Rob_Zepp

good to know your still above ground and stopping pucks. the forwards and goaltenders are good, still not sure about our defense. will be fun to share the ride with this group.

I see this version of the Canucks like last year's Toronto Blue Jays - a lot of offensive potential (potentially top six in league for top 9 ability to score...and certainly best in the Pacific by quite a margin) but keeping pucks out will be interesting.   Demko plays like he can they will be more than fine and most certainly able to keep pace in the weak division they are in.    If they get on a role with their style they can play with anyone and I don't think people yet realize how crazy good their summer pick ups will be....OEL just needs to be what he can be not what he was at his best but the rest are waaaaay better than people realize.    This is a sleeper team.   Cheers SJ!

It's a Swedish thing!!!

Hey RZ, hope you're well in 2021.

If you go back over our 5 decades, don't really remember a highly-touted youth coming from The Lower Rainland. That's probably a big factor.

Then Cdn rivals(WIN & TO) take highly regarded fwds afterwards.

Also factor in Jake showing flashes with The Hitmen, & the expected trolling emanating from them parts.

Finally, it was JB's(ballyhooed drafting forte) first kick at the can. So lots more trolling came from rival regions on that basis.

For so many reasons, I'd warrant Canucklehead-hearts are heavily mortgaged. Yet this is nicely eased, as so many of our other prospect-projects have jumped in value/equity.

Sometimes you wonder if the entire team is Jake Virtanen given how often he's brought up.

Maybe if the team was nothing but Jake Virtanens, at least one of those Virtanens would have a good game and people would ease up on him.

some fans need to dump on someone. sometime in the future if petey has an off year, some will dump on him. 

if some people have no one to dump on, they won’t be happy fans. weird.

glad to see you around again. what do you think of our goalie tandem? 

Very high on Demko and intrigued by Holtby with Clark.   I am still not sure there is enough minor league depth though.   LD was a loss in my opinion.   I can see the overall SV% and GAA being as good as better though given how vastly improved the D corps is.    Hard to believe Canucks got two top four Dmen for a sum total of a third round pick.

years ago, i coached hockey with a guy who said he had been in boston’s system. he never played in the nhl but said that wren blair was his coach. i guess there were no goalie coaches back then. he asked blair what advice he could give him? blair said, stop the damn puck. i think his first name was dennis but i can’t quite remember. he also said, in warm up, the players would shoot the puck at his head. when he complained to blair, he was looked down on.

Welcome to CDC 

Yup but that is quite a few  years back now.   Always find August hard as not "training" for a camp still seems weird.    I do miss the "team" stuff for sure.   I don't miss bag skates, stairs, buses, idiots who cannot keep a puck on the ice in warmups or practice, stick technology that has taken every player and turn them into Ovie, wet pads, constant bruises, etc etc.    There, on balance I guess the change hasn't been too bad!

it must be twice as hard to bag skate with goalie skates on? doesn’t sound fair. a fellow, who had played in the boston chain, i coached minor hockey with claims he hated team mates shooting at his head during practises. i guess back then, there were no goalie coaches. he said when he asked wren blair how he wanted him to play, blair said, just stop the puck.

Only good thing about being a goalie is no one expects you to go fast when skating.   To be honest, it isn't that hard skating if it is line drills, it sucks if they are circle drills.   I had one enlightened coach who would get players who head hunted in practice have to stand in net with back turned and we got to use player sticks and aim at their assets from the hash marks.  No wind ups but I had a decent wrist shot.......

Hey, I am just glad you are back!

You bring great insight, and as you can see, you are well appreciated. 

Regards Paul (Jan)

I love the smell of Schadenfreude on a Friday afternoon.

Re-arranging deck chairs on the two Titanics....

Britannic and Titanic be going down. 

agreed. First time ive looked forward to a season since 2011.

Really excited by the moves made this off-season.  In a vacuum, I was kind of angry about some of them as they happened, but taking a step back, and seeing that there is a general direction and vision to it....priceless.  We added 2 legit top 6 wingers, we added 2 defensemen that should change the complexion of the back end.  We should be strong enough to actually be....good!  You know how you fear this moment, like it's some kind of gift that is going to be snatched away?  I think a lot of fans follow this route where we can only win if we have multiple first overalls in the line-up.  But you look back at some of the recent drafts, and Pettersson and Boesser, both under-rated at the time.  Horvat improves every season like a beast.  We just need Hughes and Juolevi to join the party, and Virtanen to get 20 goals and 15-20 assists, and we're golden!  Oh, and goaltending, do we even have to go into that?

