DSVII

At least we won't have "Leafs bring it home first" shoved down our throats the next century.

I miss playing-for-a-contract Miller

The same owner that believes this team just needs to get into playoffs and anything can happen.

I know doing well against our Defense is hardly an accurate barometer but the Devils look like a playoff team this year.

How much longer before JR follows through with his threat to move someone out of the room?

We're too nice to backup goalies

Hardly given up. There's still a chance at Bedard

Thing about this year is that even if you lose the lotto in the bottom you still get a chance at a potential franchise player in Fantelli or Michkov. If there ever was a year to take a step back and reload it is this one.

You can love this team to bits and hate every moment of it in its current state because you know they can do better. And giving up would just be not caring, doing something else besides watch the Nucks or talk about them and I wouldn't use that descriptor on any poster here.

A full 60 minute effort. Very nice!

Good structure so far from the Nucks. All I ask for 60 minutes

Hope he breaks the bad luck streak with that number

Happy Halloween game all :D

This win doesn't really change what this team has been the first 7 games, the concerns are all still there. But I'm glad we got this one and we got Brucie his 600th!

That's our 13 million D pairing!

Challenge all defensemen to a fight. Seattle has no D left to defend.

If they trade a top 10 pick for a boatload anchor contract, sure I'll say they're worse. But for now not yet.

Demko won't be operating at sub .90 forever. So the more important question is....when this team does inevitably bounce back and approaches the .500 mark. Will the fanbase still stick to the conviction we need a rebuild?

