Provost

I don't think they would be overtly playing terribly in order to get Benning fired, especially with two of our best players in a contract year. It is entirely conceivable that the churn in the offseason and losing key leadership pieces has just put them off a little, and a 10% difference in performance is what puts you from a bubble team to a bottom feeder. We can't lose sight of the fact we weren't a great team last year either and half our team were having career years. We aren't really that much worse than we were last year. If you took Markstrom's Vezina goaltending last year and replaced it with just average goaltending... we would have been a bottom 5 team. We are getting average goaltending right now and are a bottom 5 team. Having said that, Benning managed to take a league wise positive view of the Canucks after the playoff bubble and turn it around to a league wise negative view. That was as a result of him not being able to fix his own screw ups. The players see that. They walk into training camp without Markstrom, Tanev, Leivo, Stecher, and Toffoli and see worse replacements for those guys. That has to be hard to take. They know that Virtanen is a marginal player, do you think after a loss they don't think they would rather have Toffoli in that roster spot? It certainly can't help that those important former Canucks put the blame right on the GM when they left. You know they have player group chats and text back and forth, they are friends. If Tanev is hearing for weeks about the team chasing OEL, but hasn't heard a single word from the team... it could get pretty annoying. The only player that says they had actual negotiations with the team was Markstrom. Everyone else was a back up plan which is pretty disrespectful. At least tell them, "hey we have XX dollars and can only go to XX term... we love you and would like to have you at those numbers". Then the player can decide whether to stay or not. Every guy we lost was outperforming their contracts. Most of the guys we kept were underperforming their contracts. None of that is to say it wasn't the right decision to walk away from Markstrom or Tanev at a certain number.

The last name sounds kind of Italian... maybe Aquilini picks him up?

We do need an injection or se new blood to mix up the dynamic and get the team out of a funk. Hawyrluk and Bailey should get shots.

The idea of trading him or him wanting out is entirely without any merit or basis right now. He had a career year last year, by a long shot. They are called career years for a reason, they don’t happen every year. The guy has been playing poorly and he is frustrated, the team is on a slide with no reinforcements coming. He should be mad. Everything wa a sunshine and roses last year, we haven’t seen how they react to a long stretch of adversity.

I posted in another thread a week or so ago. Benning’s record has been above average, but excellent is a stretch. I did a year by comparison of who we would have drafted in the 1st rounds if we used the various draft rankings as the lists and took the best player available from those lists. Benning beat out the ISS rankings, but lost to other guys like Button. If we went with Button’s list for example we would have ended up with Nylander, McCann, Boeser (who he had ranked 9th), Ehlers, Vilardi, and Hughes. The big win for Benning was picking Petterson, most lists had him at least a couple spots later. Hughes was picked by most lists in that spot or higher, so that is kind of a wash. The big losses for Benning were Virtanen and Juolevi... I don’t think we can overplay Benning’s drafting genius when pundits in the press can out draft him. Above average drafting certainly doesn’t make up for below average in other areas unfortunately. Benning is a below average GM.

Yep... you have to give them term as well. I mean if you are shooting for this result at least...

That is over $30 million in bad value cap. About half our roster wouldn’t be picked up if we waived them tomorrow. Not a recipe for success. I guess the mantra this year will soon be “Lose for Hughes”?

Ummm... Sakic got his team from terrible to into the playoffs in two drafts. His first year he was hired at the last minute when training camp started and had no offseason or draft. He had two full offseason building the team and they haven’t missed the playoffs since. Mackinnon had 24 goals and 63 points in his rookie season right after being drafted as an 18 year old. He was solid from day 1. It took him 5 years to become a perennial 40 goal scorer and one of the very best players in the league... but his career took off right away. His only sub 50 point season was due to missing a big chunk of games. We also now have a below average prospect pool since we graduated everyone into the lineup (and are still struggling). Colorado still has an excellent prospect pools and are currently tied for 1st in their division while we are below .500 Colorado did all their work with one of the smallest cap hits in the league, were able to use that sign players to fill holes, and are perfectly set up going forward to pay their young guys when they come up for renewal. Using Colorado as a comparison makes us look worse and not better. Benning has had a year more, less success, started from a better spot, threw away a ton of picks in ill advised trades, and allocated the cap poorly resulting in the team going backward and not forward. No one in the league takes our roster and cap situation over Colorado’s.

