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Provost

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Everything posted by Provost

  1. Except that Eriksson has been in the playoffs once in the last 11 years.... twice in his entire career (plus 4 games a call up when his AHL season was done). He hasn’t exactly been through the battles or proved himself in the post season. He has also been on the bench for large swaths of the season... so isn’t exactly integral to the team... certainly not compared with the benefit of not having his cap hit. it is easy to find a cheap veteran, even on an expiring contract, for a run at the Cup. Heck, picking up Jumbo Joe would be way more useful in the playoffs... it could be the only time the league would care about us winning, just so he could get a Cup.
  2. We certainly don’t have to add to get rid of Sutter right now when his use to us is greater than it has been this whole contract. If someone offered to take Baertschi along with Sutter for a mid round pick... then that is a tough call. Clearing that much cap is probably worth a lot more than the incremental worsening of our roster by removing him.
  3. Wish in one hand, crap in the other... see which one fills up first.
  4. Well things were significantly different several years ago when he signed his contract. We probably weren’t offering the same sort of contract, we weren’t close to a playoff team, and he hadn’t been relegated permanently to the minors. I don’t think a decision from 3 1/2 years ago has any bearing on a’ entirely different decision now. Virtually none of the variables are the same.
  5. Because he would probably get get a chance to play here initially in his hometown... until/if he proved he can’t play. Ladd is probably an upgrade on Schaller. He would certainly be on our extended playoff roster as injury depth. The lure of getting a fresh start would be strong. How is Utica worse than Bridgeport? They are even close to each other.
  6. You keep taking Ladd out of the equation. 3 more years of Ladd for 2 more years of Eriksson. Ladd is tougher to get rid of than Erikkson. The only reason we do that does is because I we badly need that additional cap space for the next two years. The Islanders haven’t been willing to part with the futures it would take to get rid of Ladd’s contract.
  7. You aren’t counting the savings of not having Ladd in that. Currently Ladd is costing them $4.5 million buried in the minors plus the roster player replacement at about $1 million. Having Eriksson on their roster costs them $6 million. Then add the $2.75 retained adds up to $8.75 million... then subtract the $5.5 they are currently spending for that roster spot equals a net increase of just $3.25, and they save a year of term on Ladd’s buried salary.
  8. Ladd in the minors with 50% retained costs under $1.75 million to our cap vs. the $6 million we are paying Eriksson. That is a win for both sides. We get huge cap relief and the Isles get a defensive roster player for cheap (Eriksson effectively costs them $4.25 more in cap compared with their current state)
  9. Do we have a deal for you! Eriksson plus a pick/prospect for whatever, or Eriksson for Ladd (50% retained) https://www.tsn.ca/1.1442182.1581606208
  10. I am not sure how this is a good message. It throws the team under the bus and doesn’t take any responsibility for it just not having good enough players. It also tells opposing GMs, that ifhe is calling them about a player it means that player is a quitter. Not exactly a great sell job for actual playoff bound teams .
  11. I was pretty shocked that we didn’t take a few runs at Rittich to return the favour for Markstrom being draped in red all night. I am not sure if Roussel is playing hurt, but he has been invisible energy wise for a while. He and Schaller needed to be the ones responding. Insert MacEwan and Bailey next game please.
  12. That could be the only way we make it work... but it is a terrible idea. The way you win is to have your core players locked up long term on contracts that eventually become great deals on the back half when inflation has set in. Bridge contracts, and then renegotiating once the new TV deal revenue is coming in, escrow reduced/eliminated and the cap rising up... will cost us millions extra down the road.
