Canucks’ four biggest mistakes of the past year

[Kevin Biestra]

Funny thing is I recall it was speculated that Gillis wanted Sutter in exchange for coho. Carolina didn't budge so he moved on to kassian. Would have been nice to have had Sutter all along.

Yep. That would leave us with Bonino as the league's best 4th line centre, hands down.

[Crabcakes]

He wasn't near as bad as you're making him out to be.IMO..Before he screwed up his back,he looked pretty good with the Sedins (and they looked pretty happy he was there)...Kassian scored some key goals in their last eastern roadswing....Lets wait until next season,then we'll talk.....If ZK starts popping in goals with the Habs,brace yourself for a whole lot of whining on these boards.

I will add that I am pro Benning...but unlike some folks on these boards....I certainly do not support everything he done 100%,...not a chance..

Well maybe you're right. I could be exaggerating to make a point. If a player is uncoachable what can you do?

[shiznak]

It's not overrated because look at what happened to the Oilers without mentoring…you can't just throw these young players out to the wolves on their own. Also, with that logic…would Taylor Pyatt have been a good candidate to pass on his abilities to a young and up coming player because he played with the Sedins? Yeah, no.

Learning from the best is a pretty simple formula.

The Oilers had plenty of veteran mentors over the years. Smyth, Horcoff, Hemsky, Khabibulin, Belanger, Ference. Their problems, weren't lack of leadership, but rather poor coaching, goaltending, and defense.

[Baggins]

This is Bennings first NTC as a Canuck. What do you all think that means?

Both Miller and Vrbata have ntc's. Both limited but ntc's nonetheless.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

The Oilers had plenty of veteran mentors over the years. Smyth, Horcoff, Hemsky, Khabibulin, Belanger, Ference. Their problems, weren't lack of leadership, but rather poor coaching, goaltending, and defense.

. Zero of those players could lead by example. Oilers had 18 year old as the most important pieces on there team. Compare that to the flames were Gio is captian and there hardest working/ best player. Something similar to the sedins.

[shiznak]

. Zero of those players could lead by example. Oilers had 18 year old as the most important pieces on there team. Compare that to the flames were Gio is captian and there hardest working/ best player. Something similar to the sedins.

Beside Belanger, all of those player have either won a Cup or made it to the finals. Horcoff was a NHLPA representative for the Oilers and was chosen by the committee to find a new executive director for the PA.

[BI3KSA-]

I see Bennings plan, but feel we need to trade atleast 1 or 2 more vets before the season starts.

Virtanen, Kenins, Grenier, should be ready to play with the team this season.

I feel we should add a few of them this season and a couple next season, instead of adding 4 or 5 next season.

Atleast 1 of Cassels, Shink, McCann, Gaunce will be ready next season.

Hopefully Higgins is traded and maybe Hansen.. Don't want to see Hansen go, but there's really no one else to move..

Management is waiting to see if those rooks actually are ready before they trade vets. Theyve said before theyll make room if those players are ready. Thats the right move, not moving vets before we even know if any rooks are ready to take their place.

[coryberg]

Yep. That would leave us with Bonino as the league's best 4th line centre, hands down.

No no. We would have got etem,Theodore and #10 for Kesler instead. Haven't you followed the cdc armchair GM discussion?

[coryberg]

. Zero of those players could lead by example. Oilers had 18 year old as the most important pieces on there team. Compare that to the flames were Gio is captian and there hardest working/ best player. Something similar to the sedins.

Ryan Smyth couldn't lead by example? No further questions your honour.

[PowerAids]

I find it funny how so many of the hockey "experts" in the media say they have no idea what JB is doing and every move is so perplexing.

If you put each trade he's made in a vacuum, none of them are a win on a pure value scale. What he has done though is bring in players that are competitive and play the same way every shift, and shipped out players that were prone to inconsistency. With the way WD like's to roll the lines, it makes a lot of sense to have 4 lines that will all play with high energy/intensity and will attack other teams in waves and constantly forecheck. I actually think it is shaping up to be an exciting style of play for next year.

As far as the rebuild goes, look at both the amount of 1 year deals that are expiring after this year and our current prospect pool. Right now we have a lot of good young prospects, but pretty much every one has a question mark about whether they are ready or not, there's no point blowing up a team if you don't have the young players that are definitely ready to step up.

I think next year will be the true youth movement for the team. Cassels, Gaunce, Virtanen, Shinkaruk, McCann, Grenier, Subban, Hutton etc. we will have tons of good players who will have a year or 2 of seasoning in the AHL (or completed their Junior careers) and be much more prepared to make the jump.

