vcrguy Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Off to a flying start and then nothing for a lonnnnnnnnng time. I've never played pro sports, but I've played competitive sports my whole life. When the scoring streak is the blip and the non-scoring streak is the norm, that's the norm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shazzam Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Needs better wingers, but he needs to be better himself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warhippy Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Well this should be interesting to come back and read up on. For what it's worth. Small sample size hard to tell when Higgins is his frigging line mate but hey. We traded Kesler for him so i am sure that the ensuing comments will be fun to read Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldnews Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Ahaha, vcrguy is back and he's par for the course. You make the best threads vcrguy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vcrguy Posted January 1, 2015 Author Share Posted January 1, 2015 Needs better wingers, but he needs to be better himself The problem is, if I had to choose one, I'd keep Higgins. He's way more consistent and of course, like most Canucks, has a NTC. Thanks MG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ActiveDouble Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Well. Higgins is a third liner at best. Hansen is not skilled enough to be a second liner. He's more of a third line checker. Vey is too young and he's inconsistent. Kassian has not proved himself that he belongs on the second line. Burrows is actually decent. But he can go streaky at times. I've been saying it even before Gillis was fired. We need another top 6 second line winger. Especially after now getting rid of the cancer. Cancer was our goal scorer for many years on the second line. Now, we have none. If we really want to make the playoffs we really need to find more players like Cancer, minus the cancer attitude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2SKATES1STICK Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 on pace for 50, without the benefit of effective pp time. he's paid less than half of burrow's salary. he has the most even strength points on the team. more than ovechkin, datsyuk, kesler he's not getting scored against, playing top lines. he has tweener wingers. i'd say he's acquitting himself well, given his usage and cap-hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ActiveDouble Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 on pace for 50, without the benefit of effective pp time. he's paid less than half of burrow's salary. he has the most even strength points on the team. he's not getting scored against, playing top lines. he has tweener wingers. i'd say he's acquitting himself well, given his usage and cap-hit. Are they all legitmate second liners other than Higgins? NO. Higgins is a second liner. But on a playoff team, he's a definitely a 3rd liner that can replace an injured top 6. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N7Nucks Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 We are littered with tweeners throughout our line up. Excluding our top line. Bones is the centre version of Higgins in my books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junkyard Dog Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Lets not compare old Canucks with new ones. There is no point. Raymond and Bonino are different players that play different positions by the way. Fun fact: Bonino leads all Canucks in takeaways and all Canuck forwards in shot blocks by a wide margin. Bonino's faceoffs have vastly improved since the start of the season as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathew Barzal Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 A solid third line PP specialist being forced to play outside his comfort zone. What else is new? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2SKATES1STICK Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 on pace for 50, without the benefit of effective pp time. he's paid less than half of burrow's salary. he has the most even strength points on the team. more than ovechkin, datsyuk, kesler he's not getting scored against, playing top lines. he has tweener wingers. i'd say he's acquitting himself well, given his usage and cap-hit. Are they all legitmate second liners other than Higgins? NO. Higgins is a second liner. But on a playoff team, he's a definitely a 3rd liner that can replace an injured top 6. wtf are you on about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormriders Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Lets not compare old Canucks with new ones. There is no point. Raymond and Bonino are different players that play different positions by the way. Fun fact: Bonino leads all Canucks in takeaways and all Canuck forwards in shot blocks by a wide margin. Bonino's faceoffs have vastly improved since the start of the season as well.Didn't check out all your 'facts' but your comment 'Bonino's faceoffs have vastly improved since the start of the season as well.' is not really true. In his past 12 games he has had 4 games over 50% in faceoffs which is 33% of the games. In his first 23 games he had 8 games where he was over 50% or 35% of them. So he is about the same, certainly not 'vastly improved'.Also in these same last 12 games he has a total of one goal and one assist for a total of 2 points and is a -7. So he's not been good on the dot, can't keep the other line from scoring, and can't put up points. In his first 23 games he had 19 points, almost a point a game, and we were all excited with him putting up decent points and seeing an outstanding snapshot, but that now just looks like a hot start and he has to be a lot better than he is playing now.Keeping with the last 12 game theme, Bonino does have the highest for forwards in blocked shots with 16, but he gets a lot of playing time including penalty, and I suspect a lot are from there [still very high], but his take aways is lower than Hansen, Richardson, and Vrbata and no better than several others. I did go back to the beginning of the season for take aways out of curiosity, and while he had the most, it is lower than Hansen's based on ice time [lets remember he has the third highest ice time on the team so more opportunities for all of this, so all his numbers should be higher].No team can be a contender with their second line centre with these type of stats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaudette Celly Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Would not be surprised if he's playing injured. Too much of a drop-off in play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamJamIam Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Aside from faceoffs, he's become pretty damn good at everyone people were concerned about when we traded away Kesler. We tend to forget that Bonino is still developing, which is a testament to his steady play. But he only just changed from his "call up" jersey number a year ago, when he earned a roster spot on Anaheim. He's continuing to improve and a quick look at his stats show that he's actually doing a bang up job with his deployment. I had no idea before I looked just now but Bonino is 3rd on the team in D zone start %. He's (barely) behind Richardson although (again, something I