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AV.

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Everything posted by AV.

  1. Dazzle, give it a rest. You keep purposefully twisting my words. NTCs are a good incentive to give out when money is being forfeited or left on the table. Hansen, Higgins at 2.5M is an example of this because they could have gotten more elsewhere. Edler at 5M is another. Garrison was bad but he did leave money on the table. In Benning's case, he paid full dollar amount + gave trade protection to acquire players like Beagle/Roussel/Ferland/Myers in FA. Those are not guys that anybody in the NH would be giving protection to.
  2. Deb, people keep bringing up Stevie Y in conversation. If I was bring up, let's say, David Poile or somebody else, then perhaps I would be in the wrong. For the most part, I'm simply responding or continuing my previously made points on Tampa Bay/Stevie Y Now, to your point, I agree that you need two teams to make a deal and that the core's "best days" (so to speak) were behind them. My point is that the options did exist. I don't blame Benning for Kesler's deal, save for choosing Sbisa over Vatanen/Theodore. He was handcuffed and did fairly well. The Hamhuis deal was complicated because Dan only wanted two teams but the option him to move him was there, even if it wasn't ideal. The Burrows return was fine too. I liked Dahlen's profile at the time. The Hansen return actually wasn't too bad. He got Goldobin and a 4th (would've turned to a 1st). That's great value. Both him and Burrows were great trades and nobody complained about them. Edler is moot because he's still here. Maybe we speed things up with an Edler move but he loved being a Canuck and demonstrated that by returning for 2 more years when he could have gotten more elsewhere. Bieksa we got a 2nd. Great deal. But really bad when we dumped that second with Bonino for Sutter. Eriksson was a legitimate top 6 player. Beagle, Ferland, and Roussel were bottom-six players. Tyler Myers was a #5 defenceman in Winnipeg. What's hard to see here? It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with their actual quality.
  3. Hamhuis and Malholtra got us to a Cup final. Garrisons was bad, yes. Benning's NTCs got us, at best, a 2nd round playoff appearance. I have no idea why you say he only gave out one when Roussel, Beagle, Ferland, Holtby, Eriksson all got one.
  4. Gillis handed out NTCs to keep money down and keep the core together. That's what you do when you have a winning team. Benning handed out NTCs to...attract free-agents? I have not once ever mentioned Eriksson's name save for one post about Benning being unable to move his contracts I've actually said in other threads that Eriksson was a great signing at the time because he was an elite two-way forward and had chemistry with the Sedins. It sucks when you strike out on a free-agent of Eriksson's calibre because it is truly unlucky. If you strike on out a free-agent of the Beagle/Roussel calibre, you have only yourself to blame.
  5. Lol. He had the option to move Hamhuis to get more futures if he wanted to. It's not hindsight, it's an actual fact. Uhmm, so what did the Rangers do with Grabner? How about the Sharks with Marleau last year? What about Detroit with Ryan/Stetcher/Namestnikov or maybe Buffalo with Hall this year? It's called you can negotiate with players and say "we're looking to add more picks and prospects, play here for a year, and maybe we can send you to a contender at the deadline" These deals exist and happen all the team. You don't get a bad rep from the agents or players for negotiating that type of deal.
  6. I should also add that he probably won't run into problems with re-signing his core guys since he probably won't fill up his cap with bad contracts and hefty money. That's something Canucks fans don't have the luxury of saying, unfortunately.
  7. Sure by all means. I think Stevie Y will have that Detroit team in the playoffs in about 1-2 years. He managed to get two 2nds for Athansiou, got a 2nd for simply taking on Marc Staal. He's doing a great job to accumulate assets and weaponize his cap-space, which is something that we should have done. Raymond and Seider + the boatloads of other picks he made should unearth some good players.
  8. I have been fair to Benning though. I have acknowledged and praised the increase in development of young prospects and futures during his time here. It's been the best I've ever seen since following the team. But I also look to why that is and that comes down to ultimately more picks in good drafting spots, as well as an increase in more opportunity given to these players. When you're competing with Chaput, Vey, Megna, Cramarossa, etc for spots, it really isn't that hard to perform better than those types of players. That's what's meant by opportunity and why players like Hodgson, Schroeder, etc weren't really afforded that. On a side note, you're calling me emotional but you're hung up on that comment. This is what, the third time you're bringing that up? Right...I guess I should say you're getting emotional for comparing me to a flat-earther?
