Grape
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Posts posted by Grape
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1 minute ago, CanucksCountry said:
What I don't understand is why have Brock as the bumper on the power play it should be JT, Brock should be in the same area that he was for the tying goal on the power play
It wouldn't work with JT because he is left handed. You need to keep the puck on the perimeter before getting it to the middle on those plays or else it gets easily knocked off your stick. A left handed shot down low on the left side also doesn't really present a risk to the goalie (remember Brock's goal down low vs MTL when he brought the puck back to the middle, only works because he's a RHS). That's why having JT on the left side and Boeser down low makes it work. Also, Horvat is already the net front guy and having a really good playmaker in JT in front of the net seems like a waste.
It does suck because utilizing Brock the way we do definitely does not suit his strengths. I'm pretty sure Brown 100% knows that. It's just that moving him to his optimal spot also requires other guys to move out of their optimal spots. I'd be okay with trying it because our PP needs some wrinkles.
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2 minutes ago, Silky mitts said:
Are we really going to try to pin this on Demko? Lmao
Not the game. But the OT goal is on him.
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14 hours ago, Rabbit said:
I enjoy Canucks wins, but could not win the all 41 games.
If 65-70% wins, it would be fine.
A 70% win rate usually makes you the #1 team in the league. Not sure that's very possible at all.
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3 minutes ago, Lancaster said:
The weird part is that on paper they shouldn't be that bad.
Edler and Myers are still workhorses. Lapses here and there, but there's a reason they've been in the NHL for as long as they have been.
Hamonic and Schmidt are legit top-4 defensemen.
Quinn may be a bit suspect, but he's an offensive player first.
Chatfield, Benn, Juolevi are down the chart and aren't the ones who are sinking the team defensively.
Edler is only a workhorse because this team demands him to be. Stanley Cup contending teams would have Edler playing sheltered minutes on the third pairing I would think.
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25 minutes ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:
Gillis only dealt one first round pick; I believe Benning in charge of a rebuilding team team has actually dealt MORE picks. The knock on Gillis I have is that he didn’t go ‘all in’ when he had the chance (ie., deal more picks).
Yeah, there should be nothing against certain teams dealing every single pick in a draft if they are a contending team. Drafts are a crapshoot, and usually will return one decent future player for per draft. Trading all of your picks will very likely guarantee you more than one decent player NOW, and so I'm not sure why trading picks isn't more popular in that sense.
Benning trading picks while the Canucks are in rebuild is a completely different story though.
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4 minutes ago, EddieVedder said:
I suggested Schmidt was a bad move when it happened. Now we are stuck with his contract for i believe 4 years.
We let the heart and soul of our team go and replaced him with a guy that just smiles and woops on the ice.
Tanev is 31. We would've been "stuck" with his contract eventually too. There's not much of a difference between the two impact wise, and I wouldn't go as far as to call him the "heart and soul" of our team.
Schmidt has always been an analytic darling and I think it's way too early to say that was a bad move.
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6 minutes ago, EddieVedder said:
Been saying it all along... Hughes could be the worse D at actual defending in the league. Physically hes incapabable of playing the body, his intensity and wherewithal within his own end are non existent. Tanev covered most of his defenciencies up last year. This isnt something new, and the system has nothing to do with it. This team needs to develop a true number one dman if its ever going to get anywhere.
Same goes for Brock up front... you cant rely on one dimensional players to lead your team if you want to compete.
He has his strengths defensively - his gap control is elite for example.
But as you mentioned, his physicality and focus are big problems. Another problem you haven't mentioned is his lack of speed. Quinn was very fast in college and in his first few games as a Canuck in 2018-2019, but it seems like the wear and tear of the league and maybe adding some weight has slowed him down, and he can't really keep up with the speed of attackers like he did last year and in college. I think coaches have been too focused with trying to get him stronger, which IMO is completely useless - however strong he gets, he still won't match up physically with 95% of NHL forwards. For that reason, it's I think it's so much more important to get him return to being the dynamic skater he once was, because having good footspeed is a key element to defending that isn't talked about enough.
He was definitely a true #1 defender last year when combining his elite offensive and defensive production, this year, not so much.
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A lot of his defense is effort and focus related. He's never been great at those things and can easily lose track of his man, but that's easily correctable and hopefully it's corrected quickly as adversity hits.
