AV.

Meanwhile in BC, frontline workers were told not to bother coming to Rogers Arena as the team's playoff hopes had long been dead.

Schmidt and Miller.  Very obvious.

Thing is, we're gonna get less value for them than what we paid for.  Wonder how Benning stans will spin that.

Life under Benning.  Makes you wonder...

:micdrop:

^Weird but not unexpected.

Benning outlasting CDC...you'd hate to see it.

I wonder if [redacted] sent another mass PM to the mods and users asking to remove the emoji because of "bullying behaviour" or whatever.

Wouldn't put it past [redacted] to act like a baby on an Internet forum.

Knee-jerk reaction?  It's been 7 seasons of trash hockey from this team lol.

One purple patch of 2 months doesn't suddenly wipe the slate clean.

I'm going to assume GarageBand is being used to assist with the music/fine arts curriculum?

If so, it's a good program to use, especially for beginners or amateurs.  In my experience, it was fairly intuitive and didn't pose many difficulties or challenges that couldn't be remedied by experimenting/playing around with the program, or simply using Google/YouTube to find a solution.  Many of the basic versions of GarageBand come equipped with a moderate selection of instrument sounds and samples, which somewhat reduces the need for additional/external instruments or equipment.  As it is a program developed by Apple, many versions of GarageBand come pre-installed on Apple-branded products, such as their tablets, pads, phones, laptops, etc., which means students/faculty who own those products are afforded the opportunity to supplement their knowledge/experience/familiarity of GarageBand, which may be a plus.

Like others have said, it really depends on what the school is trying to do with the program, but it should work just fine as a tool to assist in teaching, or for simple recording purposes.

Happy Birthday!

No, I honestly wouldn't have been upset.  Like I said, I knew we were giving up a top goaltender who was capable of achieving those things.  Up until 2018, Schneider was fairly good for New Jersey anyway.  It's a shame that injuries did him in.

I already said that Gillis mismanaged the Schneider/Luongo trades way back before.  I wasn't highlighting his goalie trades as good trades; I was highlighting the fact that trading Schneider to New Jersey was smarter than trading him to Edmonton, even if he walked away from "less" of a return.

If you want to believe that trading picks for rentals (during a period of time when your team is a clear-cut favourite for winning the Stanley Cup) is the same thing as trading picks as throw-ins/sweeteners to upgrade prospects, then by all means.  The truth is that trading a 2nd or 3rd for a rental, which is what Gillis did, is far better risk to take than trading a 3rd with a low-grade prospect attached for Andrey Pedans, which is what Benning regularly did.  It's fine to try that gamble once but Benning made at least 2-3 of those types of deals all throughout his first two seasons.  For every serviceable Baertschi you might get, you get a sea of Veys/Larsens/Etems/Pedans.  It was super wasteful and I don't imagine ownership was pressuring him to make those deals either.  Gillis tried that with Bernier, it didn't work out, and he never did that type of move again.  So, no, Benning doesn't get a free pass because he continued to repeat these deals when it was clear early on they weren't working.

Development has improved, sure, but again, it's easier to develop top 10 picks than it is picks in the 20-30 range, especially when your team is at the bottom of the basement.  When you're playing in a top team, the expectation is to develop while helping your team win.  That isn't necessarily the same case when your team is at the bottom and expected to suck.  Case and point, Zack Kassian (just 21 and 30 ish games of NHL experience) being expected to be our "Milan Lucic" upon being acquired, while somebody like Virtanen is still getting the "just wait until he matures" treatment from some fans, despite having 5 seasons of pro hockey under his belt.  Many still believe in Juolevi despite him entering his draft+5 with 1 NHL game played, having been taken as a top 5 pick.

Now that Judd is gone, it will be interesting to see what amounts of the 2020 picks and picks of subsequent drafts.  I won't sit here and argue that he did all the work, but I don't think its necessarily coincidental that from 2015 - 2020, we've seen some of the best prospects and development of prospects in the organization's history.  Nevertheless, Judd wasn't here in 2014 and yet that draft produced Virtanen, McCann, Demko, and Tryamkin, so maybe this bodes well for Benning.

Re: Schneider:  Yes, I wouldn't have cared. We knew New Jersey was getting a top goaltender when we were trading him, so what would it have mattered if he started winning silverware?  We wanted to trade Luongo in the first place for a reason because some in the organization felt Schneider was as good or better going forward.

As for the trade return, getting more doesn't really mean anything if its not quality.  With that said, who else could New Jersey have given us? 

