-AJ-

Relegated to a Canucks trivia question.

To be fair, we don't know that we would've even selected Guenther in the draft anyway.

Iginla being more involved in hockey can only be a good thing for the sport. Would be nice to see it.

Thanks, I figured it seemed crazy. This makes way more sense then.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong--but doesn't he have 0 front office experience? Seems a bit wild to throw him into a role like this without any experience at all. At least go for a guy like Ryan Johnson who's got AHL management experience or a person with AGM experience. EDIT: Thanks to @Fanuck for informing me that Conroy does have experience.

Edler had a bomb for a few years that was at least as hard as Salo's, but not as accurate. Ehrhoff's was quite amazing, but that was a short time period. Some other good shots from the blue line, but I'm not sure any really stand out.

Don't think it's quite the same. Dahlin is already seriously in the Norris conversation. Jovo had received minor Norris attention, but was never a serious contender (though he was more in the conversation during his best years in Vancouver). Jovo was more like "pretty good, but not as good as we thought".

Fair point. That said, it's not uncommon for players or staff members of prior cup winners to struggle with later teams.

Well Benning won a Cup with Boston and we all know how most fans felt about him.

Probably this. A high defenseman A+ prospect would be a reasonable part of the deal. A guy like Bowen Byram comes to mind.

And that is entirely possible, but you don't know what the best is unless you do a reasonably deep search through the various candidates. Take it to the extreme to see what I mean: If they interviewed on Trinca and didn't ever even consider any other options, then how would they know that he's the best? You have to explore other possible options to get a better glimpse of the entire population of options to get an understand of just how highly Trinca ranks among the various options. For all we know, they did explore a large number of options and Trinca ended up being the best option--I'm not at all against the idea. It's just rather suspicious when a team continuously does that over and over again and repeatedly hires former team members, unless there's a strong reason to believe that so many of the members of that former team remain the best options today, which again, is possible, but quite coincidental.

I see it as they might know that Trinca is an 85/100, which is quite good and acceptable for the industry. That said, there might be a 90/100 or a 95/100 that is available for hire, but if we didn't explore options, we have forgone that opportunity to hire those better options. Trinca might be good enough at 85/100, but we might end up not being as good as we could have been had we explored more options. Again, this is all speculative as I obviously have no insight into the actual hiring process they used.

A Vancouver Island player and hockeygod77. Name a more iconic duo.

He should be IMO. Played as a winger last year, but is solid at faceoffs unlike our other options.

Absolutely true, but I'd also appreciate due diligence in seeking out the best candidate. It's possible that Trinca is the best candidate, but given the slew of ex-Pens hires, it's hard not to suspect that the team isn't doing due diligence and just saving time and money to hire a "good enough" candidate instead of the best.

More Pens. I sometimes wonder if we're actually hiring the best candidates or just Jim's old buddies.

I think Petey could handle himself in a lightweight fight, but probably not against any medium or heavyweights. Given how intense he is as a player, I'd be surprised if he doesn't finish his career with at least two or three fights.

Far too early to pass judgement IMO, but it really depends on if you think we can win with our current core or not. If you think we can't, the best choice is to trade Petey, Hughes, Demko, etc, and start over and get picks for this year. If you think our core guys can win, then it's probably more reasonable to get a guy like Hronek than an 18 year old that probably won't be in his prime for another 6 or 7 years.

Guess I'm gonna have to live to 130 to see that then. No other choice.

Boy the thread title makes it sound like the Cup is going away and will only be won by one more team.

Doesn't he almost always dress like that?

McDavid and it's not close. Best offensive player by a mile and his defense isn't bad either.

Indeed, thanks for the correction. Garland was actually not bad this year on the PP based on those numbers. I wouldn't necessarily give him too much of an edge as the 2nd PP unit, as those players often play against the 2nd PK units, meaning they have easier competition that matches the lesser firepower of those units. My brain was stuck on 2021-22, when he was dead last of any Canuck forward on PP Points/60 (of any that played a regular shift on the PP). He substantially stepped it up this year, however. This leads me to conclude that the logical drop in production is in even-strength production, which went from 49 points in 77 games to a measly 34 in 81 games. An interesting trend. His shooting percentage actually went up this year, so we can't blamed bad luck.

This almost exactly echoes my sentiments on Garland. It's rather bizarre that he doesn't perform on special teams (he doesn't PK at all and isn't effective on the PP). Adding either PK skills or improving his PP results would significantly improve his value I think. Some strong PP results would push him closer to the 60-point mark he's shown he can approach in the past, at which point, he's in the realm of a solid 2nd line winger.

Miller for Schneider, Chytil, and a 1st. Wait...what year is it?