Now count the number of late round draft picks that don't hit. Your reply will be even longer. You do realize that the 'fancy' graphs take into account every player right? hits and misses? The point isn't that it's impossible to find a good player, but heading into a draft, how high you pick and how often you pick counts for a lot. Listing names and making the case that it's possible is like telling someone that a lotto ticket with 5% hit with Kucherov, therefore you can just get by with a 5% chance again next year. You're operating with 100% hindsight and selection bias here. You're throwing shit on the wall and hoping it overwhelms people. It's just spam at this point. Again, you've asked for a reason why GMMG had a crap prospect pool, I've provided the reasoning. 1.) Trading away picks for cup runs 2.) Having weaker draft positions than other teams as a result (lower picks and less number of picks) 3.) An ownership group putting making playoffs as a bar for job security (As a rabid Benning supporter, you should be more sympathetic with this one) 4.) and yes, he didn't revamp the scouting department till too late, his mandate was to be in win now mode. He never had a chance to properly rebuild. I just found this hilarious, it's not the victory lap you're thinking it to be. Also you are listing Benning drafts. Back to you giving grief on GMMG. Why did your boy Benning miss out on Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaydennnnnn POOIINNNNNNNNNNT? Why does Gillis get crap from you for his misses but not JB? Nah bud, you're whiffing on air. You're literally applying perfect hindsight to each situation and you're applying the hot hand fallacy to every successive draft. (There was a Kucherov in round 2 of 2015, there must be a kucherov in round 2 of 2022!) You know what Chicago, Pittsburg, LA, and Washington all have in common as cup winners? Their cup cores were constructed by maximizing draft capital and pick position when they were rebuilding years before your sample dates. As evidenced by Patrick Kane, Crosby, Kopitar, Ovechkin. This kind of thinking is what landed the Canucks in hot water. I've literally had arguments with JB supporters here who claim that it doesn't matter that Benning traded his 2nds, because he can draft a Kucherov in the 3rd as a steal! It doesn't happen as often as you think. To be objective, you have to see the context each GM set themselves up in prior to the draft, and where their respective teams were in their life cycles. I agree, Tampa has killed it, but citing the top of the class Tampa drafting as the reason why Gillis should have done better is weak. Ah, you must be one of those 'get in the playoffs and anything can happen' guys. The fancy graph is supposed to tell you that heading into a blind draft, the GM with more higher draft picks and higher quantities of picks will more likely walk away with more players. The answer is because Gillis had even less picks that those teams without 1st round picks, and was picking from the bottom of each round due to presidents' trophy level finishes. All else equal (I'm not arguing drafting was his strong suit either) Tampa had more picks than him over his entire tenure. They had more shots at finding a Kucherov in a generic blank draft. When you have over ten more shots at the lottery than Gillis did, a generic GM in Tampa's position will end up with more assets more often than not than a generic GM in Vancouver's position. That's very unlikely to happen again, the hockey world has changed a lot since then, Zetterberg and Datsyuk were drafted at a time when there was a huge market inefficiency in European scouting. not saying it's not possible, but the chances of that happening again are slim to none. I think you should notice I didn't go over what he inherited, but simply the draft capital he accumulated during his tenure that overlapped vs Benning. He did a better job of ensuring he could land more NHL prospects through the draft during the time he overlapped JB. Also, you disproved nothing. You called Phaneuf and Kessel worthless, yet they were still moved out for assets. Bozak and Lupul were just left to expire. The Leafs didn't do anything incredibly stupid like trading them in their final years for a boatload anchor like OEL. They saw cap space as an asset. Your boy JB saw it as a way to sign overpriced vets to save his bacon. Leafs in the Phaneuf/Kessel era were just like us, a flawed core trying to make the playoffs but getting tanking results. I lived in Toronto during that time and the talk was always 'playoffs playoffs playoffs' . Look up the Burke era Leafs and their moves, that was not a team that was rebuilding - Signing expensive free agents - Trading two first round picks in 2010 and 2011 for Phil Kessel - Trading for Dion Phaneuf - Traded their top prospect 5th overall Luke Schenn to address a hole at centre with JVR (kinda like JB trading a top 10 pick to address the hole on D he created) They pulled a Benning, paying futures for immediate help, gunning to retool on the fly, and failing miserably. They called it quits after the 2013 Game 7 loss and pivoted back to a rebuild that landed them Mathews. They started this iteration of their rebuild the same time as Benning got his job. Actually my original point said there was no expectation to keep Markstrom, but at least to not go 0-4 for all his pending UFAs. in fact i specifically mentioned he should have tried to keep a combination of Tanev/Toffoli/Stetcher, given what he ended up spending. You then continued with Tanev+Toffoli+Markstrom in your posts. I