missing. Of course there are a few more in the prospect pool: Gadjovich is scoring at almost a goal a game clip in the AHL, McDonough at a point a game clip in USCollege, and Kunz at a strong rate in the USHL. Podkolzin is the smallest of those three at 6’1” 203, McDonough at 6’3” 190, and Kunz at 6’3” 215. All five of them play very robust games. With McEWen and Bailey close to becoming regulars, it could be a very interesting set of wingers when added to Miller (or is he really a center and Petterson the winger) Boeser, Hoglander, and Lind. Podkolzin finishes off that group nicely.
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For us, Schmidt’s game improved remarkably when moved to the left side. We can’t develop Rathbone having him sit in the stands somewhere behind Juolevi - a guy who has played well for us - certainly not the problem during our losing streak - he too is stalled in his development at a time in his career where he needs to play to improve. If we are to develop these young men they need to play - there is no future in keeping Edler, he is long past upping his game, and he is just no longer good enough to take us to the next level. We already made the mistake of keeping the Sedins around two or three years after they had ceased being the kinds of players that will bring us a Stanley Cup - and that is the object, is it not? Green seems to have an issue with too many defencemen playing on their non natural side, it is much more difficult to advance the puck up the wall on your backhand. I can’t say that I believe that, but Green appears to, and he’s the guy who determines who plays where and when they get to play.
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Add McDonough and Kunz to that list in the near future - big, skilled guys tha5 can score goals.
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I don’t think he anticipated the physical nature of the AHL, not as brutal as the IHL used to be, but not Sweden. And maybe as simple as homesickness - “Country of the Heart” so to speak - a lot of Russians feel it, and maybe Dahlen, too.
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I read something a few years ago when he used to play with Pettersson, and Pettersson changed teams to move up to the first division. Dahlen stayed with the hometown team because his ambition was to get them advanced to the first division. Much like European football leagues, they have a relegation/promotion system.
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The problem with signing Edler for a couple more seasons is that Green will play a veteran over a rookie pretty much every time. We have young players, such as Yuolevi, Tryamkin, and possibly Rathbone that are at a stage where they have little or nothing left to prove in the AHL. With Hughes, Schmidt, and Edler taking up spots on the left side, there is no room to find out who is the best of the young guys and this team needs to improve on the back end and Edler is neither getting younger nor better, in fact, quite the opposite. On a rebuilding team, I don’t think we need to repeat the mistake we made with the Sedins - keeping them two years longer than they were positive values. Had we started rebuilding two years earlier, we may have already been a sure playoff, maybe even a contending team.
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The context is Vancouver fans not having realistic evaluations of their players, Edler being a Vancouver player, means he is probably overvalued in Vancouver. And there is the issue of JB overvaluing older players: Sutter, Beagle, Roussel, Eriksson and not recognizing debilitating histories such as Baertschi and Ferland.
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We find out how much Vancouver fans overrate their players every time nobody else wants them for those high draft picks and player returns that the fans think the Canucks deserve.
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Good to hear, get him some playing time. He is a very sound AHL defenceman.
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The last opportunity Edler had to sign for cheap, he held out for six mil per - don’t count on Edler for cheap, at his age, hockey is a business. Wth the way governments are running up massive debt, the chances of hyper inflation are high and six mil is what a carrot might cost in a couple of years. As a kid, I was a stamp collector, and I remember seeing German stamps from the twenties that were printed at 100 marks, then overprinted with a thousand marks, then a million, then a billion - just to mail a letter. That happened over just a couple of years of governments doing exactly what they are doing now - creating credit like it has no limit. People in Austria were running wheel barrow loads of money to the store to buy whatever good was available, to have something tangible before the paper was worth less than paper and ink. That is happening in Venezuela where parents abandon the kids they can’t feed and 25% of the population has left the country. Venezuela has greater oil reserves than Canada, and we are doing what they did to get in that state. Hockey players have professional money managers, for the most part, and they will inform Edler regarding the value of a buck.
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Rafferty, right now. He began last season as a 24 year old. In two months, Rathbone will be 22, After Rathbone finishes a season in the AHL, we’ll see if on balance and after we see Woo’s progress, how that stands up. Right now, after THREE games, Rathbone has more than a point a game. After the first two thirds of last year’s AHL season, as a pro rookie, Rafferty led all D with more than a point a game until the game where he got hurt (by the way he was 1g 3a in that game and riding a hot streak). He cooled off after he got hurt until near the end of that injury, in a Covid shortened season. Too many people don’t give Rafferty the credit he was due, and too few recognize his growth that season when compared to his college career, where he was deployed more in a defensive role than how Cull deployed him in Utica. He didn’t start that season on the first unit PP, Juolevi did. Rafferty started last season deployed with Teves in a defensive role. Rafferty took over PP first unit and added a new dimension to his play in his rookie pro season. Too bad he is spinning his wheels up here on the taxi squad, he should be in Utica, playing, instead of up here spinning his wheels. Up here, we already have Juolevi sitting in the press box, Brisebois and Chatfield available from the taxi squad, and Sautner available on short notice in Winnipeg. They did the right thing with Rathbone, now do the right thing with Rafferty.
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I think all Dahlen ever wanted to be was a hero in his home town. I don’t think the big money and North American fame ever motivated him that much, and I don’t think the physical beatings on his small frame in the AHL excited him too much either. Prestige in his own community Meant more to him, in balance. I can’t blame a guy for having such innocent desires... maybe there is a girl... or whatever.