• Roster players?  We were tight on cap so doubtful but maybe the deal could have been made bigger.
• Prospects?  John Quenneville, Damon Severson, Eric Gelinas?  Maybe Adam Larsson would have been nice at the time to add but he was held in really high regard.  Sending the 4th OVR from two seasons prior + the 9th in what was seen as a deep draft would have been highway robbery for the Canucks.  Therefore, the situation was a lot like Edmonton in that the intriguing names (Yakupov from EDM, Larsson from NJ) were unobtainable and the obtainable guys (the non-blue chip guys) weren't really all that exciting.  At best, they would be assets to move in other trades.
• Additional picks?  Definitely, this was possible.

Gillis had two choices.  (1) Send a goaltender to a team you'll play 1 or 2 times a year for a top 10 pick, or (2) send a goaltender to a division rival who you'll compete directly for a playoff spot with, and play them 5-6 times a season, for a slightly better top 10 pick, a prospect (one of the guys I listed in the other post), and a pick (presumably a 2nd).  Keep in mind, your target (Horvat) at pick 7 is still your target at pick 9.  If acquiring two extra prospects is worth sending your star goalie to a divisional rival on the upswing, then by all means take the picks.  I don't think it was, neither did the Canucks.  Evidently, it's a matter of opinion.  FWIW, I hated the Schneider trade because I and everybody else were led to believe that would be Luongo that was going to go.  When I had the opportunity to learn more about the situation, what transpired at the draft, and how it came down to EDM and NJ, I was considerably less upset with the return because it made sense.

I can agree on the final point.  I do believe that to some extent, Benning was handicapped early on in the name of "remaining competitive" by ownership.  That skews things but I don't believe it exonerates a lot of his bad moves, especially those that happened in 2018/2019/2020.

No?  We knew that we were giving up a top player either way because we had to clear cap.  Why would Schneider's (hypothetical) subsequent success make anybody more upset?  It would have been the same thing with moving Luongo.  CDC had this idea that we were getting Yakupov or Johansen for Schneider.  That obviously wasn't going to happen but getting a top 10 pick was still a good return (historically) for a goalie.

I'm sure there were unique reasons/contexts for not moving guys but the reality is that he had that option to move guys to get assets if he wanted to.

Yes, Gillis did, IMO.  The rumoured return was the EDM 7th OVR, prospect, additional pick.  The prospects may have included Musil, Pitlick, Marincin.  Good names at the time but nothing that was insane that would have enticed the Canucks.  In that half season in 2013, Edmonton had just finished outside of the playoffs.  Giving them a good goalie would have been super irresponsible at the cost of moving up 2 selections and adding two prospects essentially. 

I didn't say they were a good group of prospects.  I said they had value.

It doesn't matter if Schneider won six consecutive Vezinas or if Horvat never sniffed NHL ice.  That's not my point at all.  My point is that there was no risk in trading Schneider because they had Luongo.  They were only trading Schneider because they couldn't keep 9M tied up in goaltending and trading Luongo had encountered its difficulties in actually facilitating due to his NMC and contract.  They weren't trading Schneider to meet a need or improve the team per se beyond wanting to get futures.  They wanted futures, they got futures.  And yes, EDM was rumoured to have offered more but Gillis did the responsible thing by moving Schneider out of the division.

Benning was left an older team, no doubt, but he had ample opportunity to get picks and futures.  He's the one who decided to let Hamhuis and Vrbata walk, waive Higgins, not move Burrows and Hansen until the last season, not sign any UFAs to 1 year deals to try and leverage picks.  This mess was fixable.

Having prospects, whether you like them or not, is still capital and still assets.  It doesn't matter what amounts of them, you still have them at your disposal.  You can't say Benning was given nothing or had nothing to lean on.  That's not true.

Miller and Schneider are not even close to being the same.  There was no risk to trading Schneider because we had Luongo.  The return wasn't "lucky" because we were dealing from a place of surplus to add futures, not a place of need.  The risk was not getting the best futures package. 

There was risk to trading for Miller because we had not made in the playoffs in 4 of the last seasons before making that trade.  Again, the OUTCOME thus far doesn't change the fact it was a hefty risk to trade a 1st.

I never said that Bernier was a good trade; I said the risk was okay to take.  When it became apparent that risk didn't work out, Gillis never made that type of trade again.  Unlike Benning (when it became apparent that trading a 2nd for Vey and a 3rd for Pedan was not good) he continued by trading picks for Larsen, Etem, etc.  If you're gonna play the draft pick train game, Benning has given up way more when he should have been accumulating them.  I say that because he has done nowhere near the amount of winning Gillis did, so what was his excuse to not rebuild/re-tool therefore?