[Drakrami]

I find it funny how so many of the hockey "experts" in the media say they have no idea what JB is doing and every move is so perplexing.

If you put each trade he's made in a vacuum, none of them are a win on a pure value scale. What he has done though is bring in players that are competitive and play the same way every shift, and shipped out players that were prone to inconsistency. With the way WD like's to roll the lines, it makes a lot of sense to have 4 lines that will all play with high energy/intensity and will attack other teams in waves and constantly forecheck. I actually think it is shaping up to be an exciting style of play for next year.

As far as the rebuild goes, look at both the amount of 1 year deals that are expiring after this year and our current prospect pool. Right now we have a lot of good young prospects, but pretty much every one has a question mark about whether they are ready or not, there's no point blowing up a team if you don't have the young players that are definitely ready to step up.

I think next year will be the true youth movement for the team. Cassels, Gaunce, Virtanen, Shinkaruk, McCann, Grenier, Subban, Hutton etc. we will have tons of good players who will have a year or 2 of seasoning in the AHL (or completed their Junior careers) and be much more prepared to make the jump.

You mean Hansen/Higgins/Burrows/Dorsett/Bonino/Horvat? Funny we already have what you described.

[puckdontlie]

I'm a fan of the rebuild on the fly but I can't say Edmonton's tanking model hasn't worked. They could still become a cup dynasty after a decade of futility. Chicago and LA were mismanaged for 6+ years before they started to breakthrough and contend.

I hate seeing failure being rewarded though. Seems like in a salary cap system the draft is more critical than ever yet it rewards failure. I think the salary cap can stay but the draft should be eliminated. Every team should have have to recruit and sign all players as free agents like they do in European football. But with a salary cap and roster limits in place, it limits the amount of stockpiling but will reward good management. The best players gravitate towards winners, as they should.

In a logical world, rebuild on the fly should be rewarded more than inept management. Inept management allows the best talent goes to the crappiest teams who stay crappy and brings down the quality of the whole league.

[Fanuck]

I'm a fan of the rebuild on the fly but I can't say Edmonton's tanking model hasn't worked. They could still become a cup dynasty after a decade of futility. Chicago and LA were mismanaged for 6+ years before they started to breakthrough and contend.

I hate seeing failure being rewarded though. Seems like in a salary cap system the draft is more critical than ever yet it rewards failure. I think the salary cap can stay but the draft should be eliminated. Every team should have have to recruit and sign all players as free agents like they do in European football. But with a salary cap and roster limits in place, it limits the amount of stockpiling but will reward good management. The best players gravitate towards winners, as they should.

In a logical world, rebuild on the fly should be rewarded more than inept management. Inept management allows the best talent goes to the crappiest teams who stay crappy and brings down the quality of the whole league.

The NHL does not need to be like Euro football in any way imo. They were on the right track with caps but screwed themselves when they allowed their own circumventing of the cap with buyouts. Idiots,making idiotic decisions then making up idiotic fixes for said idiotic choices. If NHL gm's never have to live with and be accountable for their biggest decisions, did the owners really expect anything to change?

As for Edmonton, said cap will likely not enable them to become anything close to a dynasty let alone even win a cup. Do you really think they'll be able to have RNH,Hall,Eberle, Drais, McJesus, Nurse, Reinhard, Yakupov,etc all under contract when they are fully developed and off ELC?

[puckdontlie]

The NHL does not need to be like Euro football in any way imo. They were on the right track with caps but screwed themselves when they allowed their own circumventing of the cap with buyouts. Idiots,making idiotic decisions then making up idiotic fixes for said idiotic choices. If NHL gm's never have to live with and be accountable for their biggest decisions, did the owners really expect anything to change?

As for Edmonton, said cap will likely not enable them to become anything close to a dynasty let alone even win a cup. Do you really think they'll be able to have RNH,Hall,Eberle, Drais, McJesus, Nurse, Reinhard, Yakupov,etc all under contract when they are fully developed and off ELC?

Edmonton is holding those young players hostage. Some of those players would probably develop better on more competitive teams. That's bad for the league overall.

The leafs shouldn't be allowed to have draft picks for their idiotic decisions to sign guys like Kessel, Phaneuf and Clarkson to insane contracts. They are another team that wastes the future of young players.

I'm not saying to be like the euro football leagues that have no cap, I'm saying have no draft but keep the cap. This system would benefit a team like the Canucks who constantly make the playoffs but need pieces to get to the next level. It would be easier to bring in talented players who care about winning in a recruitment system more than a draft system.