With that being said, he was a good defender in college and at the start of last year as well because of his elite gap control ability and his ability to skate with people. The gap control is still there, but not being as fast as he used to be, he's having a hard time keeping up with faster guys, which for a 5'10 guy, should not happen.
I really think extra focus and speed will absolve so many defensive and offensive issues and I'm interested to see how/if Quinn can return to becoming a more dynamic skater to go along with his elite agility which we all know he has.
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Did not watch the game yesterday, so I'm not sure if anything's changed, but this has been on my mind for awhile.
Quinn's speed has steadily declined since the end of college and I think it's becoming apparent this year to the average fan. I was in the same freshman class at UM as Quinn and so I've followed his career for a long time, and speed AND edgework were two of the elite components to his game in college. People now talk as if Quinn was never known for his speed, when in reality he was at times touted as the fastest/quickest skater in his draft. It wasn't worrying last year because he was still putting up elite production in terms of raw and analytical stats, but his game seems much more affected this year. I don't care much about his point totals so far because the underlying metrics and eye test would say he would have a hard time keeping his point rate up, and I think a lot of it has to do with his objective decline in speed.
I don't know the reasons behind this and everything is speculation, but I hope it's because he's been adding too much weight, which can be easily fixed (he was a better defender and offensive player when he had elite quickness). The alternatives that I can think of are that he's playing too much, which wouldn't be ideal because the NHL demands a grueling schedule every season, or that he physically peaked a LOT earlier than most athletes do.
I know it might seem like I'm being a downer, but just wanted to share some worries I had. Would love to hear what you guys think. Maybe I'm projecting a lot of my own struggles regressing in high school sports, but I imagine Quinn must be at least a little frustrated that he can't move nearly the same way he did awhile ago, I know it was hard for me.
Edit: I'm going to link a clip of Quinn's first point. I don't think we'e seen anything like this out of him for awhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtJts_wJ6OY
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34 minutes ago, King Heffy said:
Two good years of Markstrom isn't worth the risk of destroying our cap structure with a Luongo contract. That trade alone is reason enough for us to hope another owner is stupid enough to hire Gillis.
How is our cap structure destroyed? That's a massive overstatement.
Gillis opened up the gates for the greatest stretch in franchise history. His drafting is what set him back. The Luongo/Schneider situations turned out to be positives for us, so I think it's a massive stretch to say trading Luongo destroyed us.
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Just now, CaptainKool said:
Then, if we get a few games winning streak. Jim Benning GM of the year. LOL
It's not the same people saying opposite things though. Different people have different opinions and that'll happen when your fanbase is massive.
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1 minute ago, SuitnTie said:
10 SOG after two.
10 SOG after two.
10 SOG after two.With five powerplays
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9 minutes ago, theo5789 said:
Because we knew a pandemic would hit and that Toffoli would be injured in game 1 of play-ins (maybe even prior)?
The price paid was to replace a Boeser that we thought was done for the year and be a potential playoff boost. We paid a cheaper price than other teams did at the deadline. The price we would've paid to extend him was a 4th, which we didn't.
The trade was questionable to begin with even if we had managed to re-sign Toff to a good deal.
Because by the time we become true contenders and EP and QH are in their prime, it was always more likely that Madden was going to be a better player than a 30+ year old Toffoli. And that’s ignoring the 2nd round pick we gave up.
The fact that we weren’t able to re-sign him makes it sting more.
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On 9/22/2020 at 9:27 AM, DarkIndianRises said:
We all know that Eriksson is a zero offensively these days.
Ignoring his cap however, he is still an excellent defensive player and very rarely makes mistakes.
He’s obviously not worth his cap hit but he’s also a lot more useful than you think.
Anyways, we’re unlikely to get rid of him this off season and so there’s no point complaining about the guy.
Hockey is more complicated than just offense and defense though. Eriksson is responsible defensively, but the fact that he needs to play defense all the time as a result of being unable to generate any zone exits or zone entries consistently, makes him more likely to give up goals than poor defenders who can avoid playing in the d-zone.
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On 9/23/2020 at 8:13 AM, Battlemonger said:
I guess people are not interested with politics in their sports. I guess they used to watch sports to get a break from politics. So, I guess quite a few people just stopped watching sports.
It's been pretty well documented that politics has very little to do with the viewership tanking.
COVID and its many resulting obstacles are by far the largest reasons.
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Hate Dallas.
