Provost

Not quite sure why I was tagged here... Hughes and Petterson now have the same agent. That gives them extra weight in negotiations vs. The Canucks playing one off the other in terms of allocation. I actually fully expect them to get matching bridge deals. Probably between $6.5-8.5 million depending on the term. Hughes may not have any arb rights or able to be offer sheeted... but he is already probably one of the top 5 players at his position in the entire league, likely to be a Norris finalist this season if he stays healthy.... Petterson is amazing, but even with an extra year under his belt he is probably 10-15th best at his position in the league. The idea of playing hardball and threatening to sit one of your franchise superstars is insane and not going to happen, just close the door on that idea in your mind. This isn’t a fringe NHLer who is happy to have a job. He and a Hughes are such a big part of the team’s future that I fully expect them to have a say in decisions moving forward like many top players do.

He has already had a game where he played more than 23 minutes. Continuing the trend of starting from scratch at the bottom every year and then gaining the trust of his coaches to earn more and more minutes. I am not saying he is a Norris calibre player, but he exposes the he bias against smaller D, especially when they play a more steady defensive game rather than flash and dash. He is a #4 or better on probably half the teams in the league and a really solid 3rd pairing guy who can play higher on the roster when needed on a contending team. That is pretty valuable and for his salary a pretty efficient use of dollars.

That is a crazy statement to make at this point. Stecher was our best defensive D for a long while, suppressing shots at a greater rate than anyone else including Tanev in big stretches. He also moved to the top pairing regularly and was matched against the toughest competition where his numbers were still solid. He also went through stretches of playing upwards of 30 minutes a game. He was probably of of our most under rated players. Chatfield has played a handful of games and been decent... I hope to can continue to be that but he hasn’t yet had a big enough sample size that we can anoint him even an NHL regular.

I would think that is more likely the plan for him when he plays the back end of this season. With his feet wet, as long as he holds his own, I can see him getting to start next season on the 2nd line.

Yes, I was all for signing Leivo as a cheap option who was really more suited for the “Jannik Jansen” utility role of moving up and down the lineup as needed. That assumed he was healthy of course. I would also like to see Hawyrluk, but Green has earned the benefit of the doubt, that if he thinks a kid gives him a better chance, he will go with that player. Green has his flaws, but not giving kids a chance isn’t one of them. It took huge cajones to play a skinny Swedish LW rookie as a centre in the West against giants who dominated that position in the conference. I don’t think any other coach in the league makes that decision. Giving Hoglander the chance this year is the same deal. For a coach without a contract extension, it would have been a lot safer play to just throw Eriksson back on that line and hope to just avoid goals against. I know Virtanen is going to slot back into the lineup, but so also like the fact he is being held to account merit wise which hasn’t always happened. I think you could still move him, but the return won’t be much. Maybe a package with Baertschi to open up cap space for a trade deadline add? Maybe a 2nd or 3rd round pick? We don’t really need any roster players right now that we could get in return for him. Does Ottawa need to pick up a couple of forwards with some speed? Arizona? Buffalo?

Well I don't know how many folks are still on the Jake bandwagon. I really hoped and was gunning for us to trade him in the offseason when the asset value could have been pretty high coming off what is likely a high water mark season. A former former 1st round pick coming off an 18 goal shortened campaign who has size and speed should be able to garner interest, at least in return for taking a bigger bad contract off our hands. I could be wrong, maybe the whole hockey community already didn't want anything to do with giving up anything for him Back in February I had mentioned that I wasn't comfortable saying he had "turned a corner" and his increased production was likely just a hot streak and statistical blip... I got roasted for it from all sides. Since that 5-6 week stretch he has been producing at a 4th line rate. He had a dismal final stretch of the season (to go along with the dismal start to last season), a worse playoffs, and has already been benched and outhustled and passed this year by a rookie half a foot shorter than him. Nothing says he is going to be more than he is now. There is nothing to suggest Green is suddenly going to slot him back onto the PP and into premium top 6 minutes where he can pad some stats. If he is back in the lineup it will be with lesser players, and unlike Motte (who I also called a fringe NHLer last season... and will continue to eat my words on that one) Jake doesn't seem to be able to produce in those situations. Unfortunately he is likely at zero trade value now, and may even become a contract liability you can't give away considering the money owed to him next year and his qualifying offer. Move on from him now is really the best bet to me if you can, it also frees up some space for Podkolzin to come in mid-season who would likely push Jake farther down the depth chart anyways. An asset sitting on the bench or playing on the 4th line isn't one that will appreciate.

Ya, I suppose I define “high reward” for a free pick up to be a guy who can play regular 3rd pairing minutes and be effective without having to be sheltered.

Hmmm. that could be a useful player in a depth role. His contract also means he could be used for expansion fodder. Low risk, high reward...

I feel really bad for Hoglander getting kicked out of your lineup while he is right near the top of rookie scoring... poor kid.

There is too vast a difference. Motte plays primarily against lesser competition and just has to be a little better than the bottom of the other roster to succeed. Just because a guy can do well in that role, it is not a logical jump to say that can suddenly play bigger minutes against top competition while the opposition is game planning on them. Those are just two different things. Likely the only reason Motte can have any success is that the opposition uses up all their best bullets trying to keep the Petterson and Horvat lines contained.

