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Kevin Biestra

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Everything posted by Kevin Biestra

  1. I think the identity of the 94 Canucks never really went out of style when it comes to winning championships. Big, strong, fast, don't take crap, everybody stands up for each other and for themselves (Bure, Ronning, Courtnall, etc.). All of those guys including little Cliff didn't rely one hundred percent on enforcers to make sure they weren't pushed around...they pushed back. Balanced scoring through three lines, solid defense with at least some offensive prowess, hard nosed crease clearing d-men (Snepsts / Campbell / Butcher or Diduck / Murzyn / Babych) and A+ level clutch goaltending. And this was basically the identity of the 82 Canucks just with a bit of superstar scoring in Bure. Otherwise the teams were very similar...Rota, Fraser, Williams, Smyl all scored and stood up for themselves. Smyl and Fraser and Williams were the team's top scorers and its enforcers. The Naslund era was the start of "leave it to Brashear and to some degree Bertuzzi / Jovo" to deter the rough stuff against the skill players, instead of the skill players doing it themselves. That's how we ended up with the Bertuzzi / Moore incident in the first place. The Sedins took it to an entirely new level with "pimpslap my face a hundred times like you're Morgan Freeman in Street Smart and maybe we'll get you on the power play." The Sedins and Naslund were great players and I have tons of praise for their individual awards and the team success under the Sedins...but it also established a culture that can only get you through the playoffs if you can 80s Oilers your way past the other team skillwise. We had that for a few years when the Sedins were at their peak but when that isn't the case then it just means your team is a pushover. Anyway, it looks like we might have a goalie in the tradition of McLean / Brodeur / Luongo / Smith in Demko, and in Hughes we have at least one defenseman who can match and surpass Brown / Lumme from 94 and McCarthy / Lanz / Halward from the 80s. As for the rest...we'll see. I think you need a clutch goalie and a clutch captain at the bare minimum. We had that in Brodeur / Smyl. We had that in McLean / Linden. It was iffy in both cases with Luongo / Sedin. The Sedins never really upped their game in the playoffs over the regular season and I have said before something along the lines that Luongo was three parts Ken Dryden and one part Dan Cloutier. The great Cup winners had clutch captains or de facto captains...Gretzky, Crosby, Yzerman, Sakic, Scott Stevens, Denis Potvin etc. And other clutch players on the team who may as well have been captains...Messier, Anderson, Lidstrom, Forsberg, Trottier, Bossy, etc. Linden is one of the all time game seven kings, and the only guy who showed up for the bronze medal game in 98, just doesn't have a Cup to go with it. Is Bo one of those guys? Maybe...we'll see.
  2. I wonder if that is an NHL record for a single game and no face off losses.
  3. Well, if they're gonna screw up their draft position, might as well have some fun and blow the other team out of the water while doing it.
  4. Yeah Ronning is for sure one of my all time favorite Canucks, top ten for sure I'd say and I have made a moderate case before for him in the Ring of Honour. Aside from the glaring omission in my books King Richard, I have Ronning as part of the next tier of candidates with Boudrias, Lidster, Lever, Williams, Gino, etc. I always thought two statues outside the rink of Williams and Ronning riding their sticks side by side would look pretty good. And I've always been inclined to do a little more to honor Ivan Hlinka as one of the first Czechs in the NHL, given his participation in the 1982 run plus his international legendary standing. That was another trade I forgot about when it came to trading the future to get over the hump in the present in 1982. The Canucks really did a major Benning in that regard, betting huge on the present without a lot of indication that the time was now - Brent Ashton and a pick for Ivan Hlinka, Rick Vaive and Bill Derlago for Tiger Williams - without that cup run it would have been a disaster giving away those three players...all had great futures ahead of them. Ashton had something like ten 20 goal seasons and hit 40 one year.