Also sometimes don't enjoy that hockey is too random of a sport, so I hope the better team wins, aka Tampa. That calibre of a team would have multiple championships in another league already so I think they deserve it.
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7 hours ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:
Neither of those guys can defend at a high level (though Hughes can develop into something decent as he gets older).. Tanev and Edler both need to be replaced at some point (neither are getting any younger). Those are the ONLY two guys that can defend at a high level right now on the blueline. You can't expect *any* goalie to sustain that level of performance throughout multiple seasons without resorting to a "Jacques Lemaire style offense" once those two guys are gone.
I would say Hughes is a better defender than Edler just because he spends a lot of time with the puck in the offensive zone. The best defense is not having to play defense.
Edler's poor gap control and slow foot speed now that he's old makes him a negative possession player and more susceptible to being scored on. Of course, he's a warrior because it's not his choice to play 25 minutes a night, but he's one of the reasons we get hemmed in our own zone so much.
Tanev is very solid still, but is quickly approaching the age where that might be an issue.
As a result, I really don't think replacing Edler and Tanev will hurt our defense that much, if the replacements are younger, and more fleet-footed defensemen who can prevent having to defend in the first place, and help control possession.
Either way, no goalie is going to play the way Markstrom did vs STL and Demko did vs VGK consistently.
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Our bottom 6 is not very good. And to let one good game 6 vs STL change someone's mind about that is extremely shortsighted.
Gaudette's playing fine in my opinion. So are Roussel and Motte. I feel like the other three have been dragging the team/the bottom six down this series.
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I'm genuinely worried about Boeser's wrist. You don't go from a top 10 shot in the league to what he's shown this year with his shot. His speed can come back to him, I'm sure, and he's already a smart player offensively and defensively, but that shot has disappeared. If this is the case, I hope he can seek some world class help on how to rehabilitate the wrist.
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I think that the issue that some people have might have to do with your wording, which may be intentional/unintentional on your part, I'm not sure.
Basically, if you have no interest in doing stuff like that it's absolutely fine. But I would guess that saying things like "as a guy," and "hanging out like 14 year old girls," is what some people have a problem with, since it insinuates what a "guy" should be like, and what "girls" are like, which essentially takes away from people who may not be conventional in terms of what society expects.
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3 hours ago, Dazzle said:
I thought the Fox highlights package that was created for tonight was hilarious. The commentators comment a little bit about Motte's first goal. But they praise the crap out of Ryan O'Reilly's goal. They talk about it like he planned for it to happen, and act as if he didn't get lucky. Also, the Thomas slash was called a "good play" by them. But the apparent slash to the hand on Motte's second goal was one that Canucks "got away with". Sportsnet and Canadian commentators are the best by a long shot. They call games fairly.
Really? Blues commentators are one of the most unbiased in the league. John and John on the other hand, while I love them, are entirely biased.
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2 hours ago, Elias_Pettersson said:
Surprised no ones said Motte yet. Virtanen, Horvat and Motte are our fastest skaters. Quinn isn't quite as fast, but has the best skating ability and agility by far.
Horvat and Virtanen are my picks. Motte’s a good one too.
Quinn was a bit faster at UM than he is now; I’d have picked him over anyone on this team if he was still that fast. He’s pretty clearly added some strength to become a better overall player, which has hurt his speed just a bit.
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5 hours ago, sassbs said:
Lmao you clearly did not watch the players mentioned in 2011.
bieska was just a whole other animal compared to Myers.malhotra all day long compared to beagle
borrows was a pest who could actually score!
lapierre over rousell any day of the week.
dont forget about raffi Torres whom this team desperately needs a player like that!
kesler was great in 2011. He had another nastiest to him. I love bo but kess was amazing then! Higgins waaaay better than sutter!
the only thing I agree with you is Peterson playing with more bite. Please don’t say boeser plays with bite cause we all know he doesn’t.as mentioned before, 2011 team would crush 2020 team, and the bitch slap them on their way out for good measure!
Pettersson absolutely has more bite, but definitely not as much impact yet as the Sedins' prime where they were scoring at will and winning Art Ross' easily.
19 games in and Pettersson hasn't had one dominant game/period this year.
in Canucks Talk
Posted · Edited by Grape
I can see his underperformance this season being a blessing in disguise. Lower AAV = more cap space.
Not really worried about the long term EP. If he's still playing like this 5 years down the line then yeah I think we can worry. But these are just growing pains.