Raph

It's okay dude. All of us thought we would be making $100k+/yr by age 25. I admit I was one of those guys back when I was a naive teen.

Holy cow, what a shot. But bad breakdown at the end, you don't leave MSL open like that.

If Lucic didn't make a big scene in the handshake lineup, then the reporters wouldn't be hounding Weise about what happened.

Give me reasons why you think Kassian would have not been available during the off season. Short of Hodgson suffering a career ending injury in the playoffs, Hodgson had much more value than Kassian who was pushed out of the lineup into the AHL by guys like Stafford and Foligno at the time. Kassian was still way too rough along the edges to make any difference in the playoffs, let alone having AV trust him on the ice with only a month of being on the roster. MG's narrow-minded vision of a hockey team just includes a weigh scale.

While I'm not the biggest AV fan, I was calling for MG's head since the end of the 2011-2012 season with the disasters on Torres, Ehrhoff, and Hodgson. Simply put, MG should have been canned last year, not AV. If this year was still disaster, then can AV.

I don't mind Chinese only signs if the context is right. For example, shops at Yaohan Centre or Crystal Mall where the shop owner can barely speak English himself. But this is on public grounds and by a large corporation. They have no excuse to not have that translated, as they have more than enough resources to have someone do it. This isn't some ragtag Ma and Pa shop scraping to get by and making makeshift signs on scrap pieces of cardboard.

who cares, he already surpassed expectations. Any team is lucky to have a 4th liner step up and play hero for one of their 16 wins in the playoffs.

Who cares. The expensive part of his contract is over. His cap hit is fairly easy to swallow at $3.8M or something. He's also durable as he plays a style not conducive to injuries. We'll get back the Edler of old cuz he will be able to play without thinking.

Yes secondary players are replaceable, but you still have to replace them. We lost 3 players who could QB the powerplay (Samuellson, Salo, Ehrhoff), and none of them were replaced with a player of equivalent ability. We went from a team overflowing with depth at centre to a team that has had to use wingers or AHL players to fill the middle the last 2 years. We went from 2 star goalies to none.

Our success has only been for a relatively short period. I don't think it's a good excuse. Pittsburgh and Chicago have still remained competitive after winning their cups. Chicago pretty much had to dismantle most of their team after 2010.

Well, we'll never know where negotiations could have gone with Ehrhoff cuz Gillis shipped him off as soon Ehrhoff rejected the insulting "Bieksa caphit". Gillis made a huge mistake in playing favourites and choosing Bieksa as the gold standard for Canuck defense and viewing Ehrhoff as the guy riding shotgun. Also have to remember that his rights were first traded to the Islanders where he rejected a boatload of money from them, before his rights were traded to the Sabres. And who knows... at this point I could see Buffalo rebuilding faster than the Canucks with them having like 10 draft picks in the first two rounds in the upcoming draft.

The Canucks will never.. eeeee...ever win the cup as long as the Sedins are signed for $7M/year.

Off topic, did they announce this game as a sellout?

They were acquired through trades, we didn't sign them. They were bad pickups none the less and should have been waived, bought out, or traded for a 7th round pick a long time ago. This the problem with Gillis's foresight. We've always had a problem with having too many left side defenseman. This is why Ballard never worked out cuz Hamhuis, Edler, and sometimes Alberts always got first dibs. Ballard could never adjust playing on the right side. Ehrhoff and Salo are both right side and they were replaced by Tanev and Garrison. Now Garrison has the same problem Ballard in being forced to play on the right side. Hamhuis has seniority and Edler is management's baby. So our right side defenseman are: Bieksa: high risk, high reward, all disaster Garrison: awkwardly missing shots all over the place Tanev: reliable stay at home, but can't expect too much from him Bieksa can actually be a decent player as we saw in 2011 when he only focuses on shutdown. But without Ehrhoff or Salo to help push the offense, I'm sure he feels a huge weight on his shoulders to help the offense, thus increasing his mistakes.

I named my hockey pool "Fire MG" at the start of the season. Looks like I have more foresight than Gillis and his crystal ball.

You could also argue that there is no one on the roster that has earned the right to pin the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. It would have to be a generational superstar as big as The Rock.

"Oh yes, he is a perfect replacement for Salo cuz he has a hard shot..." -MG thinking

I agree, not a bad trade if you're a lowballing cheapskate like MG.

I might puke a little if Kassian is signed for more than $1.5M/year. He hasn't shown anything to warrant a real raise.

Why does Gillis mention the great Dane Fox, but he doesn't mention his prized possession of Zack Kassian whom we gave up so much for?

Ehrhoff's cap hit is only like $4M or something. And it's not like Aquaman hasn't dished out $10M a year for a player before... And Ehrhoff was looking for term. And seeing as to how he was the only un-injured D-man during his 2 years here, his playing style is not conducive to injuries. And besides, if MG was smart and admitted his mistake earlier, he could have saved $4.2M by trading Ballard away for a 7th round draft pick. Ballard was a LD and we had too many LD's. He was also used sparingly during the 2011 run. With a blooming Tanev ready to join the ranks, anyone could see that he was expendable. Why did MG keep him? And then when we lose Salo (RD), we replace him with Garrison (LD), wtf? At least Garrison hasn't had too much trouble adjusting to RD. He would also probably save more money if he admitted the Booth experiment was a failure by trading him for peanuts. Same could be said for Bernier.

LOL at anyone blaming the refs. When the team is playing like chickens with their heads cut off, it's easy to make calls cuz every play is made with reckless desperation.

Okay so not quite so rock bottom yet.

Notice how Edler has been on the ice for the last 2 penalty calls with his teammates having to save his ass.

Holy crap Edler, that is not a grenade you are handling.