  5. One point to catch Cliff Ronning aka Reese from The Terminator.
  6. It's complicated. The 1982 and 1994 Canucks were teams you didn't F with. The rest of the league knew that there would be consequences. You would be dealing with Delorme, Williams, Fraser, Snepsts etc. or Gino, Antoski, Diduck, Murzyn, Momesso, etc. The Rangers were dirtier...I don't think anyone on the Canucks would have done the Messier on Linden hit when he was down in Game 6. And the Islanders were probably dirtier than the 82 Canucks...nobody on the Canucks would have done Billy Smith's pointless slash to Smyl's face in game 4 (sure Tiger was crazy enough to do it but he didn't). But you don't have to be that dirty and scummy to win. The Oilers dynasty, the Penguins pair of repeat Cups, all of the Red Wings cups, etc. None of those were scumbag teams. 2011 is a weird one. Yeah, the Canucks had some tough guys...but Kesler and Burrows were mostly known for talking crap to the other team until they take a penalty. I remember seeing guys just suddenly slash at Kesler's face behind the net for seemingly no reason and I can only imagine what Kesler had said he was going to do to their wife and children. The 2011 Canucks had a few guys that did tough stuff but as a team...nobody was afraid of the Canucks and unfortunately the defining image I have of that culture is Daniel Sedin getting his face pimpslapped by Marchand with no conequences. For 1982 it's probably Ron Delorme destroying Grant Mulvey. For 1994...maybe the Bure elbow on Churla or Linden crawling injured to the bench at the end of game 6. For 2011 it's getting pimpslapped and then the power play either works afterward (San Jose) or it doesn't (Boston). In short, I guess I'm saying that the 1982 and 1994 cultures in my opinion were championship adequate and had arisen organically. Yeah there's another step into the gutter than can be taken but...I'm okay without it and nobody really liked it when Cooke was doing it.
  7. Possibly... The 1982 Canucks had real depth on the blueline. It was actually really bad luck that their top two offensive defensemen (Rick Lanz and Kevin McCarthy, both 50+ point guys) got hurt before the playoffs and missed the entire run. Those two in the lineup would have definitely been enough to win game 1 against the Islanders and then who knows. It was kind of like if the 1994 Canucks had been without both Lumme and Brown for the entire playoffs. The 82 team also had Doug Halward, Harold Snepsts, rookie Garth Butcher, Lars Lindgren, Colin Campbell, Neil Belland etc. on the blueline. The 82 team was also largely built out of other teams' veterans. Richard Brodeur was the Quebec Nordiques goalie for pretty much their entire WHA run, Ivan Boldirev and Darcy Rota had been around a long time and were important for scoring, same with Ivan Hlinka who was new to the NHL but a longtime Czech veteran...similar to when Fetisov or Larionov or Makarov came over to the NHL. Tiger Williams had cut his teeth for years in Toronto and we traded away magnificent prospects to get him. Kevin McCarthy and Doug Halward were veterans when we acquired them. Lars Molin was developed in Sweden. The only real homegrown talent on the 82 team that I can think of offhand was Smyl, Fraser, Snepsts and Gradin. Also the run depended entirely on Richard Brodeur. It was basically an entire playoffs for three plus rounds of "bubble Demko" and the rest of the team just had to score two or three goals, very achievable in the 1980s, except for games 3 and 4 against the Islanders where Potvin and company focused on shutting down the Canucks' offense. Some Islanders called those the best two games the Islanders dynasty ever played.
  8. ...take Jake Virtanen, turn him sideways and shove him up Mark Messier's candy *** and that's the bottom line.
  9. I'd say Stamkos was a legit superstar 10 years ago. Led the league in goals twice, top 3 in voting at C for at the end of the season for 4 years in a row. Crazy that even perennial post-season All Stars can fail to make the HOF. Four years in a row for Rick Martin (1st team twice) and still on the outside looking in...died ten years ago or so, so he never will get to see it if it happens. Just lacked longevity and career numbers...kind of a Neely / Bure type career. Kind of a similar deal for Charlie Simmer or Kevin Stevens too I guess. Heh, Kevin Stevens was a post-season All-Star 3x but gets almost literally no credit. They just go on Lemieux's resume.
  10. That's fair but we have yet to see if Calgary is capable of playoff success. Of the last 15 Cup champions you could only make a case that four (Boston, LAx2 and St. Louis) didn't have superstar cores. And even that's if you don't count Bergeron / Chara / Thomas / Marchand or Kopitar / Quick. If you do count those you're down to 1/15 in St. Louis and they still had Selke winner O'Reilly and touched by the hand of god for one season Binnington.
  11. I think the gun has been jumped a bit on Pettersson to be honest and did from the start. He could well establish himself as one...but to date I would say he's halfway between an actual star that has a potential shot at an Art Ross Trophy (or even top five in NHL scoring for one season) and at the other end someone like Petr Klima who is a highly skilled wizard that still hovers around 65 points.
  12. I'd agree that Hughes is probably projecting to be around 5th best defenseman in the league...but at the same time that is a hall of famer and 26 teams in the league would switch places with us. Going back a few decades...okay we don't have the Coffey, Bourque, Chelios or MacInnis...but if we have the Larry Murphy or Phil Housley I can live with and build around that.