told you again you exclude Markstrom. You've included him again. Because that's the only way the math works for you. Again, there was no expectation to keep Markstrom at least from my end. So you can continue arguing against the imaginary person who said keep Markstrom, i'll just continue on. Schmidt was supposed to be Tanev's replacement, so you're paying $1.5 mil for a marginally better player who offered you 1 win above replacement according to Jfresh. Not worth it in a cap strapped world. Toffoli > Jake Virtanen. Especially when you consider the investment we put into Toff. Forget the sexual assault cases, Jake was benched long before that for his lazy play. That was an internal failure of the coaching staff, and of Benning for qualifying him. He had to make a hard choice there and it blinked. I agree to an extent, but you have to be a special kind of Defensemen to thrive in your late 30s. When you're acquiring them at 30, you are literally buying them right before their drop. The general rule is that the peak of defensemen, if you take into account the entire population, is around 19-24 Pinning your hopes that you've landed a Duncan keith is a worthy gamble to make, I just don't think you can afford to do it twice, especially at the cost of $13 mil. (OEL/Myers) Demko did just fine without Holtby last year. Haven't heard a whiff about anyone saying they miss Holtby's presence mentoring him. The foresight was not in the legal issues, but in Jake's lazy play and sloppy mistakes. It was an internal scouting failure. It is when they throw their benefactor (linden) under the bus and completely buy into the owner's plan. It's up to him to execute At least Gillis stuck to his principles, even though it cost him his job, he knew what was best for the team. Hold Benning accountable for his decision to commit to this retool on the fly. Montreal then, they rioted like 5 times in their history. Some of which were in the first round. And guess what, despite that pressure, they're still performing and rebuilding. We're not a super special situation here. Yep, it further reinforces my point. Prior to the 205th pick being made, Vancouver's pick was more valuable than Florida's at the time because there was a chance to draft Mackenzie Weegar. That's how draft position works. A scratch and win ticket with a 10% chance of winning is more valuable than one that has a 5% chance of winning before either is scratched. That holds true even if the 5% one is revealed to have won. If you are presented with a fresh pair of tickets with the same percentages, you still want the 10% ticket. You get my drift now? Also, why did Benning miss on Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaydennnnnn POOIINNNNNNNNNNT then? False choice here bud. I'd rather have him, then flip him again for picks and prospects. The team needs to rebuild. That's how you get youth. Something Benning never embraced. Yet you cheered him for it. A late 1st is less likely than a top 1st to be an NHL, but several times more likely to be an NHLer than a lower round pick. Again, you simply don't value draft capital, so there's no point to arguing with you, even though it's the reason why we're in this mess from JB. but this is more for the forum than you. Because it's irrelevant. Every GM dealt with this same circumstance. Benning had the entire offseason to crunch the numbers to make it work and go with the tough choices. He decided to focus on OEL instead. Oh completely, JR and PA missed the boat. TBL bent JB over because literally no other owner was dumb enough to pay a 1st for JT since everyone knew Tampa was in a cap crunch, and in this business, no one does you any favors. They flipped our 1st for a cost controlled centre in Blake Coleman, and won a cup. Again, without JB that cup would not have happened. A flat cap did screw him, and no one saw it coming but he did nothing to mitigate his losses. The fact that he had to buy out JV and Holtby a year later and carry dead cap over to next year shows he doesn't optimize cap space and has no foresight. He spent a year watching Quinn Hughes and Tanev dominating, paid extra trade capital for Toffoli, saw how well the room jelled together. Learned about the cap crunch, and his number 1 priority in the offseason was....ignore them all and focus on OEL, then he 'ran out of time.' Everyone got devastated, and JB acted like business as usual instead of adapting to limit the damage. And as a result, he got saddled with pieces that had to be bought out a year later. The draft pick is still his final say. He ignored Gradin and followed Aqualini. You keep bemoaning excuses and yet when you get with Juolevi, you come up with them. Personally I think Benning put too much stock on the world juniors, especially on a stacked team. There's nothing wrong with selecting a Dman, but the rule is BPA for the first round. Always. Positional drafting gets you in trouble when you ignore value. (which I guess is your MO here) Algorithms that use all the data of the player available. It's much more robust than your copy and paste the entire hockeyDB draft method for sure. Gillis hit his one and only top 10 pick too (Bo) so he has found value when given a good drafting position. But the simplest answer was, drafting was not his focus since he was trying to win the stanley cup by trading picks for help now. He even admitted that he waited too long. Nah, let's follow the trade history of the value Benning got from McCann McCann + a high 2nd pick for Gudbranson Gudbranson for Pearson. Two picks that could have ended up being cost