Grape
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Posts posted by Grape
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There's no reason Brock should have 6 points and Bo should have 1. It's just bounces going a certain way on goals.
If we were being fair and judging by play, they should both have around 3 points. Not at all worried about Bo.
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John Garrett makes me LOL sometimes. There's no way Miller tried to bank that off Kovalchuk. There was a point man open he was trying to get the puck to.
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Hockey is a high variance sport. We've played our opponents pretty evenly through 2 games. We've lost both of them. We'll deal with it.
That pass by JT Miller at the end was atrocious, though he's been really good for us
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Seriously who made that pass? That was awful. Was it Horvat? Miller?
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3 minutes ago, jason10009 said:
Green looks like a grumpy raccoon. Anyhow, our roster looks good. Positioning is substantially inferior to that of Calgary though. Blame it on coaching.
Our roster doesn't even look that great though. Our bottom 6 is a joke.
We're gonna need to play above our level like in 2015 to make the playoffs. So far we're doing the opposite
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So you've isolated change in skate radius as the ONE variable that caused Pettersson to play average for ONE game?
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1 hour ago, brownky said:
It's like they've all been dicking around in practice doing nice looking puck plays. Those work really well in practice when the defence is your own team not interested in getting hurt. I was a really good player, in practice.
Whoooole nother ball of yarn against a team clogging the lanes. Pearson had the right idea. Just shoot the damn thing. You'll get chances. I liked it when our passing would open up their collapsed box to free up the points for some hard shots / one timers - leading to goals.
Boeser trying to thread a pass through 4 flames' sticks in the last 20 seconds of a game kinda sums up my argument.
My response here has nothing to do with this quote btw. The GDT got locked so I'm responding to your argument against Hughes.
Here's my take regarding your "good defense leads directly to good offense" point. I would like to argue that it's closer to the opposite. Good offense is the best form of good defense. The Sedins were never good defenders. However, they were consistently statistically the best defenders on the team for the pure reason that they controlled so much of the game when they were on the ice. There is a reason why a guy like Gudbranson, while being able to "defend," was complete dog****: because when he was on the ice, we could not control the puck at a high rate. There is a reason why the best offensive defensemen are seen as elite players, while the best defensive defensemen are usually just seen as elite defensive players.
You mentioned "Chances intercepted, cut off, saved" these are things that Hughes has always been good at. While the "fancy stickwork in the offensive zone" as you described with Goldobin, is something that doesn't describe Hughes at all. So while your arguing against Hughes here, I'm not sure you even brought up any of his weaknesses. Not sure this was relevant to your argument.
Again, this team has desperately lacked offensive creativity on the backend. It's one of the biggest reasons we've been awful the past few seasons. It's paramount that it gets fixed. When you have a guy that can clearly help out big time, you don't just keep him in the AHL because he's subpar defensively. His net production is still going to be positive, especially on the Canucks.
Edit: a main reason for net positive production is due to the fact that defense is undoubtedly more of a team effort: the team can shadow Hughes. A player like Hughes alone can generate many more goals, but it will usually take more than just Hughes (see GWG tonight) for there to be an additional goal against. This is the reason that, as I said, the best offensive defensemen are seen as elite players, while the best defensive defensemen are usually just seen as elite defensive players. That being said, I would be very patient with him as he's not going to be anywhere close to Boeser/EP in their rookie years. I think Hughes is going to be very up and down and frustrating at times like he was at Michigan. But I think the thought that he isn't ready is crazy because he already brings so much to the team.
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6 minutes ago, Ihatetomatoes said:
McDavid also blew by Tanev. Why aren't you pointing out how bad that play was by Tanev?
Hughes was at least able to get a stick on the puck on fastest player in the league after a turnover in the neutral zone and McDavid having momentum.
Because Tanev literally did all he could to stop McDavid. Hughes was in a better position to stop McDavid and probably could've done more . You can't be serious if you think none of that was on Hughes.
If you think I'm biased against Hughes, I can tell you I've spent almost half a thousand dollars to watch Hughes play a couple dozens of times already at Michigan. I ordered a customizable jersey the second we drafted him. I just have higher expectations of him and I think that goal highlights something that's pretty reoccurring of him, the fact that he plays too passively sometimes and without urgency on the defensive end, kinda like Edler, who naturally is a good defender already.
