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Everything posted by Provost
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[Signing] Canucks sign Vasili Podkolzin
Provost replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Trades, Rumours, Signings
I think he was responding to the smarmy comments earlier in the thread... slamming people who don't think Benning is doing a good job because he is now amazing by managing to sign a player whose rights are owned by the club without any negotiating rights on the player's side thanks to the CBA. ... you know, something that every GM does every year.. sign their entry level draft picks. Really if that is the bar for people to stick out their chests and get all huffy about... that DOES say something about low the expectations are for Benning at this point. -
[Signing] Kings sign Vladimir Tkachyov
Provost replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Trades, Rumours, Signings
That is a good deal, I was wondering if he was one of those KHL guys who demanded $3 million a year without having stepped foot on NHL ice -
He plays wing at this level from what I can see (has taken 27 faceoffs total in 3 seasons) and isn’t a defensive player. He isn’t a big physical guy either. Tierney would be a much better fit to to me. We need a defensive specialist who can kill penalties and take those duties from Horvat. If we had Tierney and Sutter (on a really cheap contract) as our bottom two centres that would be pretty solid.
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Same with high draft picks
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If there was a consistent direction that had been building over the years towards an identity I would be fine to see it continue. Unfortunately it has largely been reactionary moves since day 1. We want to compete quickly... so let’s sign some veterans... wait we want to get younger... wait we need some veterans to insulate the kids... we will be good in a couple of years... we need some size and toughness... no wait, we need more speed and skill... players need to earn their ice time.... well not these particular guys they get gifted spots... We want to play a fast, relentless style... hey look at all these guys I just signed that have none of those attributes but are good character guys... I know every couple of years I said we would be good in a couple of years, this time I really mean it... wait somehow we have too many veterans so let’s let these good character guys go who are well respected in the room... we need to get younger and faster... so watch me trade a bunch of good draft picks and prospects for instant gratification... wait now we need more veterans again... we will be good in a couple of years... fans need to be patient because these things take time, when I kept saying we could do it in a couple of years, “a couple” really meant 9 years or so... we just need more speed skill, depth, and prospects and then a bunch of new cheaper veterans and all will be good!
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[Rumour] Flames listening to offers on Sean Monahan
Provost replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Trades, Rumours, Signings
Jake Virtanen and Roussel... my final offer, take it or leave it! -
Buyout Candidates...Will we see any this year?
Provost replied to CanucksJay's topic in Canucks Talk
No, the CBA doesn't allow NHL players to be unilaterally sent to the ECHL. -
That is a $50 million (real) dollar liability we are talking about, and a contract that is widely considered to be amongst the worst in the league (go Google "worst NHL contracts"). It also has a full NMC attached so no way to offload it. We aren't free and clear from cap issues after next season. We have basically 2022-23 that we have some spare cap space, but we can't really spend it all as we have extensions coming up for a bunch of players who will be due raises for several consecutive seasons after that. With an expected fairly flat cap for the foreseeable future (3-5 years), this contract doesn't even age well in terms of inflation making it a smaller proportion of the total cap. They would have to retain a significant amount. or be sending some 1st round picks our way to eat those kind of dollars for a player that is underperforming his contract and only expected to get worse as he ages. He will be 30 before next season starts with 6 years left on the deal... Arizona already likely got his best years out of him. If they take Roussel, Virtanen, and Eriksson this year.. and retain $2.25 million (to give him a $6 million cap hit)... maybe you start taking that risk... but it still doesn't get them much of a return back in my opinion.
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It is tough to know who they will pick. Both Lind and Gajovich require waivers this coming season I believe and they are unlikely to make what will be a pretty deep Seattle squad... so it could be a waste for Seattle to pick them up. If they do get selected, we have a pretty good chance of getting them back on waivers at the start of next season. I think it isn't unlikely that Seattle will pick one of our pending UFAs. They don't need 30 NHL roster players and may want to use their cap space as leverage in free agency and trades.. so they might want to come out of expansion with fewer locked in contracts. There are just a few teams in our position that have effectively nothing valuable to lose in the expansion draft... so we would be prime to be pretty much passed over entirely. If I were Seattle, I would eat some bad contracts in return for picks and waiver exempt blue chip prospects to build out a farm system.
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Buyout Candidates...Will we see any this year?
