Provost

I would probably agree on that, but unless we are getting new owners I don’t see heading back down that rabbit hole. Hextall maybe... Gilman would be on any candidate list, but as he hasn’t been a GM before he wouldn’t fit in these rankings. Rutherford could be on that list if he decided he was available.

Well we are still waiting for you to be right one time... so anything is possible.

In a posting history of terrible takes... this stands out as one of your worst. There has never been a time in league economics where you can fill out the bottom end of a roster with cheaper and more competent players. There are veterans and good players being squeezed out and earning $1 million or under and not getting any term. It isn’t our star players who are the problem, it is $30 million or so badly spent dollars that have meant those stars can’t be surrounded by good rope players and other talent. Hughes is irreplaceable, even more so than Petterson, and already one of the top D in the league...

Teams don’t get better by ditching the elite, and almost impossible to find talent.

Fire the owner? Any multi billionaires on the forum here that can make Aquilini an offer he can’t refuse? How about $50 and a government waiver for his other businesses to not have to worry about annoying things like pesky employment an Safety standards?

The team was bad right off the bat. To me that aims at the chemistry and the players seeing important pieces of the room leave and not be confident in their team. It wasn’t the coaching staff gradually losing the room. We were a bad defensive team last year and then we let our three best defensive players go (Markstrom, Stecher, and Tanev). The roster has too many problems. Unless Aquilini is committed to Benning long term, I don’t see giving him a chance to hire another coach. A new GM is going to want to pick their own guy. Maybe we need a GM with enough juice to be able to insist on more control And less ownership interference.

This is definitely a firing game... maybe they wait until they are back home.

I remember suggesting we trade Virtanen for Ristolainen when Jake was in the middle of his hot steak and Risto was constantly trade bait. Risto is successfully playing 23 minutes a night providing solid defence and putting up good numbers now.

Half the team wouldn’t even get picked up on waivers... you are far too optimistic

Is this the range Luke Hughes is supposed to go? asking for a friend....

Marc Savard was on the radio saying he would love to run our PP with the talent we have. I am up for letting him try. I didn’t even bother turning on the game tonight because I was too scared that it would be exactly like it appears to have turned out to be

This may be the most depressing thing I have experienced since Messier... The idea that Loui is going to be slotted into the lineup to help us. ... and that I can sit there and think “yep, that sounds reasonable”. Good God, that is horrifying....

There isn’t any big wad of money freeing up, people are hanging on to an illusion. This year we have to re-sign Petterson, Hughes, and Demko to raises. We have Edler who is our 2nd best D man with his contract up and aging... those minutes needs to be replaced. We have almost no money coming off the books to do all those things, especially considering we have big pushed ELC bonuses that we can’t afford this year The year after that Boeser gets a huge qualifying offer. The year after that, Horvat and Miller are up for extensions. Hoglander will be coming off his ELC then already and will be in for a big raise (or replaced by a UFA if he hasn’t worked out as a top 6. If Petterson and Hughes get signed to bridge deals (likely), they will also be expiring by this point and need expensive, max term contracts. Players roll off their ELCs really quickly, and get raises if they are good. Money gets spent as quickly as it comes off the books. The only thing that can create cap space is an increasing cap and players signed to long term contracts that become good deals over time because of cap inflation. The cap is likely to stay flat for about 5 years while the players pay back escrow money owed.

The contract Toffoli signed in Montreal was really team friendly... he said he really wanted to sign here but didn’t get an offer. It isn’t a wild assumption that we could have gotten the same deal... it is literally what he said. Of course Benning didn’t want to to be in the position he was... but he put himself there. The expansion has nothing to do with signing Toffoli or Stecher. Neither of them got a NMC, so that is 100% irrelevant. Yes I do know negotiations... not talking with the other side is not a way to get a deal done, especially if they have other options. If that is above your head, not sure how anything but several years of schooling could help. The great things is it isn’t hindsight. I, and others said at the time it was a mistake to fill up the bottom of the roster with expensive veterans who also got long terms. I said we needed to get any value from Virtanen in trade before his play plummeted again, while you were railing on about how he had turned a corner and was going to be a top end power forward. I said he should have paid the price to escape from the bad contracts because the opportunity cost of not having that so was going to cost us. Benning has one of the worst winning percentages of any active GM, and is also one of the longest tenured GMs... no one else with his record has been given close to his leash to turn things around. It is his job to fix things and he hasn’t, not complicated.