controlled top 6 players became a 30 year old middling winger. Good job JB. And as for why his value depreciated. Benning rushed him and Jake to the NHL in the Willie Desjardin years to make the team PR look better. You slag on Gillis for not developing prospects but Benning is just as guilty of this. Again, I'm not taking that away from Benning. Petey, Hughes, Demko, solid core. We had great drafting in the years, but not enough picks to make it count. You need quantity and quality to succeed. How good would Forsling/McCann/Madden all those 2nds/3rds/4ths traded away for Linden Vey/Baerschi/Dorsett look on our team now had they been willing to just draft and be patient. At last, a thing we agree upon. My issue though, was they signed those bottom six players before we had the youth to build around them (Beagle/Loui/Roussel were all before Benning drafted Petey/Hughes/Demko) I agree you need a winning culture from vets, but Benning's pro scouting simply wasn't up to snuff here. He misjudged and overpaid, and he also ignored how huge a role Tanev/Edler had in building that culture in the room. What part of 'accumulate draft capital' implies I had zero issues with 8 years of failed drafting? Probability is not a guarantee, but it picks up on trends that are consistent. Show me a development chart first, because i'm pretty sure that's a term you just invented. The sad truth is, we would have had 24-28 YOs to trade today had Benning just been more patient with his prospects. I mean, refer back to my post where i laid it all out and even you said: It was a good base to start a rebuild, but not compete. The original point of the argument was that the 2015 team was still at its core, still GMMG's. Also, don't forget timing, when Benning started in 2015, the price tag for these guys would have been higher. The value he extracted from them was from deals done later. Bieksa for a 2nd was a great value, too bad Benning never used the pick to draft anyone, he traded it for Sutter, and the cycle continues... Funny. sure looks like an outlier to me. Willie Desjardin took that roster, deployed 1-2-3-4 tactics to it and still made the playoffs. That's all the validation that core at the time needs tbh. Again, Vancouver in 2015 was often in the top half of the league in power rankings. Torts was definitely an outlier, but it was also a team with a short shelf life, due to the aging players you just mentioned. The team didn't jell with Torts. Ryan Kesler literally came out today and said he almost fought Torts. He was dysfunctional with us. https://www.instagram.com/p/CkMHaxQPXFD/ https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/10-crazy-things-tortorella-did-while-coaching-the-canucks Mike Gillis never had the chance to set up the future. Benning didn't have the vision to see that the team he inherited had a limited shelf life, he doubled down on it by not flipping the players for assets sooner, because he wanted to win now. Which he failed at. By trading out aging players for picks and prospects. Again, JB rarely did player for picks trades, and usually when he did, he shipped them out for win-now players. He valued hockey trades, which don't work at stocking up the farm. The fact that up till 2020 two of his top 4 D were still from GMMG's era tells you how bad he was at stocking up picks. The value of the players left behind was garbage, because GMJB held onto them until their value became garbage. Again, he bought into Ownership's vision after the break with Linden. He has to be held accountable for the results. A Canadian market can be patient, just look no further than Toronto, the biggest market. Look at Montreal now. Any GM that caves to the pressure of the market and fanbase isn't worthy of holding that title. No arguments there, I was on team Trade Miller OEL at the moment is immoveable. Because he is the double whammy of the cap hit and NMC/NTC. My GMMG examples apply because their cap hits were more reasonable at sub $5 mil. I hope Boeser is moveable, somehow I'm doubting it, he's snake bitten with injury. Agreed, I think Horvat is on the block. Again, you are the champion of Benning drafting. I would argue that JB would have had a better shot of finding some gems in those rounds than banking on guys several years past their x-draft dates. The pro-scouting under JB was horrendous. He should have leveraged his amateur scouts more. I was speaking mainly to creating a winning environment. Where the hell was it? You know why? While he had the Sedins here, there was no one to mentor outside of Jake/McCann/Bo. Benning should have been drafting the next wave of youth during his first years here. I provided an explanation, not an excuse. When you enter a draft blind with lower picks and lower number of picks, you end up with less talent. The fact that stanley cup winners have landed low percentage hits doesn't change that. Heck, even Gillis hit on Bo Horvat. Ultimately Gillis drafting was his downfall, and he paid for it. But ultimately it's an incomplete report card on whether he could have done better with higher picks. he was simply fired before he had a chance to do so. JB's ultimate sin though, was taking GMMG's 8 year deficit as you said, and tacked on another 5-8 with his own mortgaging of the future to make a bubble team. And unfortunately, with the moves we've seen so far. looks like we may be tacking on another 5-8 with the newest iteration of managers. The constant in all this? Francesco. Anyways, it's been fun, You can have the last word. Enough time has been spent on this thread. Agree to disagree.

