Toews
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Everything posted by Toews
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Yeah not sure where the confidence comes from. Getting the players back on the ice and making sure that they don't get exposed is going to be a logistical nightmare.
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But that's your answer right there. Who empowered the WHO? The same "selfish and greedy" people are the ones that made their own appointments to the WHO. All of those appointments were political in nature. I think it has been obvious from the beginning that the world at large is ill equipped to deal with this crisis. A lot of countries have elected leaders who do not believe in science and have a religious or some other ideological bend to them that got them into office. How did these "selfish and greedy" people get into office? It starts at the ballot box. A lot of politicians are heavily leveraged by their rich donors, these donors get disproportionate say over policy and are often only concerned with maximizing their investments. Its not surprising to see the US get so hard, Trump maybe the figurehead but its the lobbyists that own Washington.
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This is something that I have thought about as well as I have seen images being posted online. You can get way more hits by from a picture by sensationalizing it. Its easy to create the illusion that people are being dangerously reckless, when in actuality they are following guidelines. Nature of the click bait world we live in, where someone apparently doing something wrong gets a lot more attention and media coverage than everyone else.
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I suppose you could try to bombard people with healthy living choices, maybe a brute force technique might do some good. I don't claim to be in the know on human psychology. There are arguments against it, most people now days have low attention spans. Its more important to get essential information out rather than try to make some sort of broader point which is probably just going to be lost on the masses. We have known that there is a direct correlation b/w smoking and lung cancer but it often takes governments hiking up taxes on smokes in order to get people to quit. Sadly that is not the case with food, the healthy choices are often more expensive while the cheap stuff that clogs your arteries is cheap and easily available.
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I feel like there is enough reinforcement of the importance of diet and exercise to long term health. The problem is getting people in North America to follow a plan, most people are (to be frank) weak on will power and have resistance to "being told what to do". The message you are promoting likely just falls on deaf ears.
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IIRC the Iranian case was the result of a lack of trust in the current regime. The ayatollah didn't call a press conference and suggest to his citizens to drink methanol. Its the reverse situation with the USA where people are ingesting fish tank cleaner and disinfectants because of their trust in Bone Spurs.
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Why can't we just watch the clip of Trump suggesting injecting disinfectant into the lungs as a possible treatment for COVID-19? Trump believes that he is a "stable genius" and that he knows more than the generals/doctors/scientists/experts. His supporters buy wholeheartedly into that. It's always a 4D chess move no matter what insanely dumb thing comes out of his fat lying mouth. Trump could suggest playing in traffic and Republicans would say "Lamestream media doesn't want people to get exercise, obesity levels are at a all time high. Look at the number of Americans dying from heart disease. What's wrong with making suggestions? What if something good came out of this?"
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His name is DERRICK! So much disrespect in one post, let us not forget, this is a kid with a family. His second cousin died by being struck by lightning, then three years later his best friend was electrocuted... right in the nads!!! After all this kid endured to make the NHL... Smh in disgust right now.
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Is it worth it if the public and health care workers who are sick still don't have access to tests? I would love hockey back as well but i would like to do it when we have an excess of kits. It feels wrong to use our limited resources not to combat the spread of the virus but on getting our entertainment back.
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I don't really have a strong opinion but its a recommendation that makes some sense to me. The grocery store is the one place that no one can avoid. That also makes it the one place where we are most likely to get infected. I no longer venture into the cookies/candy aisle at my local store. Because it is generally crowded and I have always seen way too many idiots dialing home to ask which brand of chocolate to buy. The store unfortunately isn't built to facilitate social distancing. A few too many people (along with their carts) suddenly enter an aisle and it makes it an adventure trying to get out, especially seeing the anxiety that people get when you are trying to navigate your way through. I haven't gotten my hands on a mask, which I imagine might make me look like a risk to people. The panic is real and you are unfortunately going to meet some anxious people who are likely going to be looking at you judgmentally. I have never been this hyper conscious of what I am doing in my life probably since high school, just my mere presence can cause anxiety in others. It was the other way around in high school. Its unfortunate but we will all have to change how we have done things in the past. We have no choice but to adapt with the times. There is no real benefit trying to desperately cling to past habits and behaviours. But really its just about being smart, whether you are shopping alone or with someone. I liked Jimmy's idea of dividing up the list, its more efficient, and it also avoids situations where couples enter crowded areas of stores together, which is probably the only real complaint that I have.