  13. ...and Buying him out the next year it is $4 million and then $1 million. Add in the roster player to replace that position and you don’t save much, if anything at all. Certainly nothing in the neighbourhood of how much we need to trim. Folks aren’t joking when they say it is buyout proof. The folks that are saying it is all just fine aren’t laying out any actual map for how it is fine... just pointing out a couple of things like the expiring contracts and then a bunch of hopes, or saying that we have $40 million in cap space without adding up the cost of signing the players we need. The math is clear and simple. We either don’t re-sign many/most of our expiring good value players, or we work to vacate some dead money. Basically every expiring contract is a good value player who is producing more than their current contract (Markstrom, Virtanen, Tanev, Stecher, Leivo, Gaudette, Petterson, Hughes, Pearson, Edler). The only bad money contract coming off the books after this year is Schaller. The year after that it is Baertschi, Benn, and Sutter. The raises for just keeping some of the good players is more than the expiring bad money. I have yet to see a laid out plan that doesn’t involve losing a ton of our depth, or making unlikely assumptions like big cap increases. All of them also ignore pushed ELC bonuses that aren’t counted towards the cap on Capfriendly but that we still have to account for under the cap ceiling.
  14. Pin this because if those elite players sign for anywhere in that neighbourhood, JB is a hero. That is short term bridge deal kind of money for that level of player. To lock them up long term, add $2 million plus to each of those.
  15. Well, thank goodness we have the models of Toronto and Edmonton who have shown that you can contend for the Cup just by having a couple of high end talents and then an bunch of scrubs filling out the rest of their roster....
  16. I don't disagree with moving on from Roussel... though I can't imagine it going into playoffs where he will likely be more valuable than in the regular season. That roster spot on t he 3rd/4th LW is one where we actually have prospects who can fill it and work their way into the lineup. I would have no worries with a guy like Hoglander starting there as soon as next year, and seeing if he is able to learn in sheltered minutes. The idea of moving Baertschi as money going out to get Simmonds is also one that makes sense, even if it means the pick we have to give turns from a 4th-5th to a 3rd-4th to make up for that extra year.
  17. So you are saying we don't have to make moves to move out veterans because we can believe what Benning that that we are OK... but also don't worry because we ARE ACTUALLY going to make some moves to move out veterans? We only have a few veteran contracts expiring in the coming two seasons, and many of those are guys we actually would like to re-sign because we don't have replacements ready. We are much worse if we have to remove most of Markstrom, Tanev, Stecher, Virtanen, and Edler and replace them with ELC contracts. We are possibly worse if you add in Pearson to that list because we have no idea if Hoglander or Podkolzinv will be ready for top 6 minutes in two seasons to replace his production. If you think our defence will be any good over the next two years with Rafferty, Juolevi, and Tryamkin in place of Edler, Tanev, and Stecher... you are just in a different reality. Maybe we can work them into the lineup, but that is a longer term project than the next two seasons. We have contracts in place that mean we have no cap space to re-sign guys we would want to. That is math, and is a straight up fact. We don't have enough contracts coming off the books next season and in 2021-22 to make up for the raises we need to give the young guys we want to re-sign. That is math and that is a straight up fact. Hinging our entire future for the next several years on wishful thinking like: "Maybe Eriksson will volunteer to retire early" and "Maybe the economics aren't really what the league is saying and we will have a big cap jump" and "Maybe Seattle will take a big money bad contract off our hands"... and needing ALL of those things to come to pass to be able to ice a decent team... that is just horrible planning. If any of those things doesn't come to pass, it will cost way more than a 1st round pick to ditch cap, because every single other team is going to be desperate to ditch cap as well, with very few teams that can take on any. The upside of doing it now when we need to helps us exponentially by removing pushed ELC bonuses, as well as having the ability to make moves that actually let us take some cap back in order to make us better.
  18. Exactly this. Escrow will be WAY worse this year because basically every team is above the midpoint and even LTIR dollars count towards the player's share so many teams are spending way over the cap ceiling. I doubt they are going to want to use the artificial escalator right after getting whacked by a huge escrow number. After the December BOG meetings, the GMs basically said to assume and plan for an effectively flat cap. Maybe at most a million or two each season to not entirely screw that current class of UFAs.