Maybe a 'Bottom out' retool haha But yeah. Unless Petey/ Hughes doesn't want to go through 2-3 years of pain, we should still try and keep them.

Bah gawd that's Top Sixtito's music!

A rebuild doesn't have to be scorched earth. Those are the 10 year ones. Keep the young core (demko,hughes,petey) sell the rest and for two years reset and recoup picks/prospects. Sell at the deadline. And hell yea I'm on board

LA sports riots makes ours look like a walk in the park. And try going into Boston and New England wearing anything New York related and you'll see just how reasonable our fanbase is. https://metro.co.uk/2018/02/05/here-are-five-american-cities-which-rioted-after-sporting-success-and-defeat-7289493/ Deflection. And strawman. The point of bringing up Tkachuk was, drafting BPA is still the way to go over positional needs, because even if the person wants out, you can still get a good return for them. Would you rather have Huberdeau and Weegar? Or Lammiko? There was no foresight with the Toffoli trade, no attempt to even contact him to sign even with cap space available. The JT Miller trade was a gamble, made in the similar mindset as Brandon Sutter. A 3C on a high octane offense who could potentially put it together. he was lucky it worked out. There is no foresight because it put us into a future cap crunch that we are experiencing now. TBL bent JB over on Miller. They were in a cap crunch, no one else was willing to flip a 1st for JT. They then used the 1st to get back to back cups by trading for Blake Coleman. Make no mistake, JB had a hand in contributing to both Penguins and TBL back to back cups because of his inefficent trades for their soon-to-be overpaid 3Cs. And the 2020 team that did make the bubble, from mortgaging the future and the 2020 draft picks, ended up staying together for 1 season. Not to mention signing Ferland in free agency who had a history of concussions? on an uninsured contract? Yea. No foresight at all. It's a shame then that his scouting never caught up to the 2020s then. Promoting brackett was great, letting him leave because Benning didn't want give him automony was a mistake. Not at all. There were reports from Botchford that Gradin really wanted Nylander, and Benning overruled him because Aquilini wanted the home boy Virtanen. And Juolevi was Benning's pick because he loved how he played on a stacked Finnish Team. https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/canucks-mailbag-whats-going-gm-jim-benning-judd-brackett/ From Imac himself There were even reports Benning wanted Cody Glass, but in 2017 he deferred to Judd Brackett on this. So yeah. The support staff helped Benning land one of his best draft picks. I mean, just look at the draft charts on probability of NHL players, even late in the 1st round. I'd consider hitting on anyone that can play regularly in the NHL a win. Not every draft will have a superstar calibre player that goes to the 20th pick. that's why I don't give Benning too much grief on missing Pastranak, because he did end up with McCann. It's more concerning, that despite hitting on McCann, JB undercut his own strength by packaging him away for Gudbranson. It's Benning's fault that he didn't execute on his vision by mismanaging the cap structure of the team, signing overpriced overagers to boat anchor contracts, and failing essentially on his pro-scouting and reclaimation projects, trading too many picks away. Benning drafted well enough, but he didn't put himself and the team in a position to succeed. And yes, he should have backed Linden, but if Benning believed enough in FA's vision to go against him, he's accountable for how crappy he executed it. Especially after he had Petey/Hughes/Demko drafted. The decision to not capitalize on the inherited team had major implications on the future. The decision to not accumulate draft capital and continually gun for it had implications on the future. Mismanaging the cap and incorrectly identifying the culture carriers on the team and free agents that could help did. And it clearly shows in your line of thinking. It's not an excuse, it's the reality of the business. Value of Draft position is as real a concept as Salary Cap. In all the major sports. NHL Gms would disagree with you, considering they trade multiple picks to move up in the draft. So in your universe, would you trade a 1st overall for a 