Maniwaki Canuck

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/juniors/generals-ice-dogs-engage-scrum-dangerous-hit/

Schenn really was a revelation in his time with us. There's absolutely no reason not to sign him for a year or two around 1 million if he'll take it. Best case scenario, he continues to outperform and we have a serious bargain. Middling scenario, he's serviceable depth who's in and out of the lineup or up and down between Utica and the big club. Worst case scenario, we bury him in Utica with no cap consequences. My sense is that under Eakins, he really did re-tool his game to handle the new NHL, and that what we saw wasn't a fluke based on small sample size. But even if JB is more skeptical, he's still a good depth option at 4 or 5 down the RD chart. We seriously need to do this.

He said that picking Virtanen was a "no-brainer". You can say that again, but mean something other than what Benning intended! He was involved. But I also think he learned from that mistake and has been developing smart players ever since.

Dubas kept buying nice shiny ufas without regard for the cap until it came up and bit him in the behind. You can have one of Marleau or Tavares, but not both. Toronto needed to hire Gilman a few years ago, not last summer when it was already too late. The biggest headscratcher of all was not moving Nylander in the fall. Not only do they have to give away promising young players now, they still need to reallocate resources away from the forwards to the defense. This is no model of how to build a team.

Zucker has definitely been a Canuck-killer recently, so we've probably seen him at his best. I wonder what the issues with him were this year that he became available? If Minny doesn't want a forward, would Hutton interest them? Who would have to add in a deal with those as the two main pieces?

I doubt we'd get a lot for Baer either, and since he's been good when healthy, let's just keep him as part of an increasingly deep group of forwards and let others play up the lineup if and when he's hurt.

It all depends on the cost/value of particular ufas and trades. Either can be great or terrible according to how what you give up compares to what you get back. Both involve risk, but so does standing pat while your young star players enter their prime without proper support.

Well deserved and this recognition should further boost his confidence. He really opened my eyes when Edler and Tanev were out and he was handling 25-30 minutes a night without falling off his game too badly. Easily a 3-4 guy and still improving.

Whatever you think of Gillis, he's not coming back under this ownership. His recent interviews that link the Torts hire to ownership and allude to other issues like the vetoed Kessler trade to Pittsburg pretty much burn that bridge. Personally, I think he's a forward-thinking guy who has done some soul searching since getting fired, and could do a really good job somewhere, but not in Vancouver.

A great canuck.

Haha! After Hossa, that should wash!

The standard response is that he doesn't retire but that either Florida or us (via a nominal trade) puts him on ltr. It's certainly been done before (Hossa, Horton, Clarkson).

Toronto is a target since they're hard against the cap and have to sign Marner. I'd offer Tanev for Marleau and Kapanen. Marleau has a no move clause so he'd have to waive, but only has one more year on his contract at 6.25. We can afford that but Toronto needs to get it off the books by summer's end. They can't re-sign Kapanen anyway, so they'll move him to make headway on their cap problems. Tanev helps stabilize their suspect defense but costs enough that maybe they'd prefer picks or some other straight up cap dump scenario. Kapanen helps us get faster and younger.

Would love to have Marner of course, but we'd soon be close to where the Leafs are with the cap if we did it. Brock, Petey and Hughes are all going to get paid soon. Those guys plus Marner could easily eat up half of our cap. Depth is key to a winning team, just as much as top-end talent. Having some money for a good third line is important, as are good players on entry-level contracts. You can't do either of those things if you've blown all your cap and draft picks on a handful of top players. Balance is key to putting a strong team together. So I'd rather try to make a deal for someone a little lower on the list than Marner, who wouldn't set us back so many picks or eat up as much cap space. Taking advantage of teams hard up against the cap is definitely worth trying, though.

Wouldn't mind this guy at all. Pretty good vision and playmaking to go along with that shot. Decent size and skating.

Glad to hear you're not blaming Utica but it does seem like you're focussed on it pretty exclusively below. I agree that it's not great, but it isn't the whole picture.

I think the question is whether his skating will allow him to work around his lack of size, that is, can he elude larger players, find the space to be effective? I'm skeptical not because he's small but because he doesn't look to be an elite skater, only a good one with good hockey sense. If that's the case, is it enough for him to be successful in the NHL?

