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As much a fan of Hughes as I am, Hughes is throwing the puck away far too carelessly. He has so much skill that when we are up a goal, he could just hang on to the puck and skate circles around the opposition and kill time. I don't know why he is rushing the puck so much when we are leading.

First line needs Pearson. Garland is no good on that line with Miller and Petey. They need a forechecker, a guy that will win the puck along the boards, and a guy that will pass the puck rather than go on a solo dash 99 out of 100 times.

Gonna be his last contract. I don't buy the idea that he will only sign with a contender. Canucks aren't a contender and yet he is willing to re-sign with us.

Hi, this is Brian. My client wants 8 years 72 mil. He is willing to come down to 8 years 68 mil if you include a NMC. It looks like we are cool 18 million dollars apart.

Yeah, this indicates that the team is either hopeful that Martin's play in the AHL can carry over and that they are OK in case it doesn't. In other words, they are leaning towards a retool and taking a step back instead of immediate upgrading of the roster.

The first thing Chia's son did when he got the puck, was to look for Petter's son. And Petter's son did the rest.

Anything wrong with Lammikko at 4C? But yeah, Richardson back one more season sounds good. Should've never let him go in the first place.

Wow Petey has giant hands. He could even grab, say a basketball with one hand.

Any reason why Fukston would trade him, say for Garland?

At the current rate, Petey could score 30 goals and close to 70 points. Never could have imagined it.

I hope the fans show up wearing Sharks jersey on Saturday to mimic the Shark tank.

Dermott is looking great. He can skate well and can cover for Myers a lot better than OEL. Dermott-Myers pairing frees up OEL to play with more defensive minded Schenn, allowing OEL to foray into the offensive zone. Hughes-RD (find a long term partner) OEL-Schenn Dermott-Myers I'm happy if we go with the above defence next season -- a season that we might be retooling anyways. I don't think we can trade OEL, might as well make the best use of his talent, which is on the offensive side of the game. Lockwood clearly has NHL speed, acceleration, and IQ. He is not afraid to use his body, which makes him perfect replacement for Motte on the 4th line.

Just enjoy the games. Don't stress yourself about it. Watching the games has become way more relaxing and fun since I just let the playoff off of my mind.

I think we've also given up more goals too. Boudreau is an offensive minded coach. I like his style. Hope he is back next season.

Jim Benning's main problem was that he aimed to build a playoff team, not a cup contending team. So he made shortsighted moves since 2020 that have led to the roster we have now. And I'd say he succeeded in building a playoff caliber roster... which leads to his second problem: not knowing when to move on from a coach. I think this roster that we have is better than half of the league. On a good day, it's a top 10 team; on a bad day, it's a top 20 team. Aim high and even if you don't quite get there, you will still end up high but aim low and you will end up even lower. That's what we have with Benning. He aimed for a playoff team and he got a playoff caliber team, but not a surefire playoff team. It needs major improvements in some areas in order to become an elite team (top 10 team) that can make the playoffs consistently and ultimately a contender (top 5-6 teams). And sometimes, all it takes is a lucky draw of winning the lottery. If on this roster, we can inject a player like Bedard on an ELC, that alone will turn us into an elite team. Or marquee college free agent, like Fox, wanting to sign with you. Some hard decisions pending for Allvin this summer.

For sure, everyone makes a mistake. Note that as the best player on the team, his mistakes will be more costly than, say Chiasson's. He plays against the best players, so a mistake will likely result in a goal against compared to say, Chiasson's mistake as Chiasson plays against lesser player in general. And, Miller plays 20+ minutes on a nightly basis and many of those minutes are prime minutes. At the end of the day, it's a game of execution and mistakes. You can't win if your best player makes more mistakes than other team's best players. I think with Miller, we are a playoff team but not a cup contender because he doesn't measure up well against the best players of the contending teams. That's my honest feeling at this point. I'm not bolstering any narrative, I'm just a fan, my opinion doesn't matter (no one's opinion here matters for that matter) and I have nothing of to gain (financial or otherwise) by trading Miller vs not trading Miller. My feeling is that when Petey can bring what he brought last night more consistently, we are going to be a scary team. If Miller can be re-signed at a reasonable deal to support Petey if and when Petey gets there, I would love to have him back. About 9+ mil, I'm sure it's talked about. I'd start there if I'm Miller's agent. Little naive to think that those numbers won't be talked about. Negotiation is a game. Canucks wants to bring down the number of years in the contract while not increasing the AAV while the Miller's agent will want large increase in AAV for each year decreased.

I think Miller is a great player who brings a lot of strengths, but let's not fool ourselves, he has his low IQ moments and it has cost us in the past. 9+ mil is probably what costs to re-sign him.

Pettersson. Podz should play with Petey and he will soon. Podz-Petey are great two-way players, type of players you build around. Podz even looks to be getting faster and faster as the season progresses.

Miller is a risky player indeed. But he is a bargain deal at 5.25mil and you can live with those mistakes as he puts up points and plays in all situations. But at 9+ mil, no way we can live with those mistakes. And his low IQ mistakes get magnified in the OT where there's no one to cover for the mistakes. If there is a season to try to transition, it would be next season. Trading Miller and one of Garland or Boeser wouldn't be a bad idea to improve other positions of need.

OEL showed his offensive prowess tonight. Next season, I hope to see OEL with a more defensive minded partner so that he can focus on offence. On OEL-Myers pairing, OEL is the conservative one and has to stay back to play defence while Myers goes for a skate.

Love the enthusiasm but Dallas need to $hit the bed really bad and we have to win almost all remaining games. I think the playoff race is over. Love to be wrong though and we end the season on a 12 game winning streak and Dallas to fail... Dallas just needs to win 6 of 13 games remaining to get to 95 points. Dallas has won 10 games in the OT and 4 games in the SO. They are 14-3 in the OT/SO. In comparison, we are 6-10. That's 8 points difference. Us winning a few more in OT/SO and them losing a few would have made things more interesting. All those OT points we blew by playing low IQ hockey in the OT is definitely costing us. All I want is for us to continue to play hard and fast like we did tonight regardless of the playoffs.

Gaining the zone with OEL as PPQB is harder compared to with QH as the PPQB. But once in the zone, OEL is much more threatening. The vision, decision making, and that sneaky wrister. The first line was so crisp at moving the puck, reminded me of Miller's first season here when the Lotto line ran the show.

Tonight, we are going to get our first win against the Vegas Golden Knights. 5-0 Canucks.

Not disagreeing that his competition got a little easier, from guys like Bourque, Coffey, Leetch to Niedermayer and Pronger. But that doesn't matter. You are comparing players across different generation/era to argue that Lidstrom is not generational. The game in the 80's and 90's suited to guys like Leetch and Coffey (I'm leaving Bourque out because I think we agree that he is probably the better than Lidstrom in any era). It sure seems like those guys were way better than Lidstrom in the 90's and they were older so they hit their primes in the 90's, whereas Lidstrom just entered the league and perhaps the way the game was played didn't suit him as well as it did Coffeey and Leetch. The game changes roughly around every 10 years as the rules change and the coaching strategy evolves. The era that Lidstrom played in, Lidstrom was the best defenceman. Lidstrom dominated his era, which started around the end of the 90's to the end of 2000's. Unfortunately, the other guys you mentioned didn't play in that era (or at least weren't in their primes) so we will never know. That's why it doesn't make sense to say a player is not generational because he is worse than another player from previous generation.

Good point. Matthews is on trajectory to be the perenniel 50-60 goal scorer, which would put him on similar category as Ovi but I sure hope he doesn't get there.