25th pick straight up? Because draft position doesn't matter right? And that 25th pick could be Pastranak right? It's unfortunate because that's really the only reality where you can base this 'Gillis had no excuses' argument from. The point was he actually inherited a pretty good base to build something from or to pivot. He failed on both accounts. I thought the 2014-15 team was laden full of unmoveable NTCs/NMCs that the prior regime signed, so it definitely has Gillis' finger prints on a substantial part its core. The Sedins Horvat Jansen Burrows Edler Bieksa Hamhuis Tanev Higgins Markstrom Eddie Lack The 23rd finish was an outlier caused by Torts, not a pattern. It was a 100 pt team for the prior seasons way before that. Even 1-2-3-4 Willie was able to get 100 pts off the Sedins. Agree to disagree here, we tend to have the bad habit of holding onto our guys too long until they've diminished into nothing. Usually a year or two too late. Calm down man. If i was judging Benning on a retool, which he committed to, I'd expect him to stock up on draft picks so he could draft his core and also fill up the farm. Then slowly build the team back up to contention. It means being willing to suck for a year or two then reset. - Draft a new core (Success) - Retain your first round picks at all costs as they present your best chance at getting cost controlled ELCs (up to 2020 - success, 2020 onwards -failed) - Sell at the trade deadline if you miss the mark or are out of the playoffs (Failed) - Enter each year with more than the 7 default draft picks every team gets every year (Failed) - Ride out the bad contracts and don't mortgage your future to get rid of them for the sake of a one and done playoff run (Failed) - Surround that core with cheap, effective veteran leadership (2014-15 Success, 2016 onwards, Failed) - Structure the contracts in free agency so they don't get in the way of you extending your core (Failed) - Have the flexibility to pivot and not double down when a season isn't going according to plan (Failed) To retool successfully, Benning has to accumulate value at a faster rate than other team, either at the NHL level through winning trades or deft signings. Or through adding more picks at the draft. I expected Benning to be patient and not make rash moves, for me, keeping the 7 default picks we had was my absolute minimum standard. Take the lumps when we can like Tampa/Detroit/Colorado/STL did and know when to sell and when to buy. He failed in his execution, plain and simple. And to put the shoe on the other foot, Gillis may not be able to draft like his life depended on it, but I'd extend the same inability towards Benning's trades, free agent signings, cap and asset management and picks for reclamation project trades. GM was not a secondary role, but judging them purely by the results of drafting is not what a GM is all about. It's about juggling multiple aspects of an org and focusing them on a goal. And to put the shoe on the other foot, Benning inherited Two hall of famers, a Selke centre on the trade block, A Vezina caliber Goalie, Four top 4 caliber D (two of which were in their prime) and his future captain and he still couldn't build a winning culture or a team that doesn't threaten to implode the next offseason due to cap considerations. He spent 8 years of this team's life building a Glass Cannon. Refer back to my previous post on context and draft capital accumulation vs team winning percentages due to different stages of their life cycle. Throwing a list of names is meaningless without context. Here's that mega list of names in graph form based on the value of their draft positions and the winning percentage of the team in the regular season. Here is Pittsburgh's. it sure looks like getting Malkin and Crosby in back to back drafts just puts your team in a position to trade away all your draft capital for immediate help since you're expected to go to playoffs. And it sure looks like if you compare them to any rebuilding team in that time span, of course they'll end up with crappier draft prospects compared to a rebulding team or even an average team. If you put Benning at the helm of those picks, I dare say his results won't be much better than JR's because value of draft position is a real concept. but by all means, tell me how Benning is magically going to draft a Pastranak at the 113th pick.