never would have guessed before looking) Sbisa leads the team in that respect by a wide margin. Not only that, he is 2nd on the team in driving the play from DZ to OZ, behind only Alex Burrows. His even strength production is actually very good because of how much time he spend on the PK. But most impressively, he plays against the hardest competition of anyone on the team. He might end up with less than 20 goals this season but he has shown that he is an absolute steal at 1.9M per year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormriders Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Aside from faceoffs, he's become pretty damn good at everyone people were concerned about when we traded away Kesler. We tend to forget that Bonino is still developing, which is a testament to his steady play. But he only just changed from his "call up" jersey number a year ago, when he earned a roster spot on Anaheim. He's continuing to improve and a quick look at his stats show that he's actually doing a bang up job with his deployment. I had no idea before I looked just now but Bonino is 3rd on the team in D zone start %. He's (barely) behind Richardson although (again, something I never would have guessed before looking) Sbisa leads the team in that respect by a wide margin. Not only that, he is 2nd on the team in driving the play from DZ to OZ, behind only Alex Burrows. His even strength production is actually very good because of how much time he spend on the PK. But most impressively, he plays against the hardest competition of anyone on the team. He might end up with less than 20 goals this season but he has shown that he is an absolute steal at 1.9M per year.While that may be true, it doesn't make him a second line centre now, although maybe some day with improvement. He has tailed off badly in the past 12 games, and our team needs a strong 2nd line centre to both put up points and take some pressure off the 1st line. He might be well priced at 1.9M, but he is not playing like the guy we need right now, and that was a concern for many of us at the beginning of the season - see threads questioning if he is really a 2nd line centre.I agree with Swift that he may be playing injured, ... hopefully that's it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nuxfanabroad Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I hope Bones is just going through a rough patch. Early on, he sniped a few beauties. Positive side of the ledger, last 20(or so) Richardson sure has been prominent. Hope we keep him & Matthias. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bp79 Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 on pace for 50, without the benefit of effective pp time. he's paid less than half of burrow's salary. he has the most even strength points on the team. more than ovechkin, datsyuk, kesler he's not getting scored against, playing top lines. he has tweener wingers. i'd say he's acquitting himself well, given his usage and cap-hit. agreed I thunk the problem is higgens and the revolving door that is the other wing. bones is a pass first centre i really hope they try him and kass along with vey for at least 10 games give them time to learn off each other. going forward I see higgi as the odd one out id trade him sooner then later maybe to the bruins or to the pens. a package of higgi and a 2nd in 2016 would that be enough for krug? or higgi for depres or harrington from the pens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyhee Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 agreed I thunk the problem is higgens and the revolving door that is the other wing. bones is a pass first centre i really hope they try him and kass along with vey for at least 10 games give them time to learn off each other. going forward I see higgi as the odd one out id trade him sooner then later maybe to the bruins or to the pens. a package of higgi and a 2nd in 2016 would that be enough for krug? or higgi for depres or harrington from the pens? Fascinating. This is the first time I remember anyone suggesting playing Vey ahead of Higgins, and it was completely against my own impressions of their play. It sent me looking at stats to see if I was hallucinating in thinking Higgins was playing way, way better than Vey. Vey, of course, has had 1st unit pp time, Higgins has been on the 2nd unit pp which has accomplished almost nothing. Vey had 4 g and 1 ast on the pp, Higgins 1 g. At situations other than pp, Higgins has 5 g/10 ast for 15 pts, Vey 2g 7 ast for 9 pts. From hockey-reference.com: Higgins is + 6. Vey is -1. From stats.hockeyanalysis.com as of December 31: At 5 on 5 Higgins in 419 minutes of ice time has 5 g + 9 ast for 14 pts, or 2.0 pts per 60 minutes. Vey in 358 min 13 sec of ice time has 1 g + 7 ast for 8 pts, or 1.34 pts per 60 minutes. 5 on 5 individual corsi: Higgins is at 101, 3rd among Canucks forwards behind Vrbata and Daniel and ahead of his linemates Bonino (95) and Burrows (67.) Vey has bounced between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines, has an individual corsi of 41 at 5 on 5, worst on the team. (Those who dislike advanced stats may get some comfort from the fact that Henrik does poorly here as well. otoh, after the adjustments for teammates and opponents in puckanalytics.com Henrik has good stats, Higgins very good stats, Vey has poor stats.) From puckanalytics.com: Corsi for per 60 min relative to teammates (CF60RELTM) Higgins leads the team's forwards with + 11.06. Vey is -3.12. Corsi against per 60 min relative to teammates (CA60RELTM-here the lower figure is better) Higgins is at -1.27, good but not among the team leaders. Vey is at a poorer + 2.09, not good but not among the team's worst. Vey gets to start more often in the offensive zone-35.4% to 31.3 %. Higgins has faced slightly more difficult opponents-his OppCF% is 50.0 compared with 49.3 for Vey. ______________ The advanced stats are complicated and of course all of the stats are subject to the issue that the sample size is still fairly small. That being said, it is difficult to find any stat where at even strength Vey isn't worse than Higgins. Higgins scores more, has a better +/- (the least meaningful stat I've mentioned imo because the sample size isn't large enough to minimize the luck factor), is on the ice for more shots for and fewer against while facing slightly more difficult opposition and starting less often in the offensive zone. While I'm concerned that the sample size is small for the stats, they are consistent with what I've seen from most newspaper articles, blog posts and even posts on this forum which have not suggested that Vey has played well generally outside of the power play. They're also consistent with Vey being a candidate to be a healthy scratch (often spoken about, and having been scratched one game this season which hasn't happened to Higgins) and not seeing any ice time in the last 9 minutes of the win against San Jose the other night. Sorry to say, both on my observations and the stats, I can't see any reason to be sitting Higgins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DollarAndADream Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 He's doing all of the right things on the ice, and replacing Kesler pretty damn well. It's not like he has any true 2nd line wingers either. Bonino struggled to get points for awhile, but basically the whole team did in that same stretch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.