[erkayloomeh]

It is the job of a General Manager of a hockey club to be able to sell his players well, and trade them only if they bring back good value. It doesn't entirely fall down to "market value" or what other GMs are willing to pay, Benning has a massive importance in how much our players are worth and if he can't get good return for them, he's not doing his job properly.

Look around the league - other GMs are getting far more value for similar if not worse players than our own, and that's what pisses me off. You can't tell me the likes of Talbot and Lehner are so much more superior to Eddie Lack that we should only receive a 3rd and 7th round pick for him. Martin Jones, a far more unproven goaltender, just scored a 1st round pick. Eddie Lack, a far better goalie, gets scraps. Explain that one to me.

The Kings GM (as well as Bowman in Chicago and Chiarelli at times) have been renowned for stealing deals and that's because they're fantastic GMs who know how to sell and overvalue their own players. They can negotiate FAR better than Benning, which is a big reason why their teams are constantly contenders.

I don't think this is a scouting issue from the Canucks standpoint, because a lot of players we've brought in have been fantastic in role positions for us, but instead it's a problem higher up in management at the negotiation level and we're not winning those negotiations. Benning is either folding or not selling his players well enough, and if he can't learn how to master that art, our team is going to keep slipping with these sorts of trades as we haemorrhage the value of players.

This is bang on.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

Beside Belanger, all of those player have either won a Cup or made it to the finals. Horcoff was a NHLPA representative for the Oilers and was chosen by the committee to find a new executive director for the PA.

It's hard to lead by example on the ice when the kids at 18 are better than you. Hall, RNH and Eberle were awarded first line status from their first shift in the league. They were looked upon by the team as the players to carrier the team into the playoffs. There's a difference in having older players that had been through it at one point and having a vet can still show you how to do it. Again take Gio as an example. He is the hardest worker on and off the ice. He also has the ability to be the guy the team can rely on when they need someone to step up and take control of the game.

Ryan Smyth couldn't lead by example? No further questions your honour.

Smyth was washed up by the time he went back to EDM. He was about as able to lead by example as Mike Keane was in vancouver. Working hard and leading by example are two different things.

This is leading by example. Big game and who shows up.

[Baer.]

It's hard to lead by example on the ice when the kids at 18 are better than you. Hall, RNH and Eberle were awarded first line status from their first shift in the league. They were looked upon by the team as the players to carrier the team into the playoffs. There's a difference in having older players that had been through it at one point and having a vet can still show you how to do it. Again take Gio as an example. He is the hardest worker on and off the ice. He also has the ability to be the guy the team can rely on when they need someone to step up and take control of the game.

Smyth was washed up by the time he went back to EDM. He was about as able to lead by example as Mike Keane was in vancouver. Working hard and leading by example are two different things.

This is leading by example. Big game and who shows up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEezAB_oHhM

They need to bring back that siren goal horn. Man I miss GM Place.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

I'm a fan of the rebuild on the fly but I can't say Edmonton's tanking model hasn't worked. They could still become a cup dynasty after a decade of futility. Chicago and LA were mismanaged for 6+ years before they started to breakthrough and contend.

I hate seeing failure being rewarded though. Seems like in a salary cap system the draft is more critical than ever yet it rewards failure. I think the salary cap can stay but the draft should be eliminated. Every team should have have to recruit and sign all players as free agents like they do in European football. But with a salary cap and roster limits in place, it limits the amount of stockpiling but will reward good management. The best players gravitate towards winners, as they should.

In a logical world, rebuild on the fly should be rewarded more than inept management. Inept management allows the best talent goes to the crappiest teams who stay crappy and brings down the quality of the whole league.

Those teams weren't really mismanaged. It just took them that long to finally luck out and get a player that would become the difference maker. Toews is that difference maker and they finally landed him after going through 7 of the 8 previous years without playoffs. When i say luck out. I truly mean they had horse shoes. Toews type players don't happen often, look at the 3rd overall picks, 5 years after or 5 years before and no player selected 3rd overall is even close to the toews level.

If hawks would have selected 1st Erik Jonhson, 2nd Jordan Staal, or 4th Backstrom instead in 2006, would the hawks still have 3rd cups?

[PowerAids]

You mean Hansen/Higgins/Burrows/Dorsett/Bonino/Horvat? Funny we already have what you described.

Exactly, we already had a good base of those players, except I wouldn't put Bonino in that class. Now he has added more players that play that way and fit into that style. Other than a couple of skill guys like Vrbata, Baertschi, and maybe vey and the twins, every player will skate hard get in on the forecheck and play physical.

Look at how Calgary beat us, exactly that way, coming in waves, non stop energy, and it wore us down.