Well we just have to move on to another disgruntled player to swap for Virtanen... It seems like he has no value or negative value with his contract now, so as about 50% of folks on here predicted we missed the boat on getting anything much for the asset. Bennett isn’t a great fit for us, but a marginal upgrade on Jake just positionally and his better defensive play. I am not too fussed about missing out on this. Maybe someone will have an injury close to the deadline and take a flyer on Virtanen even with that extra year attached, or Baertschi just as depth to clear sole of our cap.

They replaced one of the winningest GMs in league history who brought them multiple Cups, won several President’s trophies, and had the most playoff games of any team... just because they missed the playoffs for 3 years after an unprecedented run of consecutive playoff appearances. Another example that proves my point, quite startlingly so. Benning hasn’t had any of the success Holland has, but has been given a way longer leash than even a hall of famer like that got. Yzerman has been on the job for one full season as the replacement. Also, unlike the Canucks, they aren’t a cap team while they are losing. They have the space to add when they get enough prospects.

Sorry, nope. In no NHL world does a GM get 7 plus years to rebuild a team without at least being a regular playoff team. It just doesn't happen in actual reality, you can disagree all you want, but in the NHL world GMs get fired for performance reasons long before Benning has even been in the hotseat. Bergevin is a bad example... his team has made the playoffs 5 of his 8 years and been in 1st place in his division for 3 of those years during the regular season. The "we need to rebuild" excuse buys you 2-3 years... not 7.

The only “realistic” metric for Benning at this point can be wins and losses. It isn’t a “try” league. Any other analysis isn’t realistic, it is subjective. He has a below .500 record in his entire tenure. We are still below .500 and are now in his 7th season. He is one of the longest tenured GMs in the entire league. There is no GM in the league with a longer tenure and a worse winning record, but a long shot. Several teams have gone through more than one GM during his time here and have fired guys without better records. It is hard to argue that his time has been a success, because it literally hasn’t. Getting a couple elite talents in the draft doesn’t mean you become a winning team... look at Edmonton. He has to win, or he should be fired. That is the price to pay for being the boss... especially one who has drummed out other voices in the organization like Linden and Brackett. If we are below .500 by the trade deadline he should be gone so a replacement can start on their new vision for the team.

Or maybe just Miller had a career year last year and we can’t expect that every year? This is a guy that wasn’t in the top 6 before he came to play with us. He is a really good player, but maybe he is really more like the 40-50 point guy he was and not the 70+ point guy from last year. A lot went right for us to be a middling team last year. We had a weak division. Guys like Miller and Virtanen had career years. We got Vezina level goaltending. We had good health with few key man games lost. This could be the same team with just a couple of those things not working out as well as last year.

Well on the upside, maybe our upcoming RFA negotiations will end up a little cheaper...

Apparently we needed to sign Toffoli just as a defensive measure, even if we just sat him. Just take away all his goals against us and we are in a better spot.

I think even 4 would be unprecedented, at least in the modern era. Only the Rangers from 69-71 had three finalists in a row (and none of them actually won). Pittsburgh and Chicago had 3 rookies nominated in 2 years (Malkin/Staal in one year and Kane/Toews in one year)... things turned out pretty well for those teams. For us to even be in that conversation is amazing, though we had better start making hay on it because those contracts come up really fast and our prospect pool has dropped like a stone in the rankings as we have graduated our best guys onto the team. Once Podkolzin is on the team, we will have one of the weaker prospect pools in the league... not as bad as it sounds when half your team is club controlled and under 25 so you don't have so many roster holes to fill.

Bennett isn't a long term replacement at all. He is a guy that "can" play centre occasionally but hasn't ever solidified that spot. He only represents an upgrade on Jake because of position. Jake is a better player (and I am not a Virtanen fan at all). During the expansion draft we should be able to upgrade for a true 3C. There will be some guys teams can't protect who could be had for cheap. Our best bet now is to either make trades to acquire picks that can be flipped for those expansion players, or to save our bullets until then and trade away players who might have some value in exchange. We really have one benefit to not being a very good team, we have plenty of protected expansion slots available, that could be used on upgrades for guys we would otherwise use those slots on; On forward, who do we really have to protect? Petterson, Miller, Horvat, Boeser. That is it... 4 out of 7 slots. The fringe guys we "could" protect if we happened to have a spare slot, but could also easily be upgraded on are: Lind, Virtanen, Gaudette, MacEwan, Motte. Out of that list the only one that would really hurt is Motte. He is cheap and providing good value so give him our 5th slot. The rest are replaceable. On defence we have to protect Schmidt. That is it. The fringe list if we happened to have spare slots available are: Juolevi, Myers, Chatfield, and Rafferty. None of those hurt much and could all be replaced for better players (or equivalent cheaper players in the unlikely event Myers was claimed). Really, use any of our trade chips for 2nd-5th round picks and we can then use those picks to pick up spare players from other teams. Foote from Tampa will most assuredly get exposed, he is an upgrade on Juolevi. Carolina has 6 defencemen worth protecting so has 3 guys they can't.