I watch most games but I wasn't terribly invested in watching last season, that'll probably change now that we should be gunning for the playoffs 

@Rob_Zepp For sure. I think it'd be extremely hard to argue that Vancouver isn't in the top five this off season in terms of improvement. 

Other than the Aves and the Rangers, I'm hard pressed to think of a team that's improved as much as us.

Well, according to Sportsnet ...

Jase Robertson  almost as entetaining as uncle Si.

I’m going to let the hair grow and on my legs.....oh wait, I’m a dude.  But it’s the thought that counts right?

Minus button has been tried numerous times and has failed and will continue to fail because we as a society are too sensitive to criticism. Its like that one Black Mirror episode, where everyone is incapable of being honest because they are terrified of rejection and ostracization. 

@Toews Actually the minuses were deactivated again because one of the software updates changed the reputation system.  It took away the ability to limit minuses.

F

Very  happy with this off-season.  Addressed needs perfectly without overpayment.

Now if we can just jettison some of the high priced dead weight that would be awesome. 

Agree 100%

Boeser was first Joe.  But JB has cleaned up in the other rounds too. There is a big bubble of young guys on their way.  I think that’s why JB traded for Miller.  

Boeser, Petey, Hughes, Podzolkin - these are they types of players you tank for. So we've done that. Time to try to win some games. 

if we sign myers we are laughing  sutter and tanev can be traded for prospects or picks time to cut some  of the fat

Making a strong run for a playoff spot would shut up a number of them (granted not all as they have an axe to grind).  Being in another lottery pick position will just give them more ammo.

Well i think if the Nucks miss the playoffs again, Benning is gone so problem solved!

You’d still troll it zep. 

The sunshine and lollipops everything Benning does is solid gold crowd.

maybe a thread for for the Benning can do no wrong crowd so they can go agree with everything their  told to think by there lord and saviour. Lol. 

Once Reillys contract is finished

Nylander this season making 10 but thats only because of his signing bonus and the time remaining in the season when he signed. Hopefully they pay Rielly 10 mil. 

Reilly still has 3 years left on his contract so this is a mute point. 

gives me a lot of hope for our rebuild thats for sure. 

@Dazzleif they talked about Beagle, then ya, like that.   My feed didn't include any of that so not sure what was said between periods and so forth.   Seemed really obvious to me that their (Capitals) bench looked flat and in compare to last year where Beagle was pumping everyone up.   Some guys contribute a lot more to team success than just the stats they bring.

@Rob_Zepp I was talking to Brad Marchand because he mentioned Slavin. Slavin was specifically pointed out as being a highly underrated defenceman and that if he didn't play in Carolina, he'd be a "superstar". Basically what Brad Marchand said LOL.

I remember reading an article where the journalist claims that Tampa Bay can't be considered the best until Toronto plays its best (paraphrasing, but the meaning is there). in other words, Toronto hasn't played its best, so it is 'guaranteed' to succeed. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay's success is unsustainable, so it is 'guaranteed' to drop.

I can't locate the article anymore, but it was really crappy journalism. The writer was so delusional that I was shocked that the editor would allow it to be sent out.

@King Heffy I don't think Tavares was a problem. I see the reasons why he left. Duchene on the other hand. 

That was a distraction. Nylander basically has got a great contract. But it's going to take him the rest of the season to catch up and get back into game shape. So they pretty much wiped out year one. NYI are making up for it by having everyone buy into Trotz system. 

I'm not saying that Tavares himself was a problem, just the media attention and uncertainty.

Nylander's absolute trash who had his numbers inflated by Matthews.  Guy makes Vrbata look like a workaholic.

Same situation as the last time we took a defenseman in the first round.  Bourdon had a similar path to the NHL and was finally showing signs of putting it all together before the tragedy struck.  OJ plays a similar style of game and we will need to be patient.

I am really hoping the fans don't crucify Mikey when he lets in a bad goal in the WJHC.  This market is especially hard on goalies.

Yeah, that logic makes no sense. 

"He got injured! That makes him a bad pick!"

People view players as commodities and not people, that's why.

Yup. Learned that when I was younger.

Carlin evolved from the most gifted comedian, into a relevant, important social critic. I sure miss the bloke.

Can only chuckle to myself, imagining his likely commentary on today's society.

I don't even know the context, but this is pretty much Jordan Peterson in a nutshell.