Canucks Tanknation (accepting membership)

[ABNuck]

And another point...I'm not sure I'd want Matthews and his traveling media circus here anyways. Anytime in the past that Ma and Pa get too involved with their son's hockey development/promotion it goes poorly. Once a kid enters the Bantam draft I think it's time to let the pro development guys take over. I sense that mama Mathews is far too involved in her son's representation. I'll take a pass thanks anyways. I'd rather we keep plugging along, sell some salary at TD day and pick in the 2 to 7 spot...pick up some UFA's this summer, maybe offer sheet a decent RFA and go from there.

[ABNuck]

And another point...weren't we all laughing at / disgusted with Buffalo's version of this last year? Now we wanna be the laughing stock of the NHL?

[Off_The_Schneid!]

I am definitely watching the games cheering for the young guys to do well but for the team to lose

the higher the pick the better but more importantly the worse we do the more likely we are to unload dead weight at the deadline 

nothing gets said about burrows, Higgins, prust, occupying spots with zero results

i thought Hansen was an experiment on the first line but he's played every game regardless of his point production 

Tank Nation!

trade : 

vrbata, Higgins, burrows, prust, cracknell, 

hamhuis, weber

[73 Percent]

11 minutes ago, ABNuck said:

And another point...weren't we all laughing at / disgusted with Buffalo's version of this last year? Now we wanna be the laughing stock of the NHL?

Speak for yourself.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

36 minutes ago, ABNuck said:

So then who's to say we don't draft another Patrik Stefan or Pavel Brendl? Where's the guarantee? They were both highly toted players in that year.

Getting a top 5 pick is a tool for rebuilding lousy hockey clubs, but it's a tool that is given to you, not one that you go out and purchase...that would be a huge mistake. If you are relying on a top 5 pick to save your franchise then it is the equivalent of a CEO taking the company's payroll to Vegas and hoping to save the company. Any GM that builds around the draft should be fired. If you happen to get a decent player or if you fluke out with late round picks (ie/ Detroit) then good for you, nothing anybody can do to stop good fortune such as that. But the reality is you MUST build around solid established NHL players and not pin your hopes on players who haven't even played a single NHL game. Again they might turn out OK, but they might not...it's literally the definition of a gamble.

And for those who point to Chicago and LA as the reason we need that #1 guy whom we got through the draft, let's examine the facts:

CHICAGO

1997 Bounced in first round (6 gms)

1998 to 2001 Out of playoffs

2002 Bounced in first round (5gms)

2003 to 2008 Out of playoffs

So for anyone keeping score that's 2 playoff appearances in 11 years (2005 cancelled) of which they managed to win only 3 games...so A LOT of tanking had to go on before they finally landed Toews and Kane.

Draft history:

1997 1st (13 OA) Dan Cleary - Good player, helped Detroit more than Chicago

1998 1st (8 OA) Mark Bell - Who?

1999 1st (23 OA) Steve McCarthy - Who?

2000 1st (10 OA) Mikhail Yakubov - Who?

2001 1st (9 OA) Tuomo Ruutu - Pretty good player

2002 1st (21 OA) Anton Babchuk - Meh...average Dman

2003 1st (14 OA) Brent Seabrook - FINALLY a decent player worthy of a high pick!!

2004 1st (3 OA) Cam Barker - notably that prior to Kane this equalled their highest pick (same pick as Toews) so...meh.

2005 1st (7 OA) Jack Skille - Meh

2006 1st (3 OA) Captain Serious - FINALLY another good pick

2007 - 1st pick OA goes to Chicago. But who was the #1 ranked player? Kyle Turris...what if they went with the #1 ranked player instead of the #2...would they still have won any cups? What made them go with the #2 guy? If he was truly better than the #1 guy then he would have been ranked #1 not #2...kind of lucky there weren't they?

2008 - 1st (11 OA) Kyle Beach - Meh

So A LOT of crappy to average picks had to be taken before they landed Seabrook, Toews and Kane.

Scorecard: 9 seasons out of playoffs, 3 good picks in 13 years.

Is this what we are prepared to go through? I say h-e-double hockey sticks NO! Re-tool NOW! Get some players for ours and get some decent talent from a very deep UFA pool this year. I don't want multiple years of tanking and hoping to pickup a saviour through the draft.

PS...I forgot to do LA...gotta go to work...I'll do them later.

Great post, also to add in , in 2000 they also had an 11^th overall pick who they drafted Vorobiev. Again, who?

The thing I always like to point out is if you flip the 2006 & 07 years around (so that they picked 1^st overall in 06 & 3^rd overall in 07), instead of Toews and Kane, they end up with Johnson and Turris.  It just goes to show how lucky the Hawks were and how a 1^st and 3^rd overall rarely equal they level of talent of a Toews and Kane.  Same spot in drafting, two completely different outcomes.

The other thing to point out really is the Hawks are a modern day dynasty.  They really aren’t the benchmark of what high picks equal to.  There are countless teams in this league that have drafted high, that don’t have the success of the hawks. 

[mll]

By tanking Vancouver will draft high but do you really think they will be able to attract any quality UFAs?  Sure, they should be able to get a few UFAs by throwing big money at them but I doubt it's with players who chase the paycheck that you win a Cup.

Also, who to say the youngsters won't ask out - start with all NCAA players  It's speaking with his NHL teammates at the Worlds in Prague that convinced Mike Reilly to go UFA instead of signing with CBJ (source: Russo in the Star Tribune).   I thought it was revealing because it showed the mindset that players don't think they need to be loyal to the team that drafted them or that has them under contract.  If the team doesn't even show the desire to compete why waste their best years. 

 

[Shift-4]

Tanking is for losers

[Conscience]

3 minutes ago, Shift-4 said:

Tanking is for losers

If the shoe fits?

[Provost]

Here is an alternate plan to tanking that has a better chance of success and winning a Cup.

If we are out of the playoffs at the deadline let go of some of our "stale" veterans of Higgins, Burrows, Hamhuis, Vrbata, and even Miller if some contender loses their starter to injury before the deadline.  Retain salary on any expiring contract to get more assets in return (very valuable to a contending team).

Each of the next two years sign the top UFA talent available with our cap space.  Use some of our accrued assets to shore up our defensive depth.

Since you have shown the Sedins you want to win in their "window" sign them to a value contract as 2nd line players (with their fitness they will probably still be 50-70 point players) on their next contract and use the extra cap space for a couple final pieces. (say an Evander Kane who happens to be a UFA that season)

Contend for the Cup in 2018-2019

An example:

- Manage to trade away Vrbata, Burrows, and Hamhuis for picks/prospects this year

-  In the offseason swing for the fences and try to get Stamkos and Lucic

-  Trade away Horvat and McCann since you have your 3 top centres locked up for the foreseeable future, get a top pairing D under 30 in return.  There are surprisingly guys of this ilk available, and more after the season is done if you are offering great, cheap prospects.

That immediately gives you a pretty competitive team, though not a Cup favourite right away.

Lucic-Stamkos-XXX

Sedin-Sedin-Hansen

XXXX-Sutter-Virtanen

XXXX-XXXX-Dorsett

Edler-XXXX

Sbisa-Tanev

Hutton-Biega

Pedan

- In the 2017 and 2018 offseasons keep adding supplementary pieces through draft, trades, and UFA.  It is a lot easier to pick up wingers than Centres or D... since our centre position is solidified with previous moves you can find complementary players.  It is a lot easier to convince a UFA to come if he is going to get to play beside Stamkos, or even the Sedins who, if history repeats itself, will continue to be top 10 or 20 in scoring for the next couple seasons.

- 2018 and 2019 repeat the process and keep getting better.

Have a window of 2-3 years of real contention before the best players ever to wear our uniform decide to retire.

No guarantee of success this way either, but a better shot at it and you get to be a winning team during that time.  It is a lot easier to draft in the middle of the pack to get complementary pieces who are destines to fill out your bottom half.

You are also competing to win, which as I understand it, is something players seem to like.

[swizzey]

Great... Another tanking thread.

 

Though, for the first time, I am fully in for a complete tank and tradeoff of UFA's come deadline.

[Ihatetomatoes]

11 hours ago, Stanky Legs said:

As WHL mentioned, I think we need more firepower than that. It's a good start though.

For the next 2-3 years any time Horvat is mentioned as being a second line center on a Stanley cup team then you know it's a pipe dream. He'll be good but he's a few years off 

[Winter Soldier]

59 minutes ago, ABNuck said:

So then who's to say we don't draft another Patrik Stefan or Pavel Brendl? Where's the guarantee? They were both highly toted players in that year.

Getting a top 5 pick is a tool for rebuilding lousy hockey clubs, but it's a tool that is given to you, not one that you go out and purchase...that would be a huge mistake. If you are relying on a top 5 pick to save your franchise then it is the equivalent of a CEO taking the company's payroll to Vegas and hoping to save the company. Any GM that builds around the draft should be fired. If you happen to get a decent player or if you fluke out with late round picks (ie/ Detroit) then good for you, nothing anybody can do to stop good fortune such as that. But the reality is you MUST build around solid established NHL players and not pin your hopes on players who haven't even played a single NHL game. Again they might turn out OK, but they might not...it's literally the definition of a gamble.

And for those who point to Chicago and LA as the reason we need that #1 guy whom we got through the draft, let's examine the facts:

CHICAGO

1997 Bounced in first round (6 gms)

1998 to 2001 Out of playoffs

2002 Bounced in first round (5gms)

2003 to 2008 Out of playoffs

So for anyone keeping score that's 2 playoff appearances in 11 years (2005 cancelled) of which they managed to win only 3 games...so A LOT of tanking had to go on before they finally landed Toews and Kane.

Draft history:

1997 1st (13 OA) Dan Cleary - Good player, helped Detroit more than Chicago

1998 1st (8 OA) Mark Bell - Who?

1999 1st (23 OA) Steve McCarthy - Who?

2000 1st (10 OA) Mikhail Yakubov - Who?

2001 1st (9 OA) Tuomo Ruutu - Pretty good player

2002 1st (21 OA) Anton Babchuk - Meh...average Dman

2003 1st (14 OA) Brent Seabrook - FINALLY a decent player worthy of a high pick!!

2004 1st (3 OA) Cam Barker - notably that prior to Kane this equalled their highest pick (same pick as Toews) so...meh.

2005 1st (7 OA) Jack Skille - Meh

2006 1st (3 OA) Captain Serious - FINALLY another good pick

2007 - 1st pick OA goes to Chicago. But who was the #1 ranked player? Kyle Turris...what if they went with the #1 ranked player instead of the #2...would they still have won any cups? What made them go with the #2 guy? If he was truly better than the #1 guy then he would have been ranked #1 not #2...kind of lucky there weren't they?

2008 - 1st (11 OA) Kyle Beach - Meh

So A LOT of crappy to average picks had to be taