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canucklehead44

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Everything posted by canucklehead44

  1. I agree. He isn’t hurting the team. Brendan Gaunce was one of our most effective forwards and had 86% defensive starts but got pushed out for lack of “points”. If your 4th liners are low event, produce little but allow little, that is a good use of cap space. If he is in the ice for 12 goals for and 12 goals against and the team is a -30 that is fine IMO especially as a young player earning near league minimum
  2. he can play center but I think his style is better suited to wing. His first 12 game call up he took 64 faceoffs and won 57.8% - he must have played centre during that stretch
  3. I think it is too early to give up on OEL and buying him out then committing big money to a UFA could get us in serious cap trouble. OEL was good last year and OEL-Bear was our third most effective pairing this season (OEL-Myers and OEL-Schenn both atrocious). The problem is Hughes and Bear was our best pairing, followed by Hughes and Myers. So my hope is that Hronek will elevate OEL back to being an effective 2nd pairing dman. Adding Hornek and Bear actually completely revamps our defense as it gives us some great options. On the left side I really like Wolanin. I think he could do ok with Myers in a third pairing role if we can’t move him. When it comes to backup goalies, bottom pairing dmen and 4th line players I’ve observed we have far more success having multiple league minimum guys compete for spots than over pay for those roles
  4. On paper his upside looks to be around Erik Kallgren or Jonas Johansson (not quite as impressive as Lack pre NHL). A nice depth add but probably won’t be a backup next season
  5. Benning said he would be our #1 dman. That isn’t happening. But he needs to be our #3 or #4. He did that his first season here. I think OEL should be given one more chance. It looks like Tocchet / Foote / Gonchar have put some good structure in place. Paired with a great defender like Hronek he can keep things simple and hopefully give us 20 minutes of solid defensive hockey along with 30 points. Worth $7.25M? No. But he has to play like a $3-$4M player to justify not buying him out. I would also prefer waiting in case we are in severe cap trouble with EP and Hronek getting big raises and buying him out then Vs replacing him with another 5-6M dollar player
  6. I think he will get a few games in. A lot of tier 2 prospects & fringe players definitely got impacted hard by the Covid layoff. Woo’s rookie season was only 28 games and he did alright with 3 goals and +7. His second season was also cut short and he was shuffled around the lineup a lot. This year he has been given the opportunity to settle in and get more minutes with Juulsen and looks to be progressing well over last year. This is basically his sophomore season given the last two were shortened so hopefully with more minutes and a playoff run he can start inching his way into a top pairing and getting some NHL call ups
  7. I agree - I like both of these guys. You can never have too many RHD. That said I would take Honzek if he was available. 6'3 Centre, 56 points in 43 games for the Giants. I wonder what the cost would be? Our 1st (10th) straight up for Toronto's 1st (27th) and New York's 1st (28th)?
  8. Garikov is a much better player than Myers who got $6M per year - then again only Jim Benning would pay that. I would be very surprised if Garikov got below 6.
  9. Bo should end up at around 68 points this season and Beauvillier at 46. Both players are about equal when it comes to being above their career points per 82 game average. In hindsight, trading a 68 point upcoming free agent who we cant afford to re-sign for a 46 point player who is two years younger, 1 year left on his contract, and an RFA is essentially a win-win deal just looking at Bo for Beau straight up. Despite rather unsavoury results it actaully feels like this management team has a plan in place and when you look at the entirity of their moves they make sense. Benning on the otherhand seemed to haphazardly throw big money at declining players or made trades that didn't make any sense. Players out: Horvat Schenn Lazar Dickinson Average age: 28.7 Estimated cap hit: 13 million Players in: Beauvillier Bear Hronek Raty Average age: 23.7 Estimated cap hit: 11.5 million The picks & Josh Bloom more or less even themselves out. So we got around 5 years younger, saved about 1.5M in cap, and become much better on the back-end but lost some centre depth.
