Ray_Cathode

This is a team that emphasizes defensive play. Shutout last game means Sasson didn’t give up much.

He now knows how to trainnto succeed in North America - next season will be very interesting re Karlsson, if he can make the physical changes - get stronger, get faster, he has tons of skill and is a master of protecting the puck.

I really enjoy watching young guys succeed. It’s why I bother to watch the prospects in the first place. It’s quite okay to point out young guys flaws - like Juolevi clearly had a physical problem in his left leg/hip area that prevented him from pivoting to the left and resulted in him geytting walked far too often. That said, you want the team to invest in fixing him up. Never happened, and he was a high first round pick. I don’t want to see Lekkerimaki suffer the same fate. Fix the issues, give him the beast chance of thriving.

Karlsson spent most of his time on the wing in Sweden, Abby was desperate for centres when the season opened, so maybe that explains that. Either way, for a fourth line guy, flexibility regarding position and a role is very desirable if you are looking toward the NHL.

Woo with the OT winner with the assist from Karlsson (2g 1a), Nielsen 3a. Helluva game for Karlsson. Abby in the fall?

Karlsson on a great pass from Rathbone. Wow!

He was like that at young stars, a step ahead of almost everyone else.

Great to see him healthy, making a difference in b the time of the year that really matters.

With the new signees and players to come down, Abby could have quite the lineup.

Right, yet they weren’t winning - not even a playoff team. They needed more ingredients: Ehrhoff (their best offensive D, Hamhuis (their best defensive D), Samuelson, Malhotra (great defensive C), Torres, Tanev, Ballard amend Rome (more defensive depth), As for drafting, it’s a lot tougher picking at the end of the draft than at the beginning. Yet, Gillis negotiated a bottom of the pack first rounder, White, into his best offensive D, Ehrhoff. Tanev he picked up for nothing - a top of the list defensive D for the next ten years. He also ended the disaster in Canuck coaching by bringing Vigneault So yes, Burke was masterful in getting the Sedins. Nonis managed convert some high picks into players. And Gillis put together the components that brought a president’s trophy, Stanley finalist to Vancouver. JB will always get credit for Demko, Pettersson, Boeser and Hughes - not a lot for ten years of high first and second round picks. But, he will have to also take the blame for screwing the Canucks over with bad contracts and devastating the talent pool with early, poor high first round choices, and trading away high picks and then losing the players he acquired with them by his terrible cap management and failure to keep his eye on the balls he was juggling while messed around with OEL, who turned into the worst financial disaster that the Canucks have had to overcome. Now back to Bloom, this kid is exactly the kind of player Tocchet is looking for: good size, strong skater, defensively consciousness, straight up and down winger. Maybe they have found a left wing version of Mikheyev - a player that Tocchet will love - fast skating, straight up and down, good size, strong forecheck and backcheck, good on the PK - an asset he has not had available… yet.

We still have Pearson and Poolman, but they might just continue on LTIR. Myers, after he receives his bonus, will only cost a new team a mil in cash, but six mil in cap. He should be moveable at that point, though we may have to take some amount back in terms of retention. If we can get rid of all of Myers cap hit, that would really help clear the road for the coming year. As for OEL, that would have to be a buyout that would gain 7 mil in cap the first year, but only about 2.3 in relief for the next two years, but then the cap hit would fall to about 2 mil of cap hit per year for a few years. Our remains buyouts for Virtanen and Holtby for about 2,5 mil end with this season. We might want to wait on trading Boeser and Garland till the team is playing better and we can yield a better return. There is a path forward for Canucks, but I think we have to find a way out of Myers and OEL With any luck in our player development, we will be able to bring a more or less a continual string of third and fourth liners along through our system. With good scouting, we might also unearth the odd ‘Kuzmenko’ like find. This management is really loading up on defensive prospects, which is really good because they generally take longer to develop.