Ya, we can’t blame his not signing this offseason on him at all. It was COVID and the Canucks. He was given the choice of signing for an AHL contract for very little money for a season that may or may not happen, and would almost certainly mean a full calendar year between games even if the AHL/NHL season did go ahead. He waited right until the start of KHL camps to finally sign a 1 year deal when it became obvious he wasn’t getting an NHL contract offer from the Canucks. He has now pocketed probably close to a million dollars and almost finished his whole season in the KHL and the NHL is barely started. He didn’t have to worry about escrow, deferrals or any of that. Signing only a 1 year extension is a pretty good signal that he wants to give the NHL another shot. If we can get him on a 2 year/$2 million per year deal we would be well served.

Well I have at least heard of one of these players before...

Aside from none of that being true... good point. He decided not to re-sign with us exactly once, and that was when his contract expired. The Canucks didn't want to offer him a one-way deal this time, so were offering him a Utica job. He would also have had to wait almost an entire year before playing hockey again without a guarantee of an NHL salary or at the time with no knowledge of whether the NHL was even going to have a season. He could re-sign with his KHL club and be sure of a paycheque and more importantly getting to be able to play. The whole weed culture thing has been thoroughly debunked. He made one comment about how he was surprised at how prevalent it was, and never mentioned being bothered by it or it being a reason why he didn't want to stay. He was absolutely fit enough to play and put in a ton of effort when he came over for his contract. He worked out like a demon while waiting to get into the lineup. He made it clear his reason for leaving was not having any communication with the coaching staff, and not getting any sense of where and if he fit on the team. He said he would play great one night and a lot of minutes, then be benched the next night or stapled to the bench without any reason given. He also said that he wanted to play somewhere that he could be an important part of his team. His camp tried really hard to get him a 1 way deal with the Canucks this offseason. They weren't asking for term or big dollars. The team was unwilling to put a one-way deal on the table at all. It would make no sense to sign that and lose his chance at playing the entire KHL season which was already starting up when his agent finally gave up trying to sign with the Canucks. There is plenty of blame that lies with the team during his first stint. He regularly outplayed some of the awful D we had in our lineup at the time, and still got put in the press box. The team didn't do anything to make him or his wife comfortable and welcomed like most teams do for families. I don't know if he will ever play for us, but basically everything you said isn't true and this coming offseason will represent the only real opportunity for him to re-sign with us after his initial stint.

That is exactly it. We can trounce the Senators and it won’t mean much (losing to them does however). Once we get back to playing NHL calibre teams that aren’t deep into yet another rebuild, we will see if we are part of that group of 6 Canadian teams that are fairly equal, or if we are a tier below. The runway disappears really fast this season, and not just because there are fewer games. Once you are at the bottom of the division this season, it is uniquely hard to claw upwards. Because of there being no non-divisional opponents it means EVERY game played by teams you are chasing is guaranteed points for a team you are directly competing against... sometimes 3 points. That is math most folks haven’t thought about yet. Now to catch up will require a couple of teams to badly fall off in play to catch them. If every team above us plays OK and shared those points fairly evenly, then it is almost impossible to gain ground in the standings. The only way to gain ground is when you play or when a team below you plays and steals some points from someone you are chasing (and the latter can’t happen too often or that team below you is now above you). When teams above you always play each other then there is no easy way to catch up to them. In normal seasons you could gain ground by doing nothing because someone you are chasing loses to a non divisional/non conference team and those available points effectively disappear in your particular playoff race. Now one team you are chasing will get those points

A 1st for a middling D in a year where he would bump someone else out of a protected expansion slot (or gets exposed himself) and needs a new contract? That seems kind of crazy.

I think you are looking at it the wrong way... lots of teams have a big drop off after #4 and will lose that guy for sure due to expansion. Why not get some value for that player and then lose a much lesser player to expansion. Vegas took a crap ton of defencemen as those are the most valuable commodity. A #4 D is worth a lot more than a #8 F

The two biggest upcoming tasks for whoever is the Canucks GM at the end of the season. 1. Sign Hughes and Petterson to reasonable contracts 2. Use our excess expansion protection slots on defence and relatively cheaply acquire at least two D that teams would otherwise lose in expansion for nothing. We have one defenceman who really needs protecting.... Schmidt. That means we have two slots we can use to pick up and protect guys. Myers Dan be exposed and if Seattle picked him up, he is replaceable on the market. Juolevi is worth protecting if we happen to have an open slot, but he could certainly be upgraded on with the 4th best D on many teams who can’t be protected. We can replace half our top 4 in one fell swoop.

Whenever we are feeling bad about ourselves... we can at least say we aren’t Ottawa. ... and thank goodness we don’t have Gudbranson anymore. Yeesh he was terrible out there.