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2 minutes ago, EddieVedder said:
Been saying this for quite some time. Hes a smooth skater but hes no faster than most nhl players. His lack of size and inability to outmuscle players the way a defender is supposed to is going to cost us a lot of goals against. He will be a good power play guy for us, but the fans have vastly overrated him if they think he will be a number 1 dman. This is why its crucial to keep developing a Joulevi and Woo. They have the frame and build to one day potentially be number one or twos.
First bolded point: this is very false.
Second bolded point: Are you really implying Juolevi and Woo are better prospects than Hughes is?
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10 minutes ago, brownky said:
The problem with "cut some slack" is - Okay, let's say McDavid is the best. That makes CrosbyVechkin probably number two/Three. The list of 4-10 is "fill your list in here" and all "just about as good" as 1-3. They're all in the league that Quinn is now playing in. It's not college ball anymore. He can either play at that level, or he cannot.
Between the preseason I saw and tonight, he cannot. At least not yet. The makings are certainly there, but he is not quite.
I think you're either judging him way too harshly, or you're just the type to focus on defense much more than offense.
Most fans seem to think Hughes was quite impressive tonight. I thought so as well. The offense he brings is absolutely paramount to a team that 1. struggles to score. 2. struggles to create offense on the back end.
As it is right now, taking his offense AND defense into account, I think he's already the at least our 2nd or 3rd best defenseman. I get where you're coming from when you say he could work on his defense in the AHL, but the NHL is the best place place to work on being an NHL defender. He can work through his mistakes as of now and we can cut him some slack, but only because he is a major positive factor offensively.
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1 minute ago, Rush17 said:
I need to learn not to get upset after a loss. I'm really irritated by this one.
In the grand scheme of things, the more important thing is that we looked better than the Oilers for the most of the game. This should be a positive sign for the first game. All in all, one game isn't going to affect the rest of the season. We'll have a few games where we're the worse team and win, it'll balance out.
It's better than following the NFL where just a few losses could be catastrophic. Or even worse, college football, when at times you have one loss and your season is essentially over. This team will get up, bounce back, and keep fighting for a playoff position for the next 5 months or so.
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3 minutes ago, Dave "The Hammer" Schultz said:
you werent watching the game? pearson had 11 shots and 1 goal ( myers was changed to pearson ) , how can u say he was meh with 11 shots ROFL
To be fair, almost all of those shots were generated by others. It wasn't the typical Ovie type 11 shot attempts game lol. The tip in was really nice.
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Just now, shiznak said:
He got manhandled twice by Draisaitl, Kassian deked him out of his jockstrap (although he made a nice recovery), and was partially fault on the game winning goal.
He didn’t necessarily had a bad game, but he didn’t have a great game either.
Did he get manhandled by Draisaitl? The only thing I remember is that he took the puck away from Draisaitl. Perhaps I missed this part.
I don't know, the board seems pretty split. I thought he was very good.
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One amazing thing about today's game is that we got a LOT of offense from our D-men.
In fact, most of our forwards didn't play well, so I'd say our defensemen generated most of the offense, which is so refreshing to see.
This includes Edler, Hughes, Myers, and Tanev mostly. They were all wonderful for the most part, especially on offense.
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Just now, Wayne Jetski said:
Hughes was arguably the best canuck all night. And he had more of a motor then half the team...
I think he was one of the best Canucks too. I'm not sure why people don't think he played well as I genuinely thought he did.
However what you see is pure talent and skill. I'm not saying he's not trying his best. It's just that naturally, he doesn't have a "fire" to his game, like Stecher has.
The way he plays will always look like he's being super passive, kind of like Edler.
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The winning goal was 50% on Sutter, 50% on Hughes.
On that goal, Hughes' issue wasn't bad defensive play: he got a stick on the puck against of the best players in the league. The issue was that he should've been more engaged. I've been saying this since his time at Michigan: Hughes doesn't have much of a motor. He's smooth and skilled and fast but doesn't play with a "fire." Long story short, he didn't defend hard enough there.
Otherwise, I genuinely think he had a very solid game.
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1 minute ago, CanuckGAME said:
Jake's gotten like 4 and a half mins of ice time
Hes been invisible because he isnt being given an opportunity.
I agree. You're not doing wonders to someones confidence when you ground him the first time he makes a mistake.
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3 minutes ago, canuck2288 said:
We need to rethink the bottom 6
top 6 look fine
IDK why more people aren't saying this!
Our bottom 6 was by far the worst in the league last year statistically. And what did we do? We kept it the same basically.
With what we've added to our top 6, we should be able to slide guys like Baertschi down to the bottom 6, to play with another offensive weapon like Gaudette. Instead neither of them "fit" apparently.