Provost replied to CanucksJay's topic in Canucks Talk
It seems that Virtanen and Holtby would be the most prime candidates for buyouts. I don't suspect that there will be any more info on a criminal or civil case for Virtanen in time to terminate his contract, so a buyout is a cheap and easy way to move on. Hotlby probably won't be taken in expansion, and his buyout saves a lot of cap space.... Demko has shown that he doesn't need as much handholding as they thought and a cheaper veteran backup would be fine. I don't know about Eriksson and Roussel... not a lot saved and just pushing cap pain for a year so only if we really need the cap space. I still think the best bet is to just tell Eriksson that he won't be invited to camp and will be riding the bus all year, put the ball in his court regarding retirement. -
Your ideal Offseason (Discussion)
Provost replied to KKnight's topic in Proposals and Armchair GM'ing
1. Sign Petterson and Hughes to combined contracts of $12 million 2. Buy out Virtanen or be able to terminate his contract 3. Organize a trade for Reinhart and Ristolainen for Schmidt, DiPietro, and our 1st 4. Put pressure on Eriksson by telling him he will report directly to the minors next year and not the main camp. He decides to retire. 5. Trade Juolevi and a mid round pick for Tierney 6. Snag Brady Skjei or Oleksiak 7. Pick up a cheap veteran backup goalie 8. Holtby gets picked up during expansion 9. We know early enough whether Beagle and Ferland can play next season in time to make roster/cap decisions with their LTIR 10. We hire Larionov as team President Miller-Petterson-Boeser Hoglander-Horvat-Reinhart Pearson-Tierney-Podkolzin Roussel-Sutter—Motte Gadjovich Hughes-Hamonic Skjei/Oleksiak-Ristolainen Rathbone-Myers Bowie Demko ? -
That is the other possible asset we have... cap space. If through expansion and buyouts we end up with some cap space available, we could use that to get a player. That is how the Schmidt deal worked. Assuming Virtanen and Holtby get bought out and with the dream of some significant cap being taken in expansion and the perpetual dream of Eriksson hanging them up if he is told he isn't even being invited to camp... we could actually have some cap space. I agree that we haven't done any asset management where we sold high on a player. Partially that is because we didn't have enough good players to start with, the other part is simply just lack of creativity and forethought. It was obvious that Virtanen should have been traded when he went on that short hot streak. Maybe even Demko could have been traded for a relative fortune after his bubble play and we could have kept Markstrom for just slightly more cap hit. Pearson had some value at the trade deadline. Those moves would be real risk taking because they could backfire.
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As much as you wriggle around... you keep submarining your own argument. Sure we can trade other players, it doesn't mean they have any value though. Can you retain a bunch of salary on Myers to make him tradeable... sure. Then it is your cap space that you are using to create value... not Myers on his own. If you added Podkolzin to a Myers deal you could trade Myers... it isn't Myers who has the value. We could take money back in a Myers trade, but again... that is what creates the value and not Myers. There is at least even money that Myers wouldn't be selected if he was left exposed during expansion.
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So you are going to just ignore everything else and just invent what you think he is saying? There is easy actual math and CBA clauses that make it really clear? “As part of that, the salary cap is basically going to be flat until we recover the overpayments through the escrow that we’ve built up both in the return to play from last season, which obviously had to be concluded under different circumstances, and this season we’re obviously… there’s a major escrow building up because of the fact that there’s no attendance,” Bettman said. $1-1.5 billion dollars of overpayment to players... do some math on how long that would take to pay back BEFORE any rise to the cap. Salary cap calculated based on PREVIOUS TWO YEARS of HRR in addition to that. That is $30-50 million per team that the players need to pay back before the cap goes up. The new TV deal adds about $10 million per team per year... and that is is if other revenue immediately bounced back to pre-Covid times. Any increase to the cap over the next 4 seasons would be some token amount for optics, and nothing to make OEL's contract become a better deal because of inflation.
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[Rumour] Sam Reinhart open to a trade back to West Coast
Provost replied to a topic in Trades, Rumours, Signings
This seems somewhere in the vicinity... though Benning seems to indicate that the team will be getting another good young player with their 1st round pick, so maybe that pick isn't on the table for trades. If we drop I think we should definitely use the pick as an asset, once you get past the top few players it seems to be a complete crap shoot. Ideally you make that decision on the draft floor as you see "your" targets go off the board, but if a good deal comes up before the draft you might need to jump on that. I would say DiPietro would have more value to them than Juolevi, but that is a minor niggling difference. Juolevi takes an expansion slot (unless this trade happens after expansion), Buffalo doesn't really have any high end goaltending prospects in the pipeline. Probably LA beats any deal we could come up with... but I would rather wait a year and get him on the UFA market than pay full market rate. It is pretty easy to "leak" that we are pursuing a trade for him or send some indication we want him, so if he wants to play at home he can choose not to sign an extension if he gets traded. -
What? You do know that the cap ceiling was impacted by Covid and their new CBA agreement right? There was also a single BOG meeting in 2020 where it was projected to rise IF the players exercised their full escalator clause. In the Board of Governors meeting prior to that one, they all came out saying they expected an effectively flat cap. Benning is using one piece of information that was literally only valid for about one week before Covid hit to explain his decisions (decisions that came before he actually got that information). He traded for Toffoli in February when the information he had was that the cap was going to stay effectively flat, the March 4th 2020 BOG meeting said that if players used their escalator it could potentially rise to $84-88 million... by March 11th Bettman decided to shut down the season due to Covid. There were literally 7 days where the information the GMs had was that the cap could go up. Those 7 days were AFTER the trade deadline so there weren't any moves made based on that higher number. It is using revisionist history to excuse mistakes that were made. Benning made no contract decisions in that one week. Here is a news story from last year that explains the future of the cap