Again, value of draft position and context explains this. Someone also has a short memory of what STL and Tampa did in 2008-2014. It was the double whammy of Gillis trading away too many picks to fuel the SC run, and Tampa Bay was rebuilding at the time remember? St Louis hoarded more picks than Gillis did during that time as well. Different contexts. Here, let me graph this for you. Let's assume you agree to this premise. That in a draft, your position determines the probability of finding an NHL ready player. As you can see, even late in the first round, the probability of landing elite talent decreases expontentially. From this declining exponential curve, we can create a value chart for how much value you can place on each position of the draft to line out this curve. This is empirically also accepted, if you want to move up in the draft, you have to trade at least two or more picks to equal the value of picking even a few positions up in the first round. https://soundofhockey.com/2022/06/06/examining-the-value-of-nhl-draft-picks/ Let's put these values over the draft picks and overlay them with actual picks made by the teams with picks they had or traded for, and for good measure, plop winning percentage over the graph. https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/index.html Note: The line represents the draft capital of the default picks of inherited by a 15th place team, and represents a points % of 58% on the season (95 pts) for an arbitrary playoff marker. So.... Pink bars = Draft value based on actual picks made by teams in that draft year and their assigned values on the table above Blue line = Team winning % in the regular season Grey line = 95 pts percentage for playoffs and the average draft capital of a team that has 7 picks from the 15th spot of each round. Gillis Canucks 2008-2014 (here you can see that we traded picks away to fuel that President's trophy run and a higher team winning %) - again you can see how much more draft capital Benning had to jumpstart his regime vs Gillis for the 2014 NHL draft What did St Louis do during the same time frame Gillis was GM? (looks like they were hoarding more picks to retool/rebuild) playing at below a 95pt pace, naturally they will draft higher, have more picks and thus get more prospects than Gillis. What was Tampa doing during that same time frame? Again, building up draft capital for a rebuild and bottoming out in the 2013 draft year Detroit is what happens when you are trying to sell for one last hurrah with Zetterberg, Datsyuk and Lidstrom propping you up. Detroit drafts better than Gillis for sure but as you can see they even had more draft value than van for a few draft years early in Gillis' reign. Care to see what the graph looks like under Benning's tenure? Again, this is the most infuriating part. Benning can draft well but he never loaded up on picks the same way elite teams like Tampa and STL had during their retool years. As good as Benning is, he can't produce the same results with one 3rd round pick while teams like STL had two 2nd rounders during their similar phase Usually a rebuilding team should accumulate more draft capital than a team that finishes in 15th place. Benning only did that once in 2017 and that was because he was gifted a free 2nd from Torts. This is what Sakic did over the same time frame. He definitely picked his spots to load up on draft capital to coincide with his team's downturns. Toronto really illustrates how much a two year tear down can help at least get your team set up to consistently go above the playoff line. Schmidt was $5.95 mil Tanev signed for $4.5 mil Hell yeah i'd take Tanev over Schmidt, even if that Jfresh chart had him 1.0 above Tanev. And put that $1.45 mil savings to signing Toffoli. Because it was a hole that was created through an unforced error, when he literally had the bird sitting in his hand right there, and that hole from 2020 persists today. Markstrom you can see the succession plan. Where was the RHD succession plan? Aging Toffoli? He was 28 years old at the time of his signing, a better bet than the 30+ yr old signings Benning made up until then. Considering we just paid a 2nd and prospect for him, it represented value leaving out of the door either way. You're signing a cup winning goalie four years after his run in his thirties, I wouldn't say that was a good bet. That was a hallmark of Benning, signing players that were good some years ago, not right now. Please point it out again, because that string of words you put together isn't making sense after mentioning Marky. is the point of this to convince me that I should pay $1.5 mil more and an extra year in a flat cap world for Schmidt? Because it's not working. and how come a one year gap where the younger guy is 29 is banking on youth but signing a 28 year old winger is considered an aging player. Definitely no foresight, considering Virtanen/Holtby were bought out a year later and Schmidt shipped out as well for a 3rd. Every move he made for the 2020 offseason didn't even have a shelf life of 1 season, so year i'd say no foresight.