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5 minutes ago, brownky said:
I'm... growing kind of on the fence about Hughes. He's so gifted offensively, but at the same time his awareness of "the other team" is *so bad* looking. Giveaways, missing checks and just bad plays from poor reads. Hopefully he picks it up fast, but maybe he really would look better with a year of AHL under him.
I don't think a year of AHL does much to a guy who who already played against men for 2 years.
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Just now, Howisthishappening said:
Ferland isnt the ferocious warrior i thought..keeps being pushed around, where is the angry bull we thought we signed?
Ferland looks more skilled than I thought he'd be, but also a little softer than I thought he'd be
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2 hours ago, stawns said:
The Canucks have been top 3 in injuries each of the last three years I believe. You can absolutely blame injuries if it's key, long term injuries year after year
As I said, even given that being the case, you can't blame injuries when you literally have players that are naturally injury prone throughout the roster.
Injuries aren't always just a matter of luck. It's a reason why the Sedins rarely got injured. Our for the past few years have been prone to injuries, especially soft tissue injuries, which are especially indicative to how injury prone a player is.
It's part of the reason we weren't good, but you can't "blame" them and use it as argument that we should've been better and that the advanced stats were wrong.
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2 hours ago, stawns said:
Almost exclusively because of injuries. Year after year they show they can play with anyone when they play healthy........the problem is the catastrophic injuries that hit every single year. No team would be able to weather those kinds of injuries and stay competitive, let alone a rebuilding team.
You can't blame injuries year after year after year and act like the Canucks are the only team that gets injured. Saying we've sucked year after year almost exclusively because of injuries is one of the most ridiculous excuse one could come up with IMO. Our defense hasn't been by far the most offensively inept defense just because of injuries. Our bottom 6 hasn't had by far the worst goal differential in the NHL just because of injuries. And so on.
Even if the Canucks are injured more often than most teams, that's reflective of the team and not just luck. A team with Tanev, Sutter, Baertschi etc... is definitively injury prone and that should be a factor into accounting for predictions as well.
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On 10/1/2019 at 1:05 AM, Elias Pettersson said:
Those points were in pre-season. Pre-season doesn’t necessarily translate to the regular season. The reason Baertschi can’t put up 50 points and 25 goals is that he’s never managed to play more than 69 games in an entire year. This isn’t a one year thing either, he hasn’t played more than 69 games in a year since his junior hockey.
The fact is he can’t stay healthy. What makes you think this year would be any different? We don’t need to give him another opportunity. We have other guys who can fill a 3rd line role. Baertschi can’t hit, he can’t go into the corners, he can’t go to the front of the net. He’s basically a perimeter player who’s one more head shot away from being out of the league. That’s hard to say but it’s the truth. Baertschi has more skill than Leivo and Virtanen but Leivo and Virtanen are better 3rd line players in Green’s system. That’s the bottom line.
The thing is, he's healthy right now. If/when he gets injured, then you move on to to a replacement player; but how does it hurt your team to have a perfectly healthy Sven Baertschi start the season?
If the best player in the world is always injured for 90% of the season, you're not gonna cut him off of the team for that reason. You keep him until he inevitably gets injured and then wait until he recovers again. Obviously this is a massive reach but it's the same concept. Sven is one of our top offensive forwards, and undoubtedly a top 12 forward on the team when healthy. The fact that he is healthy now should be enough to keep him on the team at the start of the season.
And I'm not sure what "system" you think Green implements, but I can guarantee you there's no system in the NHL that says "take offense away from an already offensively challenged team." I mean our bottom 6 had by FAR the worst goal differential in the league last year. Having the same guys like Leivo, Virtanen, Eriksson, Sutter in those positions will not change anything. It should be glaringly obvious when we trot out our "checking line" because they fit Green's "system," while other teams have scorers on their 3rd and 4th lines and continue to dominate.
The answer for our bottom 6 woes should have been to add skill and offense to it. Sven could have been perfect for helping our bottom 6 not be historically bad again. Instead we're literally going to have almost the same bottom 6 because it "fits Green's system." I'm not bashing Green, I'm just refuting the idea that any coach would have a system that doesn't allow for there to be skill on the 3rd line, because that's crazy.
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[GDT] Vancouver Canucks @ St. Louis Blues | OCT. 17. 19. | 5PM PST | SN1
in Canucks Talk
Posted
We've gotten lucky with some calls here.
With that said we are holding up well against the reigning champs so it's good to see.