  19. I didn't say he WOULD retire, just that we should have forced the issue and made him decide before having to waste assets to ditch his contract.
  20. I covered this in a couple of other threads before... but $40 million only sounds good if you don't remember that you need to sign 15 or so players with that money including two goalies; 3-4 top 4 D; 3 top 6 forwards; and a bunch of other players. It also ignores that fact we won't really have $40 million, because we will push about $4 million in ELC bonuses into that year if we don't move out enough salary next season to accommodate it. $36 million - $10 million for Petterson - $8 million for Hughes - $5 million for Tanev or equivalent - $5 million for Markstrom = $8 million left. With that $8 million you need to sign Virtanen and 10 more roster players. That is mathematically impossible. The alternative is to no re-sign any of our useful players except for Petterson and Hughes and just be terrible for two seasons with no depth. It is math, not opinion.
  21. Injuries is why there was even a possible roster spot for him in the press box, it has nothing to do with the team not choosing to demote him to force the cap issue. He was providing nothing sitting in the press box that MacEwan or another player couldn't have. He played a short stretch of "not terrible" games, we have no idea if putting another one of our players in that spot would have been better... it couldn't have made us much worse, certainly not compared with the possible benefit of having gotten rid of that cap hit. Had we demoted him out of training camp, we would have known if he was going to decide to retire long before we actually ended up putting him on the ice... nothing would have prevented us from calling him up when we actually wanted to try to play him, all we did was carry him on the roster to attend practice.
  22. Except we badly need the cap space next season as well. We not only have to fit in this year's pushed ELC bonuses, we also have to find a way to pay next year's without pushing it into the season where we have to pay Petterson and Hughes. There is no "just do nothing and it all works out" scenario that doesn't gut our franchise of depth in the next two years when we can't afford to re-sign anyone. The cost to our roster of not moving Eriksson is greater than the cost of paying futures to move him now.
  23. Exactly... if there was a thought Eriksson would retire, then that should have happened this year when he wasn't getting a sniff at playing time. It is a hopeful wish, and not something that can be counted on. I have no idea why he wasn't demoted to force the issue, but I can't presume Alfives invented theory that Eriksson has agreed to retire this summer and we can only work with what we know.
  24. I don't really see us contending for some time *you can always get lucky), but I also see that if we currently do nothing, we will actually be getting worse with losing players we can't afford but "should" sign purely in hockey terms... and I see that as a worse thing than you do. I think we should focus on getting incrementally better year over year, and wouldn't support moving good players like Tanev and Markstrom now for future assets. I think it would just be too damaging to the room and cost us more down the road. Players don't think in 5 year plans, and if they sniff a management that isn't trying to win now, we will have to be overpaying them to stay and that can cost us our success in the future by tacking on an extra million or so to each contract's AAV. Pure asset management is muddied by that. Intellectually I could agree that moving Markstrom at the deadline would return us a really good haul, but I don't think it is in the plan or that it is advisable because we are dealing with humans who react to things like that. I have posted numerous times how I think now is the time to exit as many of those inefficient veterans contracts right now, even at the expense of futures. It allows us to keep on an upwards trajectory and get our young guys to buy in. If we keep all the players in the next two upcoming seasons that we might otherwise lose to cap concerns (Tanev, Markstrom, Edler, Virtanen), and fill other gaps with any young prospects who are ready or cheap veteran 1 year deals (a la Vanek)... then in 2022-23 we are positioned REALLY well in being able to actually add a high end UFA or two to fill in any remaining gaps from prospects that don't end up working out. I agree, that is the year where we should be thinking about starting to be a perennial playoff team that might even be able to contend. To me, any picks that aren't our remaining 1st round one, and almost any of our prospects (aside from Hoglander or Podkolzin) could be expended in order to get rid of Eriksson, Sutter, and Baertschi without having to retain salary. Sutter I don't see being moved out until the offseason, as there is nothing to indicate Benning would want to take out a useful veteran during a playoff run just for cap reasons Our only roster players that could be potential trade chips would be Demko (or Markstrom if we felt we couldn't re-sign him to a decent number), Stecher, and Virtanen. The veterans we have don't have value compared with their contracts or we can't spare (eg. Miller and Pearson), and the other young players are effectively untouchable or not worth a lot in trade. So this trade deadline for me is. Use other team's playoff desperation/poor deadline decision making to try to exit a guy like Baertschi or Eriksson. This offseason, try to move Sutter out and sign our higher end prospects. Find any unsigned veterans near the end of the summer for 1 year deals who can be waived or used as depth if a prospect like Hoglander steals a roster spot. It almost never goes badly because they cost you almost nothing in cap, and at worst can be waived or used as deadline assets if you are out of the playoff picture and want to see kids play the meaningless games at the end of the season.