  9. The Sedins returned to nearly PPG in Benning's first season. Burrows, Higgins, Matthias, Bonino, Hansen all hit around 15 goals and had in between 30-40 pts IIRC The team was not a SC contender, sure, but let's not act like they all fell off a cliff real fast. Fans may not have wanted to a total rebuild but they were smart enough to know that the situation at hand was being mismanaged in tying to compete while not getting assets when it was failing. Dan Hamhuis could have garnered a pick from Dallas but wasn't traded because the pick wasn't "high enough". He ended up leaving us for Dallas in FA. Likewise, Vrbata could have fetched a 5th or 6th but wasn't traded either and he left for Phoenix. When Burrows and Hansen, two major fan favourites, were traded, I certainly don't remember angry fans. Some may have been bummed to see them go but we got assets for them and people were happy to see us make those types of moves. And wouldn't you know, those assets didn't even do anything for us in the end. The perception of trying to improve your team is what mattered and fans weren't given that. Nobody was really upset with the Vey trade when it was first made but a lot more people grew tired of those types of trades once Benning was making those moves for Clendening/Pedan/Etem/Pouliot ad nauseum. It was frustrating when we managed to get a 2nd for Bieksa and then threw in that 2nd with Bonino and Clendening to downgrade on getting Sutter and a 3rd We could have been competitive by signing short-term deals for free agents and moving them for picks or prospects if it didn't work out. We never did those things.
  10. Look. I'm doing my best in trying to articulate what I'm writing. Gillis brought in Roy and Pahlsson as rentals for the playoffs. They didn't work out as we didn't win the cup. Benning brought in Toffoli as a rental for the playoffs. He didn't work out either because we didn't win the cup (but yes, he was more positive than Roy/Pahlsson) My point is that I just wasn't sure if you were trying to say that the Gillis rentals were "wasteful" when Benning's rental didn't achieve anything for the team either. -- As for the second part, all three saw NHL time under Gillis's era. We don't know if Gillis would have also cut Schroeder from his team, moved on from Kassian after a season, or outright not have given Jensen another NHL shot like Benning did.
  11. Again, I didn't bring up Stevie Y at that time either. Another user did. Fair enough to the bolded. That was an ill-thought out response and I rescind it.
  12. Stevie Y showed leaps and bounds more promise than Benning has, even in spite of inheriting Hedman and Stamkos. He didn't delude himself in thinking that Lecavlier and St. Louis still ran the team, he didn't sign long-term deals or expensive deals that would prevent him from signing Stamkos, Hedman, or any of his core pieces he would bring into the team. He signed numerous short-term deals and acquired players like Roloson, Clark, Gagne, etc that they could help them compete and provide them the option to trade them if they didn't work out (which they didn't in 2012). He acquired numerous draft picks, consulted his scouting staff, and put together a pretty impressive team that made the playoffs once again in 2014 and was in the cup finals by 2015. Yes, Benning didn't inherit two top 10 prospects but he also didn't inherit a complete mess that the 2014 Canucks are being made out to be. Benning had Kesler, Edler, Burrows, Hansen, Hamhuis, Bieksa all at his disposal to move if he wanted to shake up the team. He also inherited a top 6 entry draft selection where he could have taken somebody like Ehlers/Nylander (players that have, in hindsight, shown more than Jake) if he wanted. The reality is nobody put a gun to Benning's head and said he had to compete with the team he inherited either. He may have been pressure by ownership but the choice was ultimately his.
  13. How come you are so quick to judge the Toffoli trade as 'wasteful', but see it differently when it came to the Schneider trade? In both scenarios, we dealt from supposedly a position of strength, which is what you said in our status update discussions. For Benning, we had center depth, and Schneider was apparently one we could afford to trade away because we had Luongo. (For the purpose of this argument, we are going to completely ignore how badly handled the goalie situation was under Gillis) Answer: I didn't say it was wasteful. There you go again twisting my words. I said if Gillis was seen as wasteful for trading picks for Roy/Pahlsson, does that mean Benning is also wasteful for making a rental trade? It's rhetorical. In the other situation, it's completely different because Schneider and Luongo made 9M dollars in cap and we couldn't that at the time. As a cup contender, it would have made no sense to have 9M in goaltending when half of that could address different areas. "Easier conditions to play when they're not expected to win every night" - So why didn't Jensen, Schroeder, Kassian make it then? Keep revising your history, bud. Answer: There were better players ahead of them at the time/they weren't ready? Schroeder was given two 20 game call-ups and wasn't qualified upon Benning taking over. Schroeder basically carved out a similar career in Minnsota, getting games here and there. Kassian was dumped with a 5th for Prust but he was a legitimate NHLer at the time of his trade. Jensen was meh but did have a bit of a good call-up in the 2014 season. I'm not really sure why Benning didn't like him but he was right to move on because Jensen never made it. Apologies for missing these. Real life still goes on, you know.
  14. Deb brought him up. Just like Shawn Antoski brought up Quinn before Please read before you get your Benning knickers into a bunch.