Sure, development sucked on Gillis but Benning's had the LUXURY of having higher picks.  It's that simple.

To better clarify my point.  Gillis traded a 2nd and 3rd to get a guy who was maybe that decade's Jake Virtanen.

Jim Benning moved a 2nd and a 3rd for Linden Vey (only 18 games of NHL experience at that time) and Andrey Pedan (who?).

Why are you twisting my point?  You said that Benning had nothing to lean on but he did, hence why I listed those players.  Yeah, in hindsight, many on that list didn't amount to anything but at the time of Benning's hiring, they had value as prospects.  If we knew that all of our prospects we had wouldn't amount to anything and we fired Benning tomorrow, would you argue that the new guy had nothing to lean on?  Of course you wouldn't.  FYI, this is the same GM that when he was an AGM, he felt it was appropriate to trade a 21 year old Tyler Seguin for Eriksson and pennies.  

Re: Miller:  You missed the part where I said "protected or not".  Like I said, if you bet something expensive on a game of blackjack and you win, it doesn't make you a genius; it makes you lucky enough to beat the odds.

Finally, Gillis' "mishandling" of draft picks was few and very far between.  You're overstating it to protect your Benning, imo.

Bernier was calculated-risk move that turned out to be bad.  Statistically, he was pretty productive in San Jose and was only 23.  Did Gillis ever make that type of move again?  No.  Almost like as if he learned right away (as a rookie GM with no front office experience) that signing experienced wingers would serve to be better and keeping his assets for other moves would be wiser.

I'm not really sure where you're getting the notion that Ballard was a cap-dump seeing as he was durable in his 4 year career (at the time), largely thought to be stuck behind bad teams in Phoenix and Florida, and was regularly hitting around 30 pts, while hitting a ton and shot-blocking like a fiend.  It turned out to be a bad move and truthfully, one that I wasn't really happy we made (I really liked Grabner at that time) but as Bieksa/Salo/Mitchell were injury-prone and Rome/O'Brien were limited with what they could do, it was understandable.  Did Gillis ever trade a 1st again?  No.

Every other move involving picks being traded were for Alberts (meh, we got 3 ish seasons out of him), Higgins (great), Lapierre (good), Pahlsson (yuck), Roy (ultra yuck).  Although, the latter two weren't so bad value wise as rentals, they just didn't help the team get out of the first round.

So, a bad move to start off his GM career with picks and two moves toward the end that didn't work out while chasing a cup.

He's lightyears ahead of Benning.

Benning inherited Horvat, Kassian, Schroeder, Shinkaruk, Subban, Cassels, Gaunce as notable prospects.  While it drops off after Kassian, all of these players had clout around the league.  They may not have been to Benning's liking but they had value.  He chose to release them/trade them for pennies so its not really fair to say he had nothing to lean on.  By comparison, Gillis had Grabner, Schneider, and maybe Patrick White (which was a massive stretch because people were pissed we passed on David Perron).  So, yes, anything drafted in the Gillis era looked great and nobody was "complaining" but let's not act like he was only making marginally better picks.  Bob McKenzie famously said that Hodgson was Stamkos without the speed, Schroeder was ranked top 10 before falling and ended up breaking the USA Jr. scoring record as our prospect, Rodin was ranked very high, Shinkaruk similar to Schroeder.  The perception at those times was not just that he was doing very well to get those guys at where he was picking them; the perception was that he was hitting homeruns.

We've liked Benning's picks (and for good reason) but we expect him to do well in the top 10.  And even then, he chose Jake over Ehlers, Nylander; Juolevi over Tkachuk, Sergachev.

---

The UFAs that Benning signed have costed us.  We just lost a starting goaltender, a good #4 D, a great #5 D, and a top 6 forward (although, we shouldn't have traded for him in the first place) for absolutely nothing because we had too much money committed to bottom six centers and wingers that we couldn't move.  We're almost certain to lose a good player in Pearson and a great one in Edler in order to have the cap-space to re-sign our core guys because these contracts will still be here next year (even in light of an expansion draft).  And yes, he escaped some contracts but that's not a good thing.  What other GM has to escape from multiple contracts he signs every season? It was Gagner in 2019, Baertschi last season, and now Baertschi/Eriksson going into next season. That's honestly pathetic and perfectly good grounds for termination.

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Ok, I laughed here because this is the most Benning bro thing I have ever read.  A team that finished in the bottom 10 (including two bottom-3 finishes) for 4 straight seasons and you think it wasn't a massive risk to move a 1st?  Better yet, you're saying that a team that made the 2nd round two years in a row (with a far better team I might add) and traded the 25th ovr (a known value) was a bigger risk than trading an unknown pick?