I didn’t say anything about Markstrom at all, it was just a matter of too much term and money. We had money available, we didn’t have qualify Virtanen and sign Hamonic... we could have found a way to afford Toffoli. Even a Sutter buyout does that, or exiting some of a bad contract by trading an asset. Benning didn’t even try to keep any of our UFAs except Markstrom. If he could have afforded to be in that conversation and be in on dealing for OEL, he could find way less money for the other guys. He just didn’t want to. I can see why other players are annoyed.

All of Toffoli, Stecher, and Tanev after they left said they basically didn’t hear anything from the team and no negotiations happened. Tanev said he was told to wait and finally got a call after the free agency frenzy from the Canucks basically telling him they had other irons in the fire but they might call him later.

When rating Benning’s draft prowess... we can use a “control group” to look at who we would have had each 1st round if we didn’ bother to do our own scouting at all and just picked the highest ranked player available off the ISS board when we selected, or looked back at MyNHLDraft which shows all the major draft ranking lists at the time of the draft: 2014 - We would have ended up with Nylander instead of Jake by following ISS. This one has an odd year as different rankings had a wide range of opinions but the weighted consensus rankings gives us Perlini or Ehlers depending on which rankings you include. Only one notable ranking had Jake as high as 6th and several had him way later. Interestingly, we still end up with McCann either way and he isn’t playing with us so he can be ignored. We do better with this pick by just listening to the draft boards. 2015 - We end up with Konecny over Boeser from ISS. I think this one is pretty much a wash. Their numbers are pretty comparable. I think they are both good picks late in the round who have outperformed their draft position. 2016 - We end up with Matthew Tkachuk over Juolevi based on ISS. I think it is fair to say we do better by listening to them on this one. 2017 - We have Vilardi instead of Petterson based on ISS. That would have been tragic. The only other possible pick just based on weighting other draft ranking boards would be taking Glass. Only one serious draft board had Petterson to be picked in that spot, most had him 7-13th. 2018 - ISS has us taking Wahlstrom over Hughes. Most of the rest of the boards give either Hughes or Wahlstrom in that spot. I think it is safe to say that Benning wins this one over the ISS board. The other draft rankings gave a consensus pick of Hughes so we could have ended up with him either way by listening to the field. The 2019/20 drafts we can’t really rate as it is way too early. In the end the difference is: Virtanan, Boeser, Juolevi, Petterson, Hughes instead of: William Nylander, Konecny, Matthew Tkachuk, Vilardi, Wahlstrom Benning definitely beats the ISS board I think by having taken the two best players in the bunch he beats the consensus boards by a little less as he probably still ends up with Hughes, but has Glass instead of Petterson. I don’t think it points to the genius leave that some are professing though. He missed on 2, is a wash on 1, and beats two (he beats these two by a lot, at least so far). Edit. An interesting note is following Craig Button’s list for highest available player left to us when we drafted gives us: 2014- Ehlers, Kempe 2015 - Boeser (he had him 9th) 2016 - Matthew Tkachuk 2017 - Glass 2018 - Hughes We miss on Petterson, but probably end up better overall with Buttons picks overall than Benning. Tkachuk-Horvat-Ehlers Kempe-XX- Boeser XX-Glass-XX

Your post can be summed up by “Everyone else is wrong because I can predict the future”. We don’t know any of the things you said. One would hope that we get better, if it was a regular 82 game season we would be on pace for 46 points... that would be getting into historically bad territory. We well may roll off a couple wins over a week Ottawa team and folks will say how great we are doing... then we could get spanked by the decent teams again. All just guesses as we don’t know the future and can only judge reality. The reality is not just that we are losing, but we are looking terrible doing it.

Any time there is a ranking of GMs, Benning sits at or near the bottom. https://nhl.nbcsports.com/2020/11/30/nhl-power-rankings-ranking-the-nhl-general-managers/ The most important metric is wins and Benning is sub 500 over his career and we are again currently dead last (when you equalize for game played) in the league in his 7th season. No active GM with his record has kept their job as long as he has. There was optimism around the team having made a step in the right direction last season, but the offseason wasn’t good. All the players we lost were outperforming their contracts and the opportunity cost of not exiting bad money meant we couldn’t sign other players. The only reason we have any hope at all is because we have been one of the worst teams in the league for many years and keep drafting high. If we are in that position again a little farther into this season he should lose his job, he is extremely lucky to still have it right now. Linden is no great shakes as an executive, but we would certainly be in better shape if we hadn’t signed all those veterans that all reports say he was against. I take Linden/Brackett over Benning/Weisbrod... and apparently those were the two main camps in the front office.

Umm... because he has hardly played, and the times he played it was in sheltered minutes against lesser competition. Boeser, Petterson, and Hughes are drafted higher if a redraft happens. Juolevi and Virtanen are taken later. Anyone reasonable would agree with that. Benning has done fairly well in the draft and that is his strong suit, but it isn’t like he has been at some sort of genius level. For being able to pick high in the last 7 drafts and a possible 49 players, we don’t have a lot of surprise guys come out of the woodwork playing significant roles on the team. His best skill is drafting, so trading ways so many good picks seems like it was a bad idea.

He scored 12 goals 5v5 and was on the ice for 36 goals against 5v5. As a total at even strength, when he was on the ice more goals were scored against him than his line scored.