  10. Colin White, Luke Kunin, Ryan Poehling based on size, production, and scouting reports.
  11. You are right. If we buy out OEL, move Myers for a cheaper cap dump like Nemeth, we could have a few options. 1. Sign Garikov / Graves / Soucy - Probably looking at a range of around 5-6.5 Million. 2. Trade - I am not sure if the Pens would have interest in Boeser, but perhaps Boeser with $2.5M retained for Pettersson would be an option? It is a shame Juolevi busted so hard. If he panned out it would have saved us aquiring OEL.
  12. All of this aged terribly
  13. Even after BoHo’s huge season and Brock’s two year drop, Boeser still has a career average of 7% higher. For all the screaming about signing Miller he now has 3 more points over Horvat this year. Horvat was shooting 22%, which is an absurd stat. On the isles he is shooting 8.9% Horvat is a good player, nice guy, plays hard but in my mind was horribly overrated. Not physical, bad defensively, doesn’t make his line mates better. Amazing 2nd line center but nothing more than that. 6.5 million is about the most I would pay for Horvat. I think JT Miller is a better player. Maybe less consistent but he feels like much more of a difference maker when he is on his game. He plays a lot more physical and also is a better playmaker.
  14. I also think Linden wasn’t respected as a President like Rutherford is. I think it is much better to have a GM report to a President than to an owner. If Benning had Linden’s back on a rebuild perhaps things would have been different. The funny thing about that entire era is the fans were more upset about Benning blowing Aqua’s money than he seemed to be. With so many of Benning’s signings I thought “wow a team would have paid us some nice picks to take on a player & contract like this”. I think that is what got me. I understand he wanted to bring in vets to shelter young players but he could have acquired those guys in cap dumps and hoarded picks
  15. If we trade Myers to Arizona for Nemeth and send him down to the minors that clears up about $4M in cap while saving Arizona $2.5M in cash. Myers would also get top 4 minutes in Arizona so he could maybe fetch them a 3rd at 50% retained come deadline. Arizona will be nowhere near the cap limit and if anything this helps keep them above the floor. I can see Aqua vetoing this though, as it would cost him $8.5M to have Nemeth play in the minors
  16. He has yet to hit the 20 minute mark in a game (Vs Wolanin who played 20+ minutes in back to back games). Bear played 24+ minutes in back to back games before his absence. I don’t think he is quite there - but perhaps an option for the bottom pairing next season. We are in a sticky cap situation. At around $2M I think bringing back Bear for one season is a smart move as he as shown he can play a top 4 role relatively well. Even if he ends up playing in the bottom pairing he is a good guy to keep as I think he is well above replacement level but way cheaper than a more proven top 4
  17. He had some enormous misses too. Virtanen over Ehlers/Nylander, Juolevi over Tkachuk. Judd Brackett was the head of scouting so he deserves a lot more of the credit, especially 2017 onward. He was hired by Gillis and promoted/fired by Benning so I guess I’ll give Benning credit for promoting him. I actually think given Jim’s overall track record people are waaaaaaaay softer on him then they are/were in any GM in recent history. Especially our current management group. He traded and downgraded more picks than he acquired for essentially one playoff appearance in a year we would have missed if not for the Covid shutdown. The amount of truly awful signings. Eriksson, Beagle, Myers, Gagner, Roussel, Sbisa, Poolman, Holtby. Not signing Tanev & Toffoli and trading for Schmidt and re-signing Virtanen. The OEL trade is likely the worst trade in franchise history. One low key underrated awful trade is the 2nd round pick & McCann for Gudbranson. We had DeBrincat ranked 13th who was available. Gudbranson was horrible then we signed him to a big contract because of sunk cost fallacy. The fact he gets so much credit for drafting (I’ve read GMs really only are involved with top 10 picks) yet seemed to have zero ability to evaluate talent at the NHL level, giving enormous contracts to replacement level players, makes no sense. Allvin & Rutherford have done an exceedingly better job thus far even if the results aren’t there yet. We are in a bind with some bad Benning contracts but I think with the addition if Hronek and a healthy Demko we actually have a good team.