I'm happy that we have Miller and I'm happy that the trade has worked out thus far, but under no circumstances was it never not a risk to move that pick (protected or not), especially since we didn't have to.  And that's just it.  You and the other Benning apologists will praise Benning for "out-waiting" the market to get Schmidt for a 3rd (which was a great move) but then don't acknowledge that he could have, and probably should have, done the same thing with Tampa for Miller.   Why is that?

I respect your position to want to see the good in Benning but you can't argue that his good equals the bad.  It's been far more bad with with than it has been good.

Sure, drafting under Benning has seen an improvement but we kinda hope it would be better than what Gillis did considering that Gillis never had the luxury of picking in the top 10 of every round for a sustained period of time.  Most criticisms of the drafting under Gillis have come after the fact anyway, because nobody was complaining when he drafted Hodgson/Schroeder/Connauton/Jensen/Shinkaruk.

In terms of signings, there were tons that had great impacts.  Hamhuis, Malholtra, Samuelsson (for two seasons), Torres, Johnson.  Only Luongo's extension and Marco Sturm were bad moves and to an extent, Jason Garrison was kinda meh (but again, nobody was complaining).  In the sea of Beagle/Roussel/Myers/Schaller/Gagner/Del Zotto, who worked out for Benning?  Thomas Vanek?  Ryan Miller and Radim Vrbata for 1 season?  I didn't even include Eriksson because nobody could have predicted his fall-off but you could look at a lot of Benning's other signings and smell disaster with them before even playing a game.

Trades probably favours Gillis, although Gillis had a free ride for a few seasons because he had a fairly strong team that only needed tinkering.   In hindsight, Ballard and Booth deals were awful but there were no complaints to either deal at the time from which they were made. Gillis's downfall came when Kesler wanted out and the tandem of Luongo/Schenider became untenable to manage (though, his returns on both goalies were homeruns).  From the get-go with Benning, he chose Sbisa over Vatanen/Theodore in that Kesler deal, took way too many risks with moving picks/prospects for guys "ahead in their development" (see Vey, Clendening, Larsen), would always add picks to deals (see Prust/Etem/Pedan deals), moved an arm and a leg for Gudbranson (who was already known to be $&!#), Sutter trade, Toffoli trade, etc.  What are his wins?  Getting rid of Gudbranson's contract (one he signed) for Pearson?  Sure, J.T Miller has worked out but he took such a massive risk with making that deal when he didn't have to since Tampa was in cap-hell.  If you mortgage your car or house or your last dollar on a game of blackjack and you win, it doesn't make you a genius; it makes you fortunate to have beat the odds on a risk of that magnitude.

Look, Benning isn't the worst GM but he's severely subpar.  We can rejoice in Schmidt today and maybe Gaudette/Virtanen extensions tomorrow, but it's just a matter of time before the next letdown will happen with this guy.  It's a pattern.

If you can compile a list of good things he's done that doesn't involve drafting Pettersson/Hughes, maybe I'll read the rest of what you wrote.  I'm quite confident I could double your list, if not outnumber it threefold, with a list of mistakes or sub-par moves he made.

Again, this isn't bashing, it's simply the truth about his tenure.  It's been a D+ at best, which isn't a failure, but far from good enough.  Mike Gillis was fired for far less when he was a far more competent GM than Benning has ever shown and yet we keep continuing with Benning when we really shouldn't.  That's all I've ever argued.

The "reality" is that Benning's best move to improve the D was handed to him on a plate from Kelly McCrimmon because Kelly McCrimmon was busy bringing in a defender (one that we should have been in on had we had been properly managing our cap) while Jim the Infallible was on his hands and knees trying to overpay for Tyson Barrie and getting put on voicemail by Chris Tanev.  This isn't slander, these are simply the facts.  It's still a good move to get Schmidt but let's tell the entire story and not paint JB in rose colours to stunt on the bashers and haters.

Also, very funny how your defence of Benning doesn't make you a Benning bro but my criticism of his tenure makes me a Benning basher.  If I was a Benning basher, why did I wait 6 years to call him out?  Almost like as if there's been enough of a sample size now to evaluate that for every good move he's typically made, its preceded or followed by moves that make you question the acumen of the front office.

Don't take it personal, Petey_BOI

These Benning bros will do anything to stop criticism, even those disguised as harmless, light-hearted jokes, if it means protecting their infallible Jimbo B.

Assets with value.

Firing Benning should be the only personnel move to make tbh.