You're letting the Jersey thing really get to you eh? We're not that special when it comes to being rowdy fanbases. Boston (ask Joe thornton how low pressure it felt when he wasn't performing), Philly, Chicago i'd reckon can give us a run for our money, especially when they're bad. We literally just saw Tkachuk get traded for a Top 4 RHD and a Top 10 winger, so yes, you can still capitalize on it to address your other needs. Drafting BPA is all about maximizing value over positional needs. We've seen how that can come back to bite teams (Montreal -> Kotkaniemi, Canucks -> Juolevi) I'll take Vilardi + Tkachuk + Ehlers/Nylander over Petey + OJ + Jake, sure. I'll give Benning credit for Petey (it was down to Petey/Vilardi for me personally) but drafting isn't the main job of a GM. It's assembling the team to compete. Hindsight is 20/20, but GMs are paid millions to practice foresight and see where the game and their teams are trending and to plan accordingly. That's why I don't give Benning crap for McCann over Pastranak (despite him having knowledge of Boston's draft board). That really was an outlier pick and 24 other teams missed out on him. And we all know that later picks are usually controlled by the scouting staff (still their responsibility) Riddle me this, why does Benning get credit for Boston as a scouting guru when their cup core was put together by Jeff Gorton and his predecessors? (Rask, Chara, Bergeron, Marchand) How come you're giving him scouting credit when it wasn't earned? Why is Jim Benning credited as a scouting savant when he's in a secondary/background role but you guys keep casually dismissing the work of Gradin and Brackett? Having a Kapanen at the 20th spot of a draft is a win, not sure what you're trying to paint here. No one is expecting perfection, but you're expected to hit on an NHL player. I didn't subscribe to Button's list, but I will admit to using the canucksarmy and hockey news more during that time. It was really this article that convinced me against that draft pick. Plus there were talks about him being a tools but no toolbox kinda guy. I would have erred on the side of skill. Again, this isn't hindsight. https://canucksarmy.com/news/jake-virtanen-is-good-so-don-t-draft-him Oh definitely the owner's fault, it's not 100% on JB. But Benning was convinced he could turn it around quickly. He failed. Again, it's the GM's job to sell the vision to the owner. Linden as our Pres too had the right idea, but he was canned after. I would say the part where JB should be accountable for, was not backing up Linden when it counted. Still I don't blame JB completely, this is mostly on Aquilini. Benning however, botched us long term with his trading away draft capital and long term contracts. Again with the 'inherited nothing' argument. Markstrom, Horvat, Tanev (24 years old), Kassian, Hansen, Prime Edler (28 yrs old). The roster was a 100 pt team that had tradeable value, as evidenced by the later trades of Burrows/Bieksa/Garrison, Benning just chose not to move on from the assets. In fact, this 'no value' roster has still outperformed any of the subsequent teams Benning put together after the Gillis pieces left, despite being coached by 1-2-3-4 Willie. Also, keep in mind, in his first offseasons, Benning was able to deploy ~$24 mil in cap space with the acquisitions of Miller/Vrbata/Sutter/Sbisa/Dorsett/Prust. Having the flexibility to make moves amounting to 30% of your cap is a great asset regardless of the situation your team is in. Benning inherited a team that was 10th in power rankings in 2014. That's not too shabby considering the were two seasons removed from a president's trophy. You can't sit here with a straight face as a hockey fan and tell me that a playoff team that is ranked top 10 in power rankings has no tradeable assets. So in summary Benning started off with: A 100+ point playoff team with tradeable assets. (Sedins aside) The 6th overall pick (which became Jake Virtanen) A lower ranked prospect pool yes, but still had names likeBrandon Gaunce, Eddie Lack, Frankie Corrado, Jordan subban Nicklas Jensen and Shinkaruk (*these guys had value at the time that could have been used in a trade) A 1G (marky), 1 RHD (Tanev), 1 LHD (Edler), Future Captain and 2C in Horvat, Kassian (his stock was still high back then) A tradeable 2C in Kesler that even with the restricted teams list, had assets available that were much better than Sbisa which Benning ultimately valued above a prospect like Shea Theodore or a push for the 10OA (a pro scouting error) A farm system that was built from the ground up (Gillis never had control over player deployment and development with the Chicago wolves. The farm system was set up for Benning which he never filled) ~$24 million in cap space to deploy after trading Kes (~30% of the cap), in a salary cap world where we see 1 year/ $6 mil cap dumps moved for a 1st this is significant The difference was though, he was able to overcome those draft misses with his trades and flexibility. Again, Benning can draft, he did well, but his warts outweigh that pro. He's not the only one who does this, but our former GM was known for creating a lot of market inefficiencies with this trades Pitts and Tampa can thank him for making their back to back cups possible. And straddling us with OEL and an empty farm system. So you'll forgive me if I'm not on my knees praising the guy for putting us into hockey purgatory for the next foreseeable future. Just hope this new group can navigate their way out of the salary crunch.