YesWeCanNux Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 I'm not overly thrilled with a lot of the moves we are making but overall I like the direction we are heading in. It's hard the gauge our off season when teams around us are making bold moves but if you look at OUR direction in the past few years it looks positive with regards to prospects. It's not all that long ago that we had Schroeder and Jensen pencilled into line ups and widely considered them our up and coming core. We went years with top picks of: 2007- White, Ellington 2008- hogdson sauve 2009- Schroeder, Rodin, connauton 2010- McNally (4th round) 2011-Jensen, honzik, Grenier Since that we have 2012- Guance, Hutton 2013- Horvat, Shinkaruk, Cassels, Subban 2014-Virtanen, McCann, demko 2015- Boeser, Brisebois And baertschi and vey through trade. We criticized management for years for trading away picks, not drafting well and for not letting players develop and now we are starting to get that. We seem to be in a much more Detroit like mind set were players will develope and work their way through solid competition on to the team. I could potentially see several of the 2012 and on players making the team individually but each will have to fight through tough competition to get there. (save Horvat who, by all accounts, is garenteed a roster spot.) Keeping these vets on the team only adds to that depth and competition and if by chance a rookie takes that job, it is earned AND we likely get an additional asset through trade. This is not to say all of our recent picks will become stars or even regular NHLers but we finally have some legitimate competition amongst our prospects. This also saves us from burning first contract years on players that are not ready to make a significant contribution to the team. If say next year we have 3 or 4 players legitimately ready to make that jump we can use those dollars saved on bringing in those additional pieces needed to truly contend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peaches Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Our drafting has definitely improved these past few years, even dating back to Gillis' last couple where he snagged us Hutton, Subban, Corrado, Grenier, Cederholm late. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rawkdrummer Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 2007-2011, those five years of no drafting results are what is killing us now. I'm good with the drafting the last few years but we're still years away from seeing any dramatic improvement. Wasting any young talent we've recently obtained to press for a playoff spot now is counterproductive. Lack and Kassian fall into that category especially considering thier ridiculously low return, just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THERETOOL Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 guys like virtanen cassels horvat and corrado can help this year .. I think subban will take another year to be ready .. his size makes him a bit of a defensive liability . think hell be good though when he arrives though.. we dont look too bad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaintPatrick33 Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Great drafting the past 3 years, I wonder when they will get to prove their worth? Or maybe they get traded soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puckdontlie Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 The rebuild started last year but most people don't realize it. People still have the Gillis mindset.. put all your eggs in one basket for one young guy a year (ie: Hodgson, Kassian, Schroeder) and play moneyball to hope that mediocre players overachieve like Ebbett, Glass, Weise, Dalpe, Alberts, Rome, Booth, Dalpe, etc. We already have more young guys coming into the lineup than we have for years... and the next year there will be even more plus cap space, plus trade value of redundant vets. Yes, individual returns now may not be great but other indirect consequences like freeing up cap space and roster spots for young guys who will one day be upgrades is the long term benefit. Once those days come those bad contracts for Booth, Sbisa, etc. will disappear. Be in it for the long game. In a few years no one will care about an extra pick for Kassian, Lack, etc. We will be in a position to make our own trades for legit game changers like Dougie Hamilton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YesWeCanNux Posted July 2, 2015 Author Share Posted July 2, 2015 Wasting any young talent we've recently obtained to press for a playoff spot now is counterproductive. Lack and Kassian fall into that category, just my opinion. Miller was and is our best chance to win now. He is the best of our 3 goalies. I admit he is older and it seems easiest to trade away the older players for younger players given where we are sitting as a team but... 1- You can't sign a guy and promise him the world and a year later trade him away. That's not how you attract free agents in the offseason. It was widely talked about how miller had a good chance signing with us because his wife is an actress and he was looking for a team on the west coast. 2- lack had 1 year left at a low salary. Next year we would be looking at paying him at VERY least 3 million a year to stay with the team. That would put us at a minimum of 9 million a year in net which is very poor cap management in my opinion. 3- I know miller is old but markstrom is not far removed from being considered a VERY good prospect. The Luongo to Florida trade didn't happen for a long time because I think Florida was very high on him at the time. He proved what he could be this year in the AHL and may be heading in the right direction now. We also have Demko, who was considered the best goalie in his draft, coming up through the system. You typically want a solid started a solid backup and someone coming up through the system which is what we have currently. Having 2 "starting" goalies looks good on paper but as Canuck history has shown it hardly works out ideal. 4- Lack was loved by fans but didn't seem to have the faith of management or coaches. Miller was signed for a reason. Lack already had 41 games under his belt when we decided we needed a more established goalie. Lack also got yanked as soon as miller was considered healthy or possibly before miller was even 100%. I hate the return we got for lack but teams weren't willing to pay more. We saw deals of higher value before AND after the lack deal. A player is only worth what other teams are willing to pay for him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavelsElbow Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 I honestly can't wait for when these young guys start coming up! Its a long way off for sure, but its still exciting! Better to have begun to figure out our drafting sooner rather than later. This "rebuild" has been a couple years late but hey thats sports. We'll be good again! Every team in every league goes through these periods! We were lucky to have such an awesome team for as long as we did! Wish all the rookies the best! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesB Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 2007-2011, those five years of no drafting results are what is killing us now. I'm good with the drafting the last few years but we're still years away from seeing any dramatic improvement. Wasting any young talent we've recently obtained to press for a playoff spot now is counterproductive. Lack and Kassian fall into that category especially considering thier ridiculously low return, just my opinion. I had some similar analysis to the OP in another thread and claimed that the 2013 draft was easily better than the previous 4 years combined and maybe better than the previous 5 or 6. The 2014 draft could turn out even better. The good news is that 2013 and 2014 were very good draft years. The bad news is that the previous 6 years were terrible. Too early to say much about 2015. As we only had one pick in the first two rounds it cannot be as good as 2013 or 2014. But if we include Baertschi and Pedan, who were obtained with picks, 2015 could turn out as good as 2014. (I am not counting Vey, who was obtained for the pick obtained by trading Garrison.) So things have improved a lot. But we still need a high end 1D to be the defensive leader that pretty much every Stanley Cup winner has (Keith, Doughty, Chara, Lidstrom, etc). And it would help to have a high end 1C to replace Henrik. Both those foundational pieces are very hard if not impossible to get without very high draft picks or having a lot of assets than can be traded (as Calgary did to get Hamilton). So we still need a full tank in 2015-16 and we need to trade rentals for picks at the deadline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monteeun Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Things aren't as bad as ppl make it out to be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil_314 Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Things aren't as bad as ppl make it out to be Meanwhile, on CDC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeltaSwede Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Been pushing this point in other threads. For some reason, some peoples opinions on here have completely 180'd and suddenly we are supposed to be signing over paid veterans in free agenzy to somehow justify the continous failed attempts at winning a cup with this OLD core. Just because we are in a rebuild (management don't like to use that word - but it is so freaking obvious) doesn't mean we can just gift roster spots to prospects. It is absolutely crucial to only let these guys onto the NHL roster when they are ready for it and not rush them. That is not the way I want this team developing there players. Bo is a perfect example of this, he was given a chance to make the team, but he still had to earn the confidence of his coach. It seemed to have worked out really well for Bo and the Canucks. Bo is just as mature as a 25 year old, not all of our prospects will be and will require more time in Utica. We are so lucky to have Utica as an organization so why not use it to develop our young guys under a VERY competent coach in Travis Green who has been doing wonders with the development of these guys. You need to EARN an NHL roster spot, it is the best ice hockey league in the world after all. Nobody should feel entitled to an automatic spot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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