  18. Look at the size of the draft team. Do you actually think Benning with all of his other responsibilities had anything to do with the selection of a 7th round pick out of Sweden ? He didn’t even have anything with us drafting Jared McCann - he threw the draft team under the bus. Jokes on him though because McCann was actually a good pick. Gradin. He had found us many of these gems over the years including Forsling who Benning traded away. Our 7th rounders between McDonough, Kirill and Forsell looking great. Maybe we lost the Kravstov trade hah
  19. Ethan Bear has played very well with Hughes. I think Hronek on paper looks like a good partner for OEL. Wolanin and Juulsen have great too. Wolanin played over 20 minutes in back to back winning games and finished 1 point + 2. He is now +6 in 12 games and has only been a - (-1) in 1 game. I think Wolanin is a hidden gem and will be a top 4 defenseman - he really stands out while on the ice.
  20. Stand-alone the only really bad move was Dickinson + 2nd for Stillman but when you factor in that trades needed to happen to make the Bear trade plus we flipped Stillman for a solid prospect in Bloom overall it’s a W. The only deal I don’t like is Hronek but to be fair he is a very good player in a position that is extreme hard to acquire. When you also consider it was basically Horvat + 2nd for Beau, Raty, Hronek + 4th then seeing Horvat’s contract it looks great . Dermott unfortunately has been injured so that deal didn’t work out although I loved it at the time so the only real miss in my mind is Lekkerimaki. Nice change from Benning. If you were to compile the worst moves of Allvin, Benning, Gillis, Burke, and Nonis I wouldn’t be surprised if Benning had more than the others combined. One blunder after another and he had screwed us over for a long time
  21. Next season getting under the cap will be determined by Pearson & Poolman staying in LTIR and likely moving one of Myers, Boeser and Garland. We give OEL another season to turn things around. If he doesn’t then we buy him out next season. If we buy him out this season we have to pay him till 2030-2031 with a dead cap of 2.1M. Next year buyout his contract runs till 2029-2030 with a cap hit of $1.8. Buying him out this offseason injects the most one time cap savings ($8 million) but we can’t really go out and blow that money with Hronek and EP getting big raises the following years. I only see OEL getting bought out this off-season as a last resort - Pearson and Poolman aren’t on LTIR and we don’t find a good enough deal for Myers/Boeser/Garland. Then we let Myers contact expire and shift that $6m to pay EP and Hronek
  22. Forsling had a massive draft +1. Straight to the SHL where he put up solid numbers and then 8 points in 7 games during the WJC. Even though a 5th round pick, unlike Myrenberg for example, he became very hyped. That said Clendening was only 22 at the time of the trade and had a 59 point season in the AHL and was a high 2nd round pick so he did look promising. This goes to show how it makes no sense how people put Benning on such a pedestal for his drafting when his pro scouting absolutely sucked. Much easier to evaluate a guy like Clendening than a 17 year old playing in a low level league. The fact we gave up on him after 17 games shows they didn’t do their due diligence.
  23. He did like a lot of Canucks Instagram posts through the years and I think at one point even changed his profile pic to his Canucks gear. He hated Willie Desjardins but seemed open to coming back when we had Green. With all of our Russians plus Gonchar I think it’s a great fit for both sides. Playing bottom pairing left side he offers exactly what this team needs.
  24. Huh? 6th in WJC scoring, 45 goals in 59 games his draft year and close to .5 points per game as a 19 year old. I’d bet good money he has 30 goal seasons in the NHL. What is it about his game you don’t like ? I’d probably trade our 3 or 4 top prospects straight up for him. But this is worse than the Neely trade for sure. Pederson didn’t hamper us and was in the Ronning trade tree. I don’t think Neely would have been as good here. The draft pick hurts, but the people saying we would have selected Sakic (who went 15) are probably wrong when another Burnaby boy in Chris Joseph went 5th overall.
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