Again, it isn’t a matter of not losing anyone. If we protect Juolevi, we lose A guy like Lind who would also be a cheap roster spot. I don’t see a lot of daylight between the two. We “can” protect Juolevi if we have the extra slot available... but no compelling reason to avoid doing deals to upgrade the team because it could mean losing him. We have Rathbone and Tryamkin as cheap bottom pairing options in the short term.

We don’t have to protect all those guys... expecting to protect anyone mildly useful is a fool’s game. What is the difference if they take MacEwan instead of Lind? Not really any difference and players like that are replaceable, especially with another tight cap situation around the league again next offseason. The players we “need” to protect: Forward: Petterson, Horvat, Boeser, Miller Defence: Schmidt Goal: Demko The players we “can” protect it we have spare slots and can’t upgrade on them through other means: Motte, Juolevi, Macewan, Gaudette, Virtanen Losing any of those guys isn’t a huge deal, but with our lack of PK players I would lean towards protecting Motte for his value. There will be solid players available for between league minimum and $1 million dollars who would probably be better than any one of those guys we would lose. That leaves 2 forward spots and 2 D slots that we can upgrade through trades, pick ups.

Yep... see what sort of discount he would have taken at least. We don’t know. Stecher was also our best shot suppression D over the last few years. He is a hometown guy and if you offered him $1.5x3 years you don’t think he would have taken it over the Detroit deal? Kind of a no-brainer for a team that bleeds scoring chances. This isn’t hindsight talking, most folks were scratching their heads from the start of the offseason onwards.

I was pretty neutral, and have long said he shouldn’t have signed those veterans to long term expensive contracts. There are always solid pro veterans left at the end of free agency to pick up for next to nothing as protection and stability for the kids... Vanek/Vrbata/Schaller types. I also said before this past offseason that it was make or break for Benning. If he could elegantly get out of his mistakes cap wise then he should keep his job... if he couldn’t he should he fired. He couldn’t...

The OP is rationalizing and conflating a bunch of things. 1. Virtually no one has argued that we should have kept Markstrom or Tanev at the price and term they got elsewhere. 2. We don't know what price and term Tanev would have accepted here because the team didn't bother negotiating with him. The only negotiations that happened were with Markstrom and Arizona. 3. Toffoli and Stecher would have been on more team friendly contracts than the guys we did sign going forward so would not have handcuffed us in the least. 4. There is no evidence at all that Benning tried to trade Virtanen and/or Boeser. If his ask for Virtanen was a 1st round pick, then shame on him for badly evaluating his own player. Qualifying Virtanen was a mistake that cost dollars which could have been used for a valuable player who wasn't going to be stapled to the bench. 5. He could have exited a bad contract by using a pick or player like Virtanen.... if he had jumped on it early like half this board was begging him to the moment we got eliminated from the playoffs. Other teams were able to move money... even Gudbranson was able to be traded. Benning couldn't get it done, and the opportunity cost of those tied up dollars cost us cap efficient players. 6. Nothing said we had to sign Holtby, there were many free agent goalies out there that we could have had for cheaper. Between not qualifying Jake and signing a cheaper guy like Griess there would have been Toffoli money 7. From his own words he said he "ran out of time". Make all the guesses or listen to whatever speculation or rumours you want... or believe he isn't lying. He just spent all his time on Markstrom and OEL and didn't address any of the other players who were waiting for a phone call until after well into free agency. This is pretty clearly corroborated by those players after they left saying they didn’t hear from the Canucks side at all. I can't even imagine after all Tanev had bled for the team, finally calling him for the first time 3 days into free agency after he had been waiting for months for an offer and then telling him that they would call him back later in the day "if" another deal couldn't be worked out with another player... that is what Tanev said happened and why he decided to sign with the offer that was actually on the table from Calgary.