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Sportsnet Interview with Brian Burke - Cap info
Toews replied to VegasCanuck's topic in Canucks Talk
His analysis of the game is worth listening to, his baseless speculation imho isn't. Regardless I won't derail this thread for those who want to discuss the substance of his comments. -
Sportsnet Interview with Brian Burke - Cap info
Toews replied to VegasCanuck's topic in Canucks Talk
The problem with Burke is he is someone who likes to hear his own voice. So I am not sure whether his speculation is well thought out and substantive or this is just his usual spitballing. -
NHL projects $84M-$88M salary cap for next season
Toews replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in General Hockey Discussion
This is a very good point which I hadn't thought of. Players are already looking at sky high escrow next season, would they want compound it with compliance buyouts? -
Never said you did. My point was the red flags with Gudbranson should not be understated. Analytics predicted that he was a poor acquisition. I wonder now if we had Gear in place earlier whether we would have traded for him. The only red flag for me with Miller was that we traded a protected 1st for him. He could have scored 20 less points this season and I would still be satisfied with this trade. I was hoping for a player who could put up around 45-55 points while being an excellent complementary player on the top line. The fact that he turned out to be more was gravy on top, but Miller was always a solid player even going back to his time with the Rangers. Tampa was an exceptionally deep team, that was no secret. Sutter never flashed the kind of skill to indicate to me that he could potentially be true top 6 center. I watched him Pittsburgh as well, I scoffed at Linden calling a "foundational" player. Maybe we can agree to disagree here because I don't think Sutter was ever a 2nd line center nor did I ever expect him to be one for us. Bonino at the time had decent value because he was a 3rd line center with term making just 1.9M making him especially valuable add to contending teams looking to shore up their C depth. Looking back I wish we had traded him for futures, may have even got a 1st at the deadline for him instead of foundational Sutter who we ended up paying 4.375M to because he was a pending UFA. Contending teams don't want to pay that figure for a bottom 6 center, crippling the trade value of the asset. Based not just off their first games but their track record in the NHL also indicated that we were overestimating their capabilities. They were useful players for us to plug into the lineup but poor acquisitions considering the assets expended to get them and the roles they were expected to fill. We also invested in a lot of fringe NHLers on other teams, expending draft capital on a failed strategy of "filling in the age gap". None of these players ever materialized into anything worth salvaging long term. Baertschi (2nd) was the one shining star which people used to justify those moves but he too has dropped off the face of the planet. Linden Vey (2nd), Andrey Pedan (3rd), Derrick Pouliot (4th), Adam Clendening (5th/Forsling), Emerson Etem(6th), Adam Larsen(5th), picks were moved out to get each one of these guys and they were never worth anything more than a cup of coffee. I have less of a problem with a 5th for Prust and a 3rd for Dorsett as we can count that as veteran acquisitions that teams make for a rebuild. Of course those teams also usually have excess draft capital which we never really possessed. Indeed but would be further ahead and how will some of our past moves affect our future chances of lifting the Stanley Cup. There are lots of teams in the NHL who have acquired some young elite talent. The teams that win Cups will have great cost controlled depth around those pieces as well. The Canucks still have a ways to go towards achieving that goal. We need to clean up some of our cap management, again I really hope Chris Gear's promotion goes a long ways towards achieving that. It can take time for a team to team to crawl out of being a perennial bottom feeder. My point was that this process is prolonged when teams shoot themselves in the foot the way Edmonton has constantly done. Blaming their problems on a "losing culture" is a simplistic explanation, their biggest issue has been managerial incompetence due to a fanboy owner who kept hiring ex-Oilers. Our problem is that we nearly traded an entire year's of draft picks and have squat to show for it. This doesn't include holding onto players for too long in the hopes of failed playoff runs. Had ownership been accepting of a rebuild maybe we could have flipped those players for more picks. We didn't have to wait to the deadline to move Vrbata and Hamhuis, could have just moved them the previous offseason. Had ownership been willing to eat money off of some of those contracts we could have received more. Thanks for the civil discussion. It feels much nicer now that a lot of the usual suspects who derail threads with personal attacks are temporarily out. I don't have any strong views on individual moves but the whole collection of the them when put together just makes me see that we could potentially have been further ahead than we are currently, had we had a more patient owner. I hope Aquaman has actually learned from this and in the future will exercise more restraint. We would never had the teams that we did had Nonis not stood his ground on Brad Richards.