Yes. The Canucks are all excited about Filip Johansson, also 23. Johansson is a former first round pick who did not emerge as a promising D prospect til this year. So yes, there is still time for Rathbone. Rathbone’s future lies in his mobility an$ ability to make sound breakouts. In that vein, h3 might want to check out Hughes game video. From thebmomentbHughes pursues a puck in his own end he is angling toward how h3bi# going to escape. When he retrieves a puck, he is already moving toward open ice or giving forechecker a false impression of how he intends to break out. Hughes always plays with a plan. As a college player, Rathbone had the raw skills to escape coverage. Even in his first pro year, Rathbone showed those skills. Now, he has become a more static player. He tends to be more or less stationary when he retrieves pucks instead of having a pre planned escape route. He would do well to develop that skill. In my opinion, the lack of that skill will keep him from being an NHL regular. If he develops it, somebody will want him, if not the Canucks. Wolanin is not as good a skater as Hughes, yet it was just this year where he emerged as a player that the Canucks valued on their roster.: Wolanin had learned how to escape his own end of the rink, and his stats were massively inflated by that.

I don’t see any Pettersson’s, Hughes’ or Miller’s among our prospects, but that leaves 20 spots to fill the roster. There are some young guys that look like they’ve got a future. Sure hope Lekkerimaki is one of them.

The thing I like best about Hirose so far is his calm. In the mayhem that is the Canucks own zone, that’s like being the eye of a hurricane. “if you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs…”

Canuck power play sucks. Why we have Hughes as the shooter is beyond me. We have our best shooter on the sideboards where other teams play him to be. He needs to roll to the blue line near the centre to get that 100+ mph shot. Hughes shot wouldn’t break a pane of glass. The second best shot is Miller, we roll him back to walk in off the blue line, why not Pettersson. You’d think after this massive run of failure, we might try something else, but no. Just the same stupidity over and over.

Kind of game where you miss a healthy Mikheyev to back off the D. (And a couple more like him.) Podkolzin would have been more useful than Studnicka in this game, too. Podkolzin plays a heavy game, and Studnicka isn’t really his own namesake. I really like Hirose’s poise - first game and he looked unfazed by that heavy team he faced. Our power play really needs to be fixed, rotating Hughes to the side and swinging Pettersson to centre near the blue line would be a lot more intimidating for shot blockers. It would also make Pettersson more hard to check, he struggles when he has to face the boards to retrieve pucks.

That’s pretty much it. The way this team is constructed, we struggle against big, strong teams. We got som3 mileage from playing the core of the team way too much, and the past few games after the five in eight days, our stars look burned out. It wasn’t so much our inexperienced D tonight as it was our mostly small, slow forwards that couldn’t win hardly any one o; one battles. Hurose looked good, a little like Tanev’s first game.

We also have Johansson coming over that the Canucks are very high on. He is a 23 year old former first round pick that has matured very well over the past year or so. Decent size at 6’1” 187, right hand shot. Very sound defensively, and gets important points in big games. Jett Woo has also made great strides in Abby. He hits a ton and has lately been productive on the pp - fixture on the pk. So, lots of competition for spots next year on the right side. The Abby team plays great team D, which is terrific prep for gaining a comfort level with the Vancouver coaching staff.

Mojo Martin.

When a murderer takes a life he takes everything that the victim has, and it destroys any benefit he may have created for himself, family, friends and community. It is the most awful thing a person can do to another, and Justice requires returning the favour (short of executing the putative murderer) the only justification for not taking the life of the convicted is the chance of error. Determining guilt is not a perfect science, leaving the opportunity for error to be reversed is a requirement of Justice. Not only must Justice be done; but the reversing of injustice must be possible.

Racism in what way, exactly?

That’s 4 goals and 4 assists for Woo in his last ten games… so far. Really taking advantage of the pp time since Wolanin was moved up. This is on top of his impressive physical play. Things could be very interesting at right D in the fall in Vancouver: hopefully led by a healthy Hronek, Bear, ?Myers?, Johansson, Juulsen, Burroughs, ?Poolman?, and now add Woo. The question marks are much more nebulous on the left side: Hughes is a lock, ?OEL?, ?Wolanin?, ?Dermott?, ??Jurmo??, ???Hirose???, ???Pettersson???, ???Kudryavtsev???.

Canuck’s Army: Here’s the news today… there isn’t any news.

Huh. I guess he must have been hurt for a few years there in Arizona, too.