  13. Yeah for active players, the only guys I have clearly ahead of him for the HOF are Crosby and Ovechkin. I have him in about the same ballpark as Malkin, Thornton, Kane, Keith, Chara and Toews. Roughly on par with McDavid at the moment if he retired today...obviously McDavid will blow him out of the water by the time it's all over and Draisaitl will probably catch him too. I guess Hedman might have passed him too.
  14. Papa Keith was a 1000 point player. Matt seems to be on the same trajectory. We should have picked him, that is unless he has Evander Kane / Jake Virtanen level character issues...and by all indications he doesn't, he's just a garden variety dickhead. Guy is on pace for like 100 points this year...imagine if we had that instead of...nothing. Well, I guess instead of a respectable 4th liner. Sigh... I think he's gonna end up one of the great father / son tandems of all time. Obviously not Bobby and Brett but a good chance we're looking at 2000 points. Also a stealth great tandem with Mike Foligno and his kid.
  15. I thought it was kind of ridiculous at the time and still think it was dumb. I like Garland and I would have given a late 1st rounder for him one for one...but 9th overall plus OEL when he's 65 years old just to get out of one year of bad contracts...silly. The whole thing hinged on OEL never aging and Garland being super awesome. Garland is just good. If we wanted OEL that badly we likely just had to wait a year and we wouldn't have had to pay to get rid of those contracts at all. We'd have our 9th overall pick on his way into the system. We could have tried to trade something one for one for Garland if there was time pressure there. And OEL on his own might well have been negative value...Phoenix might have paid us to take him.
  16. Well, it's all subjective of course how one defines a franchise player and then whether they include Bergeron on top of that. But even setting aside his Selke trophies he's at around 970 points. That's pretty much top of the heap for anyone outside of the Crosby / Ovechkin / McDavid / Draisaitl / Malkin category for most of a career, and Bergeron has some years left and is showing little sign of slowing down. No reason to think he won't get to 1200 points or so. Anyway, once a guy has 970 points for one team, I think you have to look for reasons to NOT call him a franchise player...and in Bergeron's case, all of the extra evidence says mega franchise player. Thus far 4 Selke Trophies, a finalist 10 times, top five another two times. And he'll be a finalist again this year at a minimum.
  17. Well he's obviously got Guy Carbonneau beat...in Selke Trophies and by several hundred points. He's basically this generation's Bob Gainey or Guy Carbonneau with the career scoring numbers to potentially get in on his scoring alone. I think he probably gets in on the old standard as well. Gainey and Carbonneau's scoring counterparts for career numbers were just good players like Mike Krushelnyski or Pelle Eklund or Ilkka Sinisalo or Jim Fox. Bergeron has their Selke trophies and the scoring of someone like Jason Spezza.
  18. If I could pick any player for my team from let's say 2010-2020...Bergeron would probably be among my top ten choices from the entire NHL. There is no question he would be in the top 30.
  19. Count me in with a vote for Bergeron as a franchise player. I have him at about a 95% chance for the Hall of Fame. This will be his 11th season as a Selke finalist, and early next year he will score his 1000th point.
  20. He represented the Canucks at the all star game. Scored more career goals than Henrik Sedin.
  21. Update... JT Miller catches Darcy Rota with point #81. Four more for Big Cliff.
  22. McDavid has led the league in assists twice and been second place three more times counting this year so far. I think he'd probably do all right.
  23. The turnover was actually pretty crazy. I think the only players left on the Canucks were Linden, McLean and Adams...they were one draft pick and the results of one trade...but that was also kind of all we needed. It still felt like a rematch of the same lineups. Losing Lidster as a throw in always bothered me and it came back to hurt them in the final. Also, thinking of 1989 reminds me of another one of the all time great trades in Canucks history that never gets talked about. Paul Reinhart and Steve Bozek for a 3rd round pick. That's actually getting close to Brodeur / Naslund / Ronning levels in terms of return for what was given up. Calgary doctors must have really thought Reinhart was finished after that injury. Take injuries out of the equation and I think he would have easily been an 800 point defenseman. Might have had him still going beside Babych in 1994 without injuries. Speaking of Steve Bozek, he's another guy who peaked in his rookie year (going back to an earlier discussion). So was Joel Otto for that matter, offensively anyway though he was a pretty old rookie.
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