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The problem is that people that criticize Trudeau for this often talk out of both sides of their mouths. When we took a more honest approach with Saudi Arabia, the complaints were that Trudeau's virtue signalling was costing our economic growth. The reason why politicians often talk out of both sides of their mouths is because their critics do the same. We need to find a consistent approach with how we deal with some of these oppressive nations, that's not going to be easy to do especially with the way trade currently functions. Ideally I want to believe that through our choices alone we can help free the oppressed masses around the planet. If we had affordable choices to some of the goods we currently rely upon China to deliver, it would go a long way to loosening some of the economic ties that force us to be politically correct in the face of one of the most oppressive governments in recent times.
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I believe the Panthers shopped Gudbranson rather than the other way around. The Canucks were desperate to fill that second RHD slot with Tanev being the only legit option on that side. In general we should have been wary why the Panthers were giving up on a former 3rd overall pick who plays the most coveted position in the sport (RHD). I won't lie I was wary of the Miller trade when it happened but it has been the right move for this team. Miller has turned into a great mentor for some of our young players, I would never have envisioned that. Miller has definitely been a force multiplier for us, a truly incredible addition by Benning. Credit to him. I disagree that it justifies the Sutter/Gudbranson trades. I think they were decidedly inferior players and it was obvious the very first game these guys played as Canucks. I don't think there ever was any home run potential there with those two. They were useful bodies to plug into the lineup but in the end they largely didn't live up to their billing, Gudbranson was touted as a potential top 4 defenseman and Sutter was supposed to be a "foundational player". We made a bunch of trades like those to acquire lots of middling players and expended draft capital as a result. I believe this was done to satisfy an unrealistic mandate from ownership, ie. we want to win but we want to rebuild as well, also referred to as 'retool'. If you look at the early years of Benning what came up a lot was "losing culture", people frequently talked about the Oilers and how we had to avoid their fate. But anyone looking at the Oilers would see that they never had Edler+Tanev and the Sedins to insulate any talent they did bring in. The Canucks were at a decided advantage to the Oilers. I am uncertain how much of what is blamed as "losing culture" in Edmonton was not just some supremely $&!#ty roster construction. The Oilers sucked at drafting, they sucked at free agency and they couldn't stop getting in their own way. Look at what the Avs got for Duchene who is an inferior player to Hall who could only fetch Larsson. To boil the Oilers struggles down to "losing culture" is imho reductive. The idea that this team didn't sign veterans is also not true, they did sign veterans they were just largely way over the hill when they got them and they had to overpay them to come to Ed-freaking-monton. The Canucks have done a lot of losing the last few years but it hasn't ruined our young talent nor do I think it had the potential to when we had such great mentors in the twins and Eagle+Tanman. The narrative of losing culture I believe was to justify the unrealistic mandate. Maybe Sutter had some sort of imperceptible impact on Horvat which turned him into the player that he is today but I can't rely on something that I cannot see. I see a lot of assets traded which could have been used more efficiently and I know that the Canucks refused to 'rebuild' (proposed by Mike Gillis) prior to Benning even getting there. I simply don't believe for a second that Benning would have made the exact same set of moves if he had complete autonomy over the organization. Benning in his first draft drafted 5 players who look like they are going to be NHL regulars, Virtanen, McCann, Demko, Tryamkin, Forsling. In general you are lucky if you get 3 NHL regulars in a draft. Someone here referenced HFboards, their issue has always been that they have spent all their time fixating on Benning when the problems that plagued this organization were present long before he arrived here. It makes me wary that we pushed Linden out of the organization because he was advocating for a more patient approach.