As per the above posts... which are good to actually read. The value of a player is 100% dependent on timing. We could have easily moved Baertschi if he had a $1 million salary. At the deadline, salary and cap implications are largely removed as most money will have been paid out. That entirely changes the value of players on the trade market. Literally every year depth players get inflated values at the deadline. A mid/late round pick is like a lottery ticket, it probably isn’t going to turn into an NHL player... but gives you an extra chance. Your 2nd point is literally the opposite position from the first part of your post. Nobody is overvaluing mid/late round picks at all. That is what our players are worth and why teams would be willing to spend those picks just for playoff depth and injury insurance. You can’t say that our players are overvalued, but the picks they would command aren’t worth any value. Those are contradictory.

Heck, in his last year Eriksson might even get a modest return at the deadline (if a team has some space for the pro rated amount of his salary, which would be way less). Once you largely take salary out of the equation, some of our players look better. Veteran defensive stability is what team covet at the deadline... Sutter likely has neutral to negative value right now, and is worth around a 3rd round pick at the deadline...then may only command a $1 year, $1 million contract offer in the offseason. it is just the way it has always been. Doesn’t mean it makes sense...

Because they want to win the Cup? 4-5 teams are going to be in an arms race to beef up depth for a playoff run. This year it is even more important because getting one of these guys also stops a direct rival from getting them. Sutter and Pearson are direct upgrades to the very bottom of most rosters, and are certainly upgrades as injury insurance. As I noted above, the proof is in the pudding with what comparable players have gotten as returns at the deadline. It is still pretty stunning to me how picks are thrown around like Canadian Tire money at the deadline, but the exact same pick two months later is treated like gold. It happens every year. Benning was happy to throw in a 2nd and a 4th as sweeteners to get Toffoli for a handful of games (on top of a very good prospect). Yet in the offseason a 2nd round pick wasn’t even going to be considered to get out of a bad contract which could have allowed us the cap space to keep Toffoli long term. For once it would be nice to exploit that inequality of valuation rather than be the victim of it.

Have you ever paid attention to a trade deadline before? Our players aren't worth that right now, but values are hugely inflated at the deadline and a 3rd round pick is the going rate for a plug players. Fantenberg got a 4th round pick. Lovejoy (with a sum total of 2 points on the season) got a good prospect in Connor Carrick and a 3rd. Adam McQuaid (with 2 points on the season) returned a 4th, 7th, and a 2nd round picked prospect Julius Bergman. A guy like Sutter is a perfect deadline pickup as a veteran with size and a defensive profile. Benn similarly so.

The great thing is the deadline is basically right at the end of the season, so cap hits mean nothing... it will all be about playoff depth. The only key is it would be guys on expiring contracts as not many teams will want players with term left. Sutter - 3rd/4th round pick Baertschi - late pick or nothing Pearson - 3rd round pick Benn - 4th/5th round pick Hamonic - Nothing unless Calgary or Edmonton wants him... since he won't move anywhere else Beagle - Late pick if someone was willing to take on his extra year Virtanen - Late pick if someone was willing to take on the extra year, probably require money coming back with similar term On the downside, how to wrangle the trades with border restrictions will be tough. At least the quarantine rules going down to the US are more limited than coming this way. We might be the only possible trading partners for other Canadian teams as they wouldn't lose the 2 weeks of quarantine time and that could inflate the value of our assets, it will only be us and Ottawa likely in selling mode, and 4-5 suitors looking to add depth. It would be really important to add as many picks as possible as those will be our currency to pick up assets that other teams would be willing to give up for cheap due to not having enough expansion protection slots to keep them. With a few 3rd round picks we could add three #4D to entirely revamp our back end.

Except he is still our 2nd best D man.... if that puts it in better perspective for you.