Blömqvist

O'Reilly would be good on this team. He seems like a Tortorella type of player. He has excellent two way ability (impeccable defense and solid offense) and good work ethic. He's been a fairly consistent scorer this season and last season. So far this season, he's never gone more than 2 games without a point and is on pace for 35 goals and 26 assists for 61 points. Last season he had a 0.69 PPG which extrapolated to an 82 game season would be 57 points. Impact player? Yes. Can score goals? Seemingly. Two-way ability? Hell yeah! Relatively young? Yep, 22 years old. Not a rental player? RFA at years end. If Colorado would take an O'Reilly for Edler (and a bit more) trade I'd be all over that. It would give us a top 6 of the Twins and Burrows, followed by a strong workhorse line in Higgins, O'Reilly, and Kesler that can play both a shutdown role (if needed) and be a major offensive threat.

Although I do think Edler can still realize his potential of all-around top-pairing defenseman, I have been on the "trade Edler" campaign since last season. I think our situation with too many overpriced defensemen and not enough top 6 scoring is like LA two seasons ago. Recall, LA was one of the worst teams heading into the trade deadline in terms of goals for. At the deadline they traded Jack Johnson to Columbus for Jeff Carter. Their reasoning was two-fold: 1) They needed help up front and wanted to bring in an impact player, and 2) they had depth on defence, and Johnson's role was replaced by up-and-coming defenseman Slava Voynov. Looking at us, we are in the same conundrum. We have, as you said earlier, 19M tied up in our top 4 defensemen and not enough invested into our top 6 forwards. Edler is an expendable asset because we have Chris Tanev who can replace his minutes and provide a better defensive presence. We also have depth in Frank Corrado, who is like a Tanev doppleganger but better offensively and a bit more physical. Gillis needs to realize the weakness of this team and bring in an impact player, not project players or 3rd line players. I firmly believe that Tortorella can work wonders with a d-group of Hamhuis, Tanev, Stanton, Bieksa, Garrison, and Corrado combined with a world-class goalie in Luongo. We haven't really been letting very many goals against, but we haven't been scoring either. Give Tortorella one more impact offensive player and maybe, just maybe, our Canucks can have another magical run.

Philadelphia. Voracek and Simmonds for Edler and Hansen Dan - Hank - Simmonds Burrows - Kesler - Voracek Higgins - Santorelli - Kassian Booth - Richardson - Weise/Archibald Hamhuis - Tanev Stanton - Bieksa Garrison - Corrado then next year: Dan - Hank - Simmonds Kassian - Horvat - Voracek Gaunce - Kesler - Burrows Higgins - Richardson - Weise/Archibald

I believe so. He should be a one-way contract meaning we have to pay him his full NHL salary while he plays in the minors.

Let's face it, the Canucks need a scorer in our top 6, not multiple hard working third liners. We can wine about how the refs cost us a game, but the fact of the matter is that if we can't score more than 2 goals per game on a consistent basis then we will not go very far this season. Moreover, guys like Higgins, Hansen, Santorelli, and Kassian get quite a few chances to score, and although they do provide a bit of secondary scoring every now and then, they don't bury their chances on a regular or semi-regular basis and can not be counted on when the Twins and Kesler get shut down. MG needs to do fix the secondary scoring problem that we've had since the 2010.11 Finals. He's had 2 years to remedy the problem but has only brought in a project player in Booth, despite having valuable trade assets in Schneider and Edler.

So expensive! Anyone have an idea as to when the next shipment will be?

Raymond had a goal?!?! The stat I'm more interested in is how many time he fell...

I think he stays (along with Gaunce). Gillis traded an up-and-coming star goaltender for this kid. I'm thinking he'll use his authority to keep Horvat on the main roster.

This is the End 9/10 + Hands down the funniest movie I've ever seen - Story was kinda all over the place/completely random (much like a Harold and Kumar film, but more random-er)

Exactly! That was the downfall with AV. AV at his core is a defensive minded coach. MG came along and gave him some offensive players in Ehrhoff, Samuelsson, Sundin, Schneider, and Demitra (RIP) and basically forced AV to play an offensive game. AV did well to adjust, but when those players left and were replaced by 3rd/4th liners with little offensive skill our team proved to be crappy because AV was still forced to play an offensive style of game via management. It's like putting the engine of a Toyota Corolla in an F1 car and expecting it to win the race. With that in mind, even if we did get the greatest offensive coach available right now it would be useless since the majority of our team is that of the engine of a Toyota Corolla. As you said, we can't play offense with "Lapierre, Hansen, Higgins, Booth, Kassian." Our roster should be suited for a Tippet-style defensive game. We have a great goaltender, a solid defence, and a whole lot of nothing up front except for the Sedins, Burrows, and Kesler. Unless management wants to change the makeup of this team, it's looking like we're heading back into the dark ages -- which I don't mind if we get 16 wins in the playoffs.

I think both should have been canned. MG failed to give the coach players to work with post cup run, and AV just flat out failed the past two playoffs. I think that the only reason MG didn't get fired from his GM position is that at the end of the year presser he said that he is moving the team into a new direction to compete in today's NHL. Had he not said that, I'm sure he would have got fired.

sh!t there go his powers.

Although Garrison has formed a very nice shutdown pair with Hamhuis, I would like to see an Edler-Garrison pairing. They both had pretty bad starts in the beginning of the season (Edler racking up points though), but now that they've found their game as of late maybe it's time to give that pairing a second chance?

2010.2011 ice-time 22:17 2011.2012 ice-time 23:41 With us, this season he's averaging 21:27

The one knock I have on Garrison is his physicality. He's good along the boards and excellent with his defensive positioning and stick work, but I was expecting more hits. In his three full seasons with Florida (10.11 & 11.12) Garrison has averaged 131.5 hits a season. Over a full 82 game season Garrison would only have 68 hits this season. With his size I was hoping that he would be a fairly punishing defenseman. Hopefully he can increase his physicality during the playoffs.

It's a weird ranking. The guy factors in the "quality of opposition" a defenseman faces and how many goals were scored against said defenseman. I can understand Ehrhoff being #10 because, at the time, he played with the Sedins (and other team's top lines would play against them) and for a good chunk of time they had the puck in the offensive zone -- and when you have the puck in the offensive zone then chances are the other team will not score on you. It's just a weird way at ranking defenseman. There are too many underlying factors such as the one presented above.

Hahaha yea! It makes me wonder why they don't feed him the puck for one-timers more often on the power play.