To put all of this in perspective: 1. If a club can add 2 drafted players per year to its lineup, that would fully renew a 23 man roster in 11.5 years. Most NHL careers don't last that long so you do have to find more players somehow, but that's just from the draft, without any free agents. This past year we added 4: Petey, Hughes, Gaudette and Demko. The previous year we added Brock and the one before that Tryamkin. So over the past 3 years, we're averaging 2 drafted players added to the lineup per year. Again, that's without FAs from college or junior like Stecher, MacEwan, Sautner, and Rafferty who have either made the team or are knocking on the door. Once you add those in, we're closer to adding 3 players per year via amateur scouting. In short, we are doing just fine at finding and developing NHL-caliber players. 2. Many others have said it but it bears repeating: Utica is not the only or even the main place where those players are developing. Increasingly, US college hockey is where the real development stories are happening. Of all the first-rounders from the Benning era, only Jake and Juolevi have played in Utica: McCann, Brock, Petey and Hughes went straight to the NHL in their draft + 1 years. Mostly it's second-rounders and lower who spend time in Utica. That means we're doing well with our first-rounders, not that Utica sucks at development. We'd all have liked better rookie years from Lind and Gadjovich and a better pipeline of developing second-round picks, but Benning traded several of those away to get Vey, Baertschi and Gudbranson. That's the single biggest reason why the cupboard looks bare in Utica but it's hardly the club's fault. But the picture is way brighter once you look at how Madden, Rathbone and Lockwood are doing in college. All three of those guys have a decent shot at the NHL. Our players are also developing in Sweden and Finland. So we really do have to look beyond Utica to assess our prospects. Bottom line: Utica has only been getting a small proportion of our good prospects and has done a decent job with what little they've had to work with. 3. None of this means that Benning is above criticism. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd prefer to have Rasmus Anderson (taken with the second-round pick we gave up) over Baertschi and a re-do on several of our draft picks. But that's true of any GM's record and those were still reasonable moves at the time, whether or not we agree with them. None of it is any reason to freak out about Utica like the 1040 crowd does. Getting all mad and mixing up separate issues might raise ratings over there, but the conversation here is usually better for being less apocalyptic.

Real class move the other day, punching that guy as he was being helped off the ice. Do not want.

For sure. For the first few years I was still mad about passing on Ehlers, but as time goes on and he continues to plateau and even show some of the same hockey IQ issues as Jake (all rush, no pass), I've gotten over it. In retrospect, the top 10 in that draft had some real clunkers: the 18 yr. old wonder, dal Colle, Fleury ... Jake could still end up as the 6th best player in that draft, and address some of the size concerns you have, especially if he learns to play big.

Fair enough, especially about the iq issues w/Ehlers. Reading the play well can often get you a lot further than a spectacular as an end-to-end rush. We'll see if Caufield can make the space he needs to play his game against men. Maybe so, but I do think that's the question to ask about whether his game will translate.

Everyone debates whether there are issues with the coaching at Utica and frets over how "our prospects aren't developing" down there. But the simple fact is that few of our top prospects have actually been playing there. Three of our last four first rounders jumped straight into the NHL in their draft + 1 year, and many of our next tier down (Gaudette, Lockwood, Madden, Rathbone) are developing in US college hockey, not the AHL. Then there's the ones developing in Sweden and Finland. Nobody can blame Utica for failing to develop prospects who don't play for them. The whole panic over this issue is just stupid.

Yeah, I wanted Ehlers but don't want Caufield, and the difference is definitely the skating. Ehlers was and is on a whole other level. There's no way Caufield has anything close to the same acceleration, top gear and lateral movement. I do agree that Caufield has a great release and is a great all-round finisher, but doubt he will be as effective when bigger, faster defenders are closing on him and he's not on a dominant team with better linemates. Ehlers made most of his chances himself: that's not at all the case with Caufield.

Pretty impressive for sure. I don't know where the concerns about this guy's hockey IQ come from. Maybe playing against men he can't accomplish as much with that amazing skating as he does against juniors? But he seems to read the play well enough and find his team mates, so it's not like he's going full Jake out there (just kidding). In a draft that's supposed to be all about the USNDP, I wouldn't be shocked to see Byram, Broberg and Soderstrom all sneak into the top 10.

I'm not sure if Gaudette and Madden have the value yet to get us the kind of RD prospect we'd like. Maybe in a year or two that could change. But the positional hierarchy seems to be RD>LD>C>wingers, so you have to have a relatively more proven commodity in a less desirable position to move up the chain. I'd love to get a guy like Dobson, and hope Benning makes a call about him, but it would probably take a big over-payment even though he's still in junior. Parayko would be even more. So yeah, let's just draft Soderstrom instead and hope he's ready in a couple of years. With him, Woo, and Stecher, we'd be set at RD. We don't need any more centers and while we do need a good LW, that's the easiest piece to get in free agency or another draft down the road.