VIC_CITY

I think there's always room for a guy who's learning on the job when he has the tools and potential if Puljujarvi. He may not get to play every day or get a ton of PP minutes right off the bat but most teams have a project or two (or three) and Jesse is definitely worth of that. I wouldn't do more that Goldobin and a small piece though. To be honest, we might even be be better off just keeping Goldobin. At least he's shown some success with EP and seems to be liked by his teammates. Plus he's already a couple years deep into Travis Green's hard knock school of hockey, rather than that gong show in Edmonton. That has to be worth something.

I hope so. But I don't think Benning's contract status has an impact on either those things happening. If anything, it was an announcement to give the fans something to talk about in the dog days of summer. Boeser's contract status is the same as a number of RFAs. There's no rush to get a deal done. But the market should start to settle in the next 3 or so weeks. As far as Eriksson goes, I think it's within our best interest to play hardball with him and send him to Utica. There's no need to accept a trade to one of Loui's preferred destinations if it means attaching significant futures or taking back equal salary commitments. Once he's down in Utica, he won't be blocking deals to Edmonton, Ottawa, etc (if that rumor is true). This trade needs to benefit us, not just Loui.

It will be interesting if he shows up to camp, what that will be like. They'll probably play him on the road to avoid the boos and see if he has any success from there. But he's going up against a group of hungry lions, just waiting to steal a roster spot away from him. This doesn't end well for Loui.

He could score 50 goals but he just scored 50 points. No way Laine gets $10M or 8 years. Right now he's looking at $7.5-$8M on bridge deal IMO.

Do you remember the facetime interview he did leading up to the draft where he was laying in bed and talking about how he thought he was the #1 pick? Confidence is one thing but then again, look at EP. Sure he's confident but he knows he needs to get better. He doesn't take anything for granted.

Now you're talking Loui Eriksson money! Jake Virtanen signed for 2 years at $1.25M per coming off of a 10G 10A season, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Goldobin come in at around the same but on a 1 year show me deal. In the end, there's no way Goldobin holds out over a couple hundred K. I doubt he even thinks he's worth north of $1.5M.

@Timråfan and @Arrow 1983 are just doing gods work in another summer of hockey withdrawals. Do you remember that 100+ page thread on signing Shane Doan?

Well, they have a pretty good card to play in Utica if it came to that. Benning and Aquilini are over the fact that this was a horrible signing. Plenty of horrible signings happen every year on July 1st. If every one of them resulted in a GM losing their job, their would be no GMs. Benning still has a chance to save face by ridding himself of the contract. If he were to send Loui to the AHL and have him retire after his bonus next summer, that would be a huge win for us. Does anyone really think Loui rides the bus for 3 years? I know it's cold but Loui stuck his foot in his mouth and now Benning has the whole fan base behind him. Benning's image amongst Canucks fans and fellow GMs would most definitely be boosted if he burried Loui. Benning is viewed as...a little soft we'll say. But this is a power move! Come on Jim, throw down the hammer!

You may be onto something with Kovalchuk. Just doing some digging around...NJ and Kovalchuk agreed to terminate his contract on the basis that he would retire from the NHL, but NJ would hold his rights until he was 35, at which point he could return with UFA status. I'm not sure how that works, as he was signed to a 15 year deal at the time. Maybe someone with more brain power than me can figure out these termination rules!

Ya, but you can't assume Edmonton won't match, especially at $2.1M. That's not really anything to worry about. Whatever you think they'll do, assume the opposite, it's Edmonton! That's a risk Puljujarvi might not want to take.

It's been a trend for a while now. Edmonton signed Hall, RNH and Eberle to 6x6 deals (or something similar) coming off their ELCs. $6M was a good chunk of change back then.

You know, it's fun to play armchair GM but this is probably the right take. We have too many forwards as it is. We might pencil guys like Leivo, Pearson, Baertschi and Virtanen into bottom 6 roles but that doesn't change the fact that these guys are all busting their asses this summer trying to prove us wrong and one or two of them just might. So there's really no need to bring any more forwards into this group. That is, unless bodies are going out (Goldobin, Erkisson, Schaller, etc). So I'd still entertain a Goldy + a small asset for Puljujarvi but there's no real need to make that trade. Our depth at forward is probably the best it's been since AV was our coach.

Interesting. I haven't heard that but I can't recall a time it's ever happened?

They can, but I don't know if Loui would have any interest in that. He's a $1.5M player right now. Maybe $2M if he's lucky. He'd be leaving at least $3M on the table (over 3 years). Anything is possible though.

Ok sure, but you can't deny that Gadj's stock is rock bottom right now. He's arguably not even a top 15 prospect for us at this point. So that's why I mentioned his name as someone I'd be willing to include in a trade for Puljujarvi.

That's how things are shaping up to look. But if Benning is still our GM, don't expect that to happen. He'll either trade one of them or toss Seattle a 2nd rounder to take a guy like Motte. If Markstrom is the goalie he showed the last 3/4s of the year and Demko takes another step forward this year, both will be far too valuable to lose for nothing.

Gadjovich's stock has taken a nose dive over the past year. He has some major work to do to regain his value as a legit NHL prospect. Here's a good read on the current state of our prospects and how they rank within our system. https://www.vancourier.com/pass-it-to-bulis/the-vancouver-canucks-2019-20-prospect-pyramid-1.23903559

I mean, I don't even think I'd do that. Beartschi alone is the superior player, although he comes with the concusion history. The most I'd do is Goldobin and Gadjovich or one of other forgotten prospects.

My dude, let's make a couple assumptions about the mods first: 1) Mods generally don't close down the most popular threads on the forum, especially when they're such hot button, currently relevant topics. It's the dog days of the summer, what else is there to talk about? 2) Mods have seen the same games as you and I, they've read the same Loui quotes as you and I and have quite possibly come to the conclusion that Loui sucks. Long live this thread!

If Loui came to camp with a Theo Von inspired mullet, I'd consider forgiving him.

Definitely don't like JD whatsoever but his take is actually quite reasonable for him. Shocking, he can be quite tolerable when not sounding like a condescending know it all prick... Although that last line was pretty douchey. Is it possible for him to just answer the question without some how managing to push his anti-Benning agenda?

To be fair, the RFA market is constantly on the rise. If it wasn't Kyle Dubas, it would be the next guy and Brian Burke saw this coming a long time ago. The 2nd (bridge) contract has essentially been eliminated for the upper echilon. What I find interesting is that the players could be the ones to bring it back. The thought used to be security trumps all, but then the tide shifted when players started leveraging other teams by signing or threating of an offersheet. So players were signing big money deals coming off their ELC. Now things are shifting back the other way and players are realizing that they might actual make more money in the long haul (with the way game is growing and new TV deals etc), so a bridge deal might actually be the best way to go. Back to Dubas, I don't think the Nylander signing was that bad. Sure, the player got full value, but it's not like he was going to sign for less than $6.5M. So I don't think $6.9M shook up the market that much. I'm sure they discussed cheaper deals for less years but that's just what it cost to buy out Nylander's UFA years. The right move would have been to trade Nylander for a defenseman IMO.

I was trying to find a picture of Loui in warm up with his hair freely flowing in the breeze and caption it: Loui at max effort lol but I legit couldn't find 1 photo in his entire career without a helmet. It appears as if he's always wore the helmet/visor in warm up and yet to lose his helmet in a collision/puck battle. That's so Loui.

I can see that. He kinda reminds me of Doug Gilmour in those old Head & Shoulders commercials.

Interesting. Does Alaska still have an ECHL team?