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Ice-time can be misleading. Gudbranson only started averaging 20+ min when Willie Mitchell got injured. He wasn't a legitimate top 4 defenseman even when he did trade for him. He was getting less ice-time in Florida than Hutton got in his tenure with the Canucks, and I think we can all agree that Hutton is not a legitimate top 4 defenseman.
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There is so much uncertainty right now its close to impossible to speculate what is going to happen at least based on the current information available to us. The NHL and the PA will sit down sometime and try to figure out some solutions to this quagmire that we are in. Those solutions will likely be imperfect and assuming that they will work to our benefit would be a mistake. When I see someone cite a PA source about compliance buyouts I might believe it. Till then I am not assuming that we are going to get a couple of 'get out of jail free' cards. The NHL has yet to even decide what happens with the lottery and the draft and whether changes will be required to the format as well as transfer of conditional picks.
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If there are people who are afraid of stepping out of their homes without someone in tow I feel sorry for them. I would find such codependency/neediness far too grating over the long haul. Lets agree to disagree.
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Some of the practical reasons people gave it might make some sense to shop together but emotional support? Give me a break. Man/Woman up.
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Sorry but I laughed at the idea of someone needing "support" to go to the grocery store. That sounds like fragile, co-dependent behaviour which I would refuse to enable on principle alone. This might be one of the reasons I am single.
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Fair enough. Its not worth the angst. I think we can have our own interpretations.
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Gillis wanted a "rebuild". Kesler was almost dealt at the deadline for a package of futures. There is a quote from Bob Murray out there saying he had offered more at the deadline. We targeted Bonino and Sbisa to replace Kesler and Garrison, instead of the slew of picks and young talent the Ducks had in the pipeline. That was really the first indication that ownership wanted to field a competitive team while also mandating a retool. I haven't always loved Benning his entire tenure here but over time I have come to terms that he is the man for the job provided that ownership doesn't put pressure on him to accelerate the process.
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Here is the entire quote for reference... Rebuilding is "strip it down". Retooling is what the Canucks did. The Canucks weren't following the traditional 'rebuild' model. You and anyone else can call it whatever you want but it wasn't a "rebuild" as the term is understood in the context of professional sports in NA. Edit: Added the entire discussion for context.
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You are correct that the lottery changes have forced teams to reevaluate how the rebuild approach works. Regardless my point is that one does not need to tear the team down to its bare bones. The Canucks could have still held onto the Sedins, Edler & Tanev and signed all the contracts that they did with the exception of Eriksson (6 years), Ferland (4 years) and Myers (6 years). We could have also saved the futures that were traded while we trying to fill holes on the roster (Vey, Baerstchi, Gudbranson, the Kesler trade, etc). There are always opportunities available to be capitalized on for those who have the foresight. Carolina was able to acquire Teuvo Teravainen for taking on Bickell's contract and TO's 1st this year for taking on Marleau's. Its a moot point as I doubt our ownership has any interest in pursuing that route, not all owners are willing to part with the almighty $ for a lottery ticket. I included that because it is a legitimate strategy which has been pulled off successfully to acquire assets.