Ray_Cathode

Well, he has been playing in the Finish Elite League for the past year against men and he’s just 19 years old as of April, so yeah he just might be good enough.

Nice to have an asset like Barrie to move for a big return. Question is, what do Leafs do when his contract runs out. Sakic has done a great job of gathering assets without encumbering himself with huge contracts to old hands. He embraced their bad years and converted them into valuable pieces. Makar means they can acquire a valuable two way centre and pick up some great draft spots.

I read this and then went back and looked at some Pooalot videos. Now, Benning and Green really tried with this kid, but he was just awful. I’m sure he never tried to be awful, I’m sure he wanted to be terrific, but sad fact is... it isn’t petty to recognize awful for what it is.

Huh. The Stanley Cup finalist seems to think he has value. For sure those guys have no clue what they’re doing...

I’m sure he will, he is a sound defensive player and lord knows the Oilers can use some more of what he brings. Now, if only we can help somebody with Eriksson...

Unless we can dump a ton of salary we can’t afford him. We can develop our own... Hughes.

Getting their cap space back helps translate into Miller, Myers and Benn - that is the value we get in return for letting them go.

Getting their cap space back helps translate into Miller, Myers and Benn - that is the value we get in return for letting them go.

Yep, once Gaudette moved up we didn’t have a lot at centre in Utica.

Yeah, we just let one go in the Miller deal.

They might for a healthy Tanev. Having Myers for PK etc. Helps take Tanev out of the most vulnerable situations that have higher prospect of injuries. If Tanev is healthy he is a helluva defensive player. Having a period where he plays 85-90% of his games could change perceptions as to the risks involved in having him. For a team on a cup run, losing a key player on D or feeling they aren’t strong enough defensively could attract a late first pick.

Is Utunen still young enough?

The problem for Gaudette is that he may be playing behind 4.375 million bucks of Sutter and 3 million bucks of Beagle - and that sucks. Bad contracts seem to be coming back to bury us. The Luongo deal is not our fault, it accorded with the rules of the day, but Bettman decided to selectively punish Vancouver retroactively with a ruling that could only work in the insanity of Bettman’s NHL. But Eriksson, Sutter, etc. belong to Benning and an ownership guilty of having the patience of hornets at a barbecue in their desire to be immediately and permanently mediocre. If Benning succeeds in making this a contending team it will be in spite of ownership.

Rathbone, Rafferty, Tevis, Jasek, Utunen?

As a winger, I prefer Motte, as a centre we still have Sutter, though I’d rather not... not hat he is a bad guy, he’s not... he’s got good character, he does his role well, it’s just health issues.

Yeah, but so do the other teams - that’s why these players are on this list.

You mean like BJ Macdonald did with Gretzky?

Where he always is... hurt.

As much as I love having lots of D draft picks, I recognize that we have a lot to sort out. I guess it starts with just how good is Hughes? Is he a huge improvement to our offensive game? In a brief audition last year it looked good. Is Tryamkin coming back and how much has he improved over the past couple of years? Is Juolevi as good as his draft position promised? Can Sautner and Brisebois rise to solid five or six? Will Rathbone or Woo be a player for us in 2020? Is Rafferty as good as he looked in the last half of his second game? Will Teves or Elliot develop enough to be available in a year or two? We do have good quality in depth at goal. We are decent but not deep at centre. In the pipeline - only Madden- if we consider Gaudette as legit - something still to be proven We are desperate on the wings and have a lot of clutter of marginal players at the NHL level - Eriksson, Granlund, Goldobin, Motte, Spooner, and gimpy players in Sutter and Baertschi. And even a couple of question marks - how much development is left in Virtanen and Leivo? We don’t have much knocking on the door on the farm - McEwan, Jasek, and then it drops off steeply down to Lind and Gadjovich. We only have Lockwood after that - before this draft. So yeah, drafting a slew of wingers, a couple of whom might be centres?, was a good idea. I really like our top three picks - especially Podkolzin - yeah we have to wait, but he is going to be a handful when he gets here in a couple of years.

You figure guys that have spent half of each of the past two years hurt (Baertschi, Sutter) have value? Surely you jest. Hutton was chosen by the previous regime. Goldobin, really? He can’t stay in our lineup and and we were what, ninth from worst? I think by patient, you are admitting that at present they don’t have any significant value, which just goes to the establish my point. And I don’t particularly blame Benning except for the fact that he was unwilling to stand up to an ownership unwilling to accept that the team needed to be rebuilt. That premise stopped us from getting higher values from the assets that we once had, and assets that we still have whose value has all but disappeared. There is also a long list of players that we acquired with draft picks that could have secured more draft picks instead of surrendering them - Vey, Dorsett, etc.

Really? What surplus of any value? Guys with big contracts that either don’t play for crap like Eriksson, or guys too injury prone to have value like Tanev or do you mean guys like Spooner that can’t even make our paper thin lineup -you think they will harvest a bushel of draft picks? Which round two players look like picks - Dahlen ( that gleaned precious little ) Lind? Gadjovich? Or do you mean the second rounders we gave away for Vey, Dorsett, etc?

The trade is already discredited on its face and in comparison to other deals that went down. The undeniable record of Canuck drafting failures is right here: Overview Piece On Our Recent Drafting

If he doesn’t show up he still eats cap space?

From what I understand, if it wasn’t for the two year wait our pick would have been in he top three anyway. I’ll take our pick. At some point in the future, Chicago will be dying to get rid of the Seabrooke contract because they are going nowhere with that albatross around their necks. We have some very cap wise people on cdc, what happens if Eriksson refuses to show up to play?

Who the heck is worried about Miller getting hurt? What would matter is if Pettersson, Boeser, Horvat, Markstrom or Edler get hurt - who replaces them? After Pettersson hurt his knee in the Montreal game, he got 6 goals in the remaining 33 games after having 22 in the first 38 games that he played - he played 71 games in the year. I like Edler, I think he is a real honest player, but his health is not what it was - when he went down we were plain awful, and all of the warts on Hutton showed up after a couple of games where he was forced to play over 26 minutes - he was acceptable as a 3/4, but was not a One. What will tank Vancouver is the loss of even one of their key players, we just don't have the depth to fill for them. Even losing Sutter was a problem last year. Tanev you can count on missing half the season - Edler 20 or so games. Multiple injuries on our already pathetically thin defence would be catastrophic. Here we are in the Lower Rainland and we have to pray it doesn't rain. I would love to think we have not given up a potential high lottery pick, but luck at the lottery draws and how we never move up on them tells me we are not a 'lucky' team. Look at the Marleau trade to Carolina - that is how a real GM improves a building team - by accumulating high picks, not overpaying to do another team a favor and release them from cap hell.