a little. The rising cap has been mostly just an illusion based on the player's artificially raising it and not indicative of increasing revenue. The cap ceiling for 2018-18 for example was set at $79.5 million with the players using an escalator clause to make it that high even when revenue projections didn't indicate it. They had 12.9% of their salaries withheld in escrow because all parties knew that was an artificially high cap. In the end once the numbers were crunched, the players had to give 9.9% of their salaries back to the owners because the cap was artificially high... that makes the "real" ceiling for 2018-2019 $71.9 million. The escrow at the start of the 2019-20 season was set at 14%... that was before Covid was even a consideration. That means the league was withholding 14% of player salaries to make up for expected overpayments compared with the appropriate HRR share. Every single year the NHLPA chose to use their artificial escalator clause for the ceiling in order to protect that year's free agents from being squeezed. https://www.rawcharge.com/2020/4/1/21202478/tampa-bay-lightning-the-stark-reality-of-the-nhl-salary-cap-position-nhlpa-cba-escrow-math Now if you don't want to believe my very detailed explanation... why not hear it from Bettman himself AFTER the ESPN deal was signed: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/bettman-nhl-salary-cap-will-remain-flat-near-flat-immediate-future/
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The quote was not worth anything as you could get equivalent or better UFAs for the cap hit OR they have negative value. I don't know what tool you are using, but those Capfriendly numbers would simply be indicative of comparing contracts that already exist, and have nothing to do with the squeezed Covid UFA market that will happen this summer. Anyone who doesn't understand that there not just being money available under the flat cap is just flat out wrong. Even using an invalid and wildly optimistic comparison like you are, it still shows Myers as having less value than he would be paid and MacEwan and Highmore right at what they are getting paid. Nobody is giving us anything for those guys when there will be dozens of equivalent or better players begging for jobs in free agency, and another handful within their own organizations. All the reporting said that Pearson got as much or more than he would have gotten on free agency this summer considering the way the market will be with a continued flat cap for years to come.
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It will not.... not even close. We are in for an effectively flat cap for 3-5 years. 1. The players were already paying significant escrow prior to Covid as they had artificially raised the ceiling using their escalator clause. The cap was about $10 million higher than what the HRR share would make it. That difference already completely wiped out the gains from the new TV deal of about $10 million per team. 2. The Covid CBA put an artificial cap on escrow, meaning by the time fans are fully back in all the buildings, the players will owe between $1-1.5 billion dollars to the owners that has to be repaid. A continued flat cap even when revenue increases is how they can do that. 3. The new cap calculation takes the two previous years HRR to calculate the next year’s cap. That means for both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 season it will still be using this season of almost no ticket revenue for the calculation. This will keep the cap down until after those years just due that calculation... even ignoring the billion dollars the players will owe. 4. The first part of season isn’t likely to have anything near full capacity in the Canadian markets.... so another lower revenue year that impacts future cap calculations.
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OEL’s contract is always on the “worst contracts in the league” lists. Not sure why we would take that many years of overpaid term to get rid of cap that is coming off the books in a season. Look at our future cap situation and we would have a hard time eating those dollars.
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My post literally said that he wouldn’t be a major piece in a trade. He would add a pretty blue chip goalie prospect to their organization who is much closer to playing in the league than anyone they would be drafting.
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I think DiPietro has some value and is a bit of a luxury for a team like ours that has so many holes. Demko is our starter for 5 years. A team like Buffalo needs goaltending help, so they could find DiPietro interesting (though not a huge piece on his own). It would take all our “list” to land Reinhart for example... but that doesn’t help our most important needs. Does DiPietro and a 3rd get us an unhappy Ristolainen? Maybe that is in the ballpark.
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Hearing Benning speak always gives insight if you listen between the lines. When he mentions players by name you can also pay attention to the names he didn’t say. Based on his presser they think of Miller as part of the (young) core. He also explicitly talked about Rathbone. He mentioned trades, so who could we realistically trade? In terms of anything of value, all I can see are: Schmidt Juolevi DiPietro Picks (aside from this year’s 1st that he indicated they would likely keep) That isn’t a big list. The players that aren’t likely to get moved because of their value to us: Petterson, Hughes, Boeser, Miller, Horvat, Hoglander, Podkolzin, Demko, Motte The players who aren’t likely to get traded because they aren’t worth anything as you could get equivalent or better UFAs for the cap hit, or they have negative value and would cost us to move: Roussel, Beagle, Ferland, Myers, Eriksson, MacEwan, Pearson, Virtanen, Highmore, Holtby It seems like Virtanen and Holtby are easy decisions for buyouts. What are potential trade targets that could be had for that list of possibly available assets? Nothing that is likely going to fill many holes in the lineup.
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... thanks for proving my point about "blind loyalty"
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No, that is the appropriate response to the folks that are denigrating any posters who dare to say something negative about any aspect of the team.
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Except the context was that people are saying that criticizing any aspects of the organization literally equates to not being a fan. That is absolutely blind loyalty, and even worse... it is some sort of weird cult. A person can post that they have no faith in Benning and yet still love the Canucks and think that Petterson is a great player. Heck, you can even think Benning has done an above average job at drafting and also think that he is abjectly terrible at pro scouting and cap management. Shouting down anyone who criticizes any aspect team is pure nonsense, that is absolutely what is happening on many of these posts and what I was responding to.