-
Posts
11,265 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Gallery
Everything posted by Crabcakes
-
Ok, I looked it up. It's an unwritten rule that the head coach of the Habs must speak French. What I said was about the importance of communication with the fans. What Molson is talking about is the burden placed upon the GM. In future I guess he will have a President to deal with the media rather than the GM which sounds like a good idea to me. It sounds like Aquilini is thinking along the same lines
-
I think there's more to Benning's lack of communication than just with the media. He failed to communicate with players who he lost to free agency (Tanev and Toffoli among others) and the scuttlebutt was that he and Weisbrod had isolated themselves from the rest of the management group and were making decisions on their own so there was a failure to communicate within management. Consensus among a larger group always results in better decisions and I think there was a bushel full of questionable ones made in the last 2 years. Communication is really important and when it isn't coming, the media in a demanding market like Vancouver start demanding more. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first one to call them jackals and they are, but if the GM is too busy and doesn't have the time, he needs to have a spokesperson. To be fair, I think especially since lower revenues in the covid era, the front office has been overly lean. This lesson I think (hope) is not lost on Aquilini since he has hired a President this time around. They have always understood this in Montreal because they have always had a top executive who is French speaking so that he can communicate with the fans directly without the need for a translator.
-
Me too. I think it's the lack of communication coming from the club. That's on Benning. When odd decisions were made, I wondered if that was because of the hand of ownership. Maybe not. I especially hated it when Green had to field questions better answered by the GM. When Benning came out a month ago with a presser after meeting with Aquilini, and he had no answers, one has to wonder if the presser was at the insistence of the owner. Benning was a dead man walking at that point.
-
I don't think that it was so much the destruction of the prospect pool than just not adding to it as players got old enough to be evaluated and vetted. Benning felt that he had his core and it was no longer necessary to rely on making 1st round picks as using them as assets to round out the line up. That is the philosophy anyhow. If you look at Rutherford's drafting record with Pittsburgh, he only had a 1st round pick in 2 of 8 years but they were challenging for cups all those years. The criticism of Benning comes from, ok, you've started trading top draft picks to round out the line up but look, there are gaping holes on the D-corps and the D is much worse than it was 2 years ago. A 1st for Miller is hard to criticize. A 1st + for OEL and Garland again is hard to criticize but there are other factors that necessitated this move. The last good drafting year was 2019 when they drafted Podkolzin and Hoglander. In 2020, Judd Brackett was let go on May 29, just before the draft that saw no 1st or 2nd round picks and so far, no likely prospects. 2021 we see Klimovich in the 2nd round who looks promising. But I agree, there have always always always got to be drafted players coming up thru the system. For me, it's the dismantling of the D corps that really bites. Letting useful players slide for nothing. This team would be way better if Tanev were still here. There may have always been issues but not like today. 2019-20 2021-22 Edler Tanev Hughes Hamonic Hughes Myers OEL Myers Benn Stecher Hunt Poolman / Burroughs / Schenn Hughes and OEL are fine and bona fide top 4 D but are the rest full time top 4? Probably not. And the other issue has always been the overpayment of Myers. There is 3 to 3.5 Mil of wasted cap space there. Benning had been searching for a top 4 RHD for a long time and came up empty. It wasn't Gudbranson, Myers or Hamonic. They can do ok with 3 bona fide top 4 D (like they had 2 years ago) and a good 3rd pair guy like Hamonic but if you have natural 3rd pair guys playing on the top pair no matter how good his partner is, you've got problems. I think that it is job 1 for Rutherford to fix and it's not going to come cheap. But a lot of the players seem to do well on other teams because they are a good fit in terms of skill set and culture. Remember what a poor fit Hansen was in San Jose? This seems to be lost on Benning. The good news is that Benning is watching the games on TV like the rest of us, and wondering why his team was performing so poorly.
-
The media has changed a lot over the last number of years. Gone is job security. Gone is the value of a Journalism degree. It has become a popularity contest that is fickle as hell and some of the best sources are guys who have started Youtube channels. So when the media is criticized, they react with fear. It's quite funny because they have to embrace technology and perform on a daily basis. What I like is that I can pick and choose who I listen to and who I follow.
-
Cue the conspiracy theories. Brian Burke plays a "nudging" role in the signing of Rutherford in Vancouver. And what is more, don't be surprised if there isn't a deal between Pittsburgh and Vancouver...... puhleeze! Rutherford knows Pitts pretty well. He used to run the team. I dare say, he even has friends on staff there. It's not only likely but probable that some kind of a deal will be made between the two team in the next year. Does Aquilini really need Burke to tell him that Rutherford would be a good signing? Look, Bennings the drafter and has drafted a core that Rutherford can work with. Rutherford is a deal maker (not much of a drafter tbh) but that's not what the Canucks need right now. They need a deal maker to flesh out the core and turn this team into a winner. Nothing to see here. Captain Obvious strikes again.
-
You talk like a GM. This is what Rutherford is going to look at I don't know how long Rutherford will take to evaluate, he is certainly not wasting any time punting the old management team presumably to make room for his own team. I imagine some time after Christmas, we may see some line up changes. There are plenty of good pieces but there are clearly some holes in the line up and also wasted cap space. When you draft BPA like Benning has (most of the time), there is a danger that you'll have to make some trades of good assets in order to balance the line up. This has to be job 1 doesn't it? Steamer was talking about being harder to play against. Do we see some tweaks along these lines? As well as shedding some wasted cap? But what they're really talking about lately is culture culture culture. Exciting times.
-
[Waivers] Scott Harrington, Brendan Perlini
Crabcakes replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Trades, Rumours, Signings
^^^This. Smyl said that they're taking 2 weeks to evaluate who they have already and how they're fitting in with the new coach and systems. Then they'll be deciding what to do with the roster if anything. FWIW Aquilini likes to do a mid season review every Christmas break -
[Report] Canucks fire Jim Benning, name Stan Smyl as interim GM
Crabcakes replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Canucks Talk
I've never heard Smyl mentioned as a possible GM. Having said that, I'm sure he can keep a chair warm as well as the next guy. I think it's going to be a collaborative effort and there should be a hire before the draft -
[Report] Canucks fire Jim Benning, name Stan Smyl as interim GM
Crabcakes replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Canucks Talk
I have no trust in the owner and hope that they hire a head of hockey ops that will not cave to the caprices of ownership the way that Benning has done. They need somebody strong to lead this team and do things the right way. We in Van had doubts about Holland and look, that dumpster fire, in 4 years is looking pretty good with essentially the same core -
[Report] Canucks fire Jim Benning, name Stan Smyl as interim GM
Crabcakes replied to -Vintage Canuck-'s topic in Canucks Talk
Ya, and you should be worried about that Not that I'm sad about what happened at all but the fans called for change and got it. That's the sign of a weak owner -
I hope he doesn't rush to hire a GM or whoever is going to run hockey ops. I just watched the Dahliwal clip on twitter and according to him this has been brewing for at least a month. They need to do things right. The need a guy like Holland who isn't going to cave to the owner or the old boys club. Benning probably knows what he needed to do but he just bent over for the owner and this is what we get. Spinning our wheels for 7 years. You can't re-tool around 33 year old players and expect to get anywhere. That's how old the Sedins were in 2014 and in a couple of years they were past it. The owner doesn't know anything. He is too close to the team. You need somebody who isn't a fan to run the show The good news is they already have a core and as long as they don't frack it up, they should be ok in a couple of years