  15. They fired all their GMs...so thanks for proving my point?
  16. Stevie Y was hired in 2010. In his first season, he made the conference finals. By 2015, he had made the Stanley Cup finals, and would make the conference finals two more times before resigning. You list patience but where in Stevie Y's tenure did he make the same mistakes as Benning? When did he overpay for UFAs? When did he have to bury the contracts he signed? When and where did he start moving picks and prospects for slightly developed picks and prospects? When did he lose UFAs for little value? I'm sure you can find some isolated examples but let's not act like Stevie Yzerman was bad at his job.
  17. If anybody can find me an NHL GM that has had to: 1) bury the amount of contracts (ones that he has signed, btw) as much as this one has 2) make up the number of excuses for why he has for not able to trade pendng UFAs for assets/why he had to add sweeteners for deals/lwhy he would lose value on assets as much as this one has 3) fail to make the playoffs/win in general as much as this one has 4) considerably overpay for UFAs as much as this one has Then, by all means, be my guest and show me the example and tell me if he still has a job. Benning is not that good, folks.
  18. Lol. What does Jim Benning offer that Chris Gear/anybody in the NHL won't/can't?
  19. Except the text above the bolded is the response?
  20. Posts like these are funny. I don't care to win whatever this dialogue is. I've entertained this as long as I have because its funny to watch how much you and the rest of the Benning bros go all out to protect a man who really isn't that good at his job in comparison to both his GM peers and the men he has succeeded in the role of Canucks GM. If you bring up Benning's lack of winning, the excuse is that he was rebuilding. When you ask why his rebuild wasn't as good as other teams and took so long, the excuse is that he had "immovable" contracts (which is funny because he found a way to move on from Garrison, Burrows, Higgins, Hansen, etc within two seasons and can't find a way to get out of Sutter/Beagle/Roussel/Myers/Ferland/Baertschi/Eriksson - the guys he signed) Every criticism of Benning is met with some excuse about why he isn't able to do his job. More than that, every good thing Benning does is treated like as if it exonerates all these bad moves. No winning/no plethora of assets/cap problems? That's okay, Thatcher Demko panned out as NHLer..hurr durr development. No other GM in the NHL has been given this much leeway from fans. I made a case for why Benning is subpar and why we should probably move on, given that our other, better GMs didn't have this long of a leash, and that other candidates probably wouldn't be as incompetent to make the types of mistakes he made. You come in here with the intention of white-knighting Benning in the name of "no negativity bro/write something different bro" while never actually answering the main question of the thread: What does Benning offer that other candidates won't/can't?
  21. I don't really care to prove if Quinn is better than Benning. I stated that he was because he made a final and Benning has not. It's really not that deep. Nonis has been the worst in all facets and it remains to be seen if Benning will be as bad because he's still on the job and can improve his performance. Gillis didn't really throw away picks at the time of his dealings (again, its only hindsight) unless you believe that Higgins/Lapierre were not integral additions or that getting Pahlsson/Roy for cup runs were foolish. But if that's the case, isn't dumping Madden and a 2nd for 10 games of Toffoli just as much of a waste then? I can actually remember in 2009 and 2010 that people were upset Gillis didn't move his picks for rentals. Gaborik/Kovalchuk/B.Richards/Zidlicky were all names this board wanted. Gillis may be a lot of things, a waster of assets he was not, at least not until after he was gone. -- How do we know have a deep pool? We all thought Jensen/Schroeder/Hodgson/Cassels/Shinkaruk/Subban were going to be good but then? Right now, I count Podkolzin and Hoglander as good bets for NHLers and even then, that's mostly because we'll have no choice but to play them with how bad our cap situation is going to be. Maybe DiPietro, Lind, and Woo will sniff the NHL also. So, we have 2 surefire prospects in there? One top 10 pick and one 2nd rounder? Wow, very deep. I won't discount the graduations of Boeser/Gaudette/Virtanen/Demko/Pettersson/Hughes but they were introduced at a time when we sucked. Easier conditions to play when they're not expected to win every night.
  22. It's really not that outrageous to suggest that Burke, Quinn, Gillis are better than Benning. Nonis wasn't that good so maybe Benning is better than him.
  23. They made a Stanley Cup finals in 94. Fairly simple.
  24. Sedins weren't surrounded, nor replaced, by good enough players from 2015-2018 by Benning. Yes, they got older and naturally declined but Benning insisted that the team just needed a retool. I've said player development has been good and improved. But let's be honest, player development ultimately takes the backseat to winning (remember, teams compete to win the Stanley Cup, not most successful draft) and it's bound to be better or improved when your team is drafting in the top 10 every season. I've also already said that its easier to implement young players when your team sucks than when your team is expected to win every night.
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