Whenever someone uses "pace" to describe production it is just trying to obscure reality. In any given period a player can be "on pace" for any number of things. In reality Virtanen was on pace for a terrible year last year for the first part of the season, was on a PPG pace for a few weeks in the middle of the season, and on pace for one of his worst career years ever in the last part of the season. Most GMs can figure out that the player is more likely the guy who has 6 years of history being what he is compared with the guy who spent a few weeks on a hot streak. Not sure if 30 teams would have passed on qualifying him, but certainly most likely would have. Beyond his questionable performance on the ice, they have to layer in the opportunity cost for those cap dollars and the unique offseason that just happened. By the time the qualifying offer had to happen, the league knew there was no money and would be amazing deals to be had. Really, would we have been better off letting Jake walk and using those dollars towards a huge chunk of Toffoli's contract? How about a defensively solid veteran like Koivu, Granlund, or Haula? I am pretty sure none of them would be pasted to the bench right now and seeing their asset value drop like a stone.

Ok sure... we can trade Eriksson and Virtanen for a waived Deangelo and Kakko I am ok taking their headaches off their hands if we can make the salaries a wash. We can find a way to terminate Deangelo maybe....

The rumours in NY are that he got into an altercation with a team mate after the game. Some have suggested a fight with him and Georgiev (who was given a maintenance day today). It was also reported that it was a "last straw" and not just one incident. The guy seems like garbage. Thankfully we don't need him anyways.

He has been used as a winger, but in his last 3 seasons he has been over 50% on faceoffs (taking about 1/3rd ro 1/2 of what Gaudette has been taking). He also has a WAY better 2 way profile and is pretty solid defensively which will endear him to our coach and also allow him to be less sheltered than Gaudette. Gaudette primarily had his starts in the offensive zone and Bennett in the defensive zone. In any event, it would really be a comparison between Jake and Bennett, not Gaudette and Bennett. Putting Bennett on Sutter's wing for the season and learning under him, gradually taking more faceoffs in spot duty, etc could be an immediate improvement and possibly put him in a position to be a 3C next year. Our system and 3rd line has different expectations than simply being a shut down line, so he could certainly fit there with an expectation of providing more offence. Horvat and Beagle will always take the toughest matchups, it is just the makeup of our team. Virtanen has outperformed Bennett, so one would think a pick would have to come our way unlike Benning always sending picks out in these sorts of trades. As an ex Hitman, Jake would have some immediate popularity in Calgary. If we could wrangle a 3rd round pick, maybe that is a chip we could use to offload Baertschi to another team and opening up a little cap space for a deadline add if we are in need of one. https://calgarysun.com/sports/flames-snapshots-bennett-looking-to-add-to-offensive-output

Clearly a Bennett for Virtanen swap makes too much sense. Tougher to make that trade in division when we play them so often.

AV is one of the best coaches in the game. He seems to know what players need motivating by a kick in the butt and what players need to have a different approach. This seems to clearly just be motivational tool.

Yikes.... I am only assuming they tried to trade and came up with nothing. This may be a pre-emptive move to see if anyone will claim him before either hoping he doesn’t report and can get suspended, or they have a back up deal retaining salary.

I actually genuinely don't know as it has never been tested as far as I know. From the bare language of the contract doesn't indicate any limit, meaning that a player could be kept forever in that status if they refused to sign their qualifying offer. I don't know if anything in the recent MOU addressed that at all, I am just going from the CBA itself. If a player went to a 3rd party arbitrator over it, I am pretty confident that a limit would be put on how long a club could keep them in limbo. It goes against any fair or reasonable labour law to be able to deprive someone of their right to make a living indefinitely, the law only allows CBA's certain leeway in what can be mutually agreed upon. No idea what a resulting arbitration or court decision would come out as. They wouldn't allow a team to indefinitely deprive a player of his ability to earn a living, but on the other side all a player would have to do it play for one extra year on a qualifying contract to be then eligible to negotiate a contract with any other team in an offer sheet scenario. All of that to moot as there is no way they poison the relationship with Hughes by forcing him to accept whatever offer they put in front of him.