  25. This is the idea of how we have to think, because folks get attached to every one of our prospects and players... and don't really think as much about how our roster shapes up in coming years. I do have some argument with including Tanev and Motte as core pieces. I think we should do what we can to re-sign Tanev, but that is a short term solution. There is no reasonable expectation he will still be a viable top 4 guy three years from now. Lots of metrics have shown that he has slowed down a lot even this year, and entirely relies on having a guy like Hughes carry the puck for him. That isn't a trend that is going to get better, it won't be long before his mentorship and stability on that pairing turn into a drag that Hughes is carrying. Motte is a nice little energy player, but pretty replaceable and that is a roster spot ideal for some of our prospects to slot into for the coming years. Between now and 2021, here is a list of player that could/should be moved out or not re-signed, and prospects who "could" be ready to make the leap. Players that could be let go or traded: Eriksson, Leivo, Baertschi, Sutter, Schaller, Ferland, Benn, Fantenberg, Roussel, Motte Players that "should" be re-signed: Markstrom, Tanev (if unable to do that, then Stecher), Petterson, Hughes, Virtanen, Edler, Pearson (depending on price and if Hoglander and/or Podkolzin is ready) Prospects that could potentially be ready: Hoglander, Juolevi, Tryamkin, Rafferty, MacEwan, Bailey, Lind, Dipietro, Podkolzin, Rafferty, Rathbone, Woo, Madden, Brisebois One thing that is clear is that we have quite a few "possible" prospects who likely slot in on the lower end of the roster, certainly at least initially, and a lot of veterans signed to inefficient contracts who are taking up those spots and not vacating them fast enough. We don't have a lot of higher end prospects now that we have had so many graduate into the lineup. Hoglander and Podkolzin are our exceptions, and they are young enough we still have no idea. We probably don't need as many centres as we have prospects for since Petterson and Hughes fill two of the slots for many years. One of Madden or Gaudette is likely not going to be on our roster going forward. That is a possible asset to move out to shed cap. We have quite a few defencemen who are likely #5-8 guys, certainly at least for the next few years. No one realistically expects Juolevi to be a top 4 guy within two years. We also can't have an all rookie third pairing as that is a recipe for disaster. That means there are limited spots to be taken by 1-2 of Juolevi, Tryamkin, or Rafferty (I am not as high on Brisebois). It also means that re-signing Edler in two years is likely a good idea to be a stabilizing presence and "hopefully" work his way down the roster as young guys are ready for more meaningful minutes. Ideally by the time Edler is ready to retire maybe 4 years from now, we have Hughes as the top pairing and Juolevi as the 2nd pairing D. To me, we really need to see what a couple of young guys look like by the end of this year to project if they might be ready for a roster spot next season. Juolevi, Tryamkin, Bailey, and Rafferty need a look, and hopefully there is an opportunity to do so. We are also in a playoff race, so can't just do it if we think it could cost us. We know what a guy like MacEwan gives us, so slotting in Bailey for a few games instead seems smart. We also know what Benn gives us, so slotting in a young guy for a few games instead seems smart too.
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