Just my .02

[RUPERTKBD]

Kassian's problem was never how he played or how the Canucks supposedly wanted him to play (in your mind). It was playing ANY way consistently with a consistent effort so the coaches knew what they were going to get when they put him on the ice 9 times out of 10.

What 'style' that was was largely irrelevant.

Same thing I tried to explain all last year in Kassian threads, particularly when Vey was brought up. Kassian has all the tools to be a much better player than Vey but Vey got more minutes and opportunity. The main reason for this was Vey's consistent effort and consistent style. Even if Vey wasn't showing up on the score sheet, WD knew 9 times out of 10 what he'd get from him when he put him on the ice. Hence he knew who to match him up with (line mates and opposition) and what game situations he could trust him to play in and get a likely result. That's it.

You're making some grand drama out of something really quite simple.

Disagree, at least in part. I've admitted all along that there were consistency issues for parts of the past few seasons, but very few (if any) of Kassian's detractors has admitted that he was playing well after he was benched and returned to the lineup when Burrows was injured.

His back flared up and he never got back into the lineup, yet the team traded him anyway. That tells me that they had their mind made up about the guy and even though he had (at least partially) addressed the issues that the team had, it wasn't enough.

It may or may not be that he would have been able to continue that improved play, but we'll never know. At least, we'll never know about Vancouver. Montreal may be another story.

I was also told that "what if" wasn't a compelling argument for justifying trading Lack in the event he would be a liability on a long term deal, yet the reason for keeping Kassian seems to be the same... "what if he unleashes his skill then the Canucks will regret the trade". To me, hanging onto a player without a purpose is not a compelling argument.

It wouldn't be a compelling argument if we had gotten something back for him. People can continue to point at Prust and talk about what a great piece he is, but NHL teams generally do not give up assets for enforcers and they certainly don't throw in extra draft picks to get the deal done.

It was poor asset management, plain and simple.

The Oilers have struggled for lots of reasons. Poor goaltending and defense is just one of them. For the Oilers, it starts with poor management. Kevin Lowe.....Craig MacTavish......Dallas Eakins......etc.

What we're talking about is their lack of a strong team culture which comes from their lack of veterans. Remember when Ryan Smith was the only vet, then it was Ference. Chirelli at least has the whit to add a few others. What I said above, their culture had been stripped away and they had to re-invent themselves. It takes forever. Isn't Taylor Hall's lack of back check effort amusing. Of how about how the team was boo-ed off the ice at home. At least Canuck management gets it and they're not going to strip it down like so many fools on CDC call for.

I don't know what some of these so called sports journalists spend their time doing but they obviously don't give a whole lot of thought to what they write and the reasons why Benning does what he does. They can't or won't get past one step logic and if a plan doesn't fit with their simplistic cookie cutter formulae, then it must be crap. What gets me is that so many readers just lap it all up as gospel truth. They think that if it's written in the paper, then it comes from an expert and we must bow down to his wisdom. Most of the time, these "experts" are just tossing off a bunch of drivel just to make a deadline.

Horcoff, Hemsky, Penner, Whitney, Gilbert, Jones, Kurtis Foster, Fraser, Smid, Petry, Sutton, Nick Schultz, Gordon, Roy, Pouliot...

...all veteran players who were on the same roster as the three young guns.

People talk about a lack of veteran presence, but the reality is, it was the fact that the kids were the best players the Oil had. All three did everything that was asked of them, (granted Nuge did have some injury problems) but couldn't overcome a porous defense and mediocre goaltending.

Jesus Christ it's been one bloody season. Everyone needs time to grow into their role including the GM. No wait according to CDC we need to fire everyone. Everything sucks, every player is awful. It's sad to think that these people actually call themselves Canucks fans. We gave Gillis 5 years, we've given many player 2-3 years to prove themselves, let's just be patient (an abstract word for many) and see what happens 3 years from now. I bet all of you will have changed your tune pretty damn quick. Oh and this isn't to just single out you, but your post made a good vehicle for my mini rant. I'm just sick and tired of everyone being so damn impatient. After 1 bloody season. It boggles my mind.

Very few are suggesting anything of the sort.

However, just because we still support the Canucks' management team, it doesn't mean we agree with every move they make. It's actually quite common for NHL teams to make poor personnel decisions, so the standard lines "You don't understand the plan" and "Management disagrees with you" aren't all that compelling.

I for one like most of JB's moves, but I have an issue with the goaltending and Kassian situations and none of the commonly recycled "reasons" put forth by those who feel Benning and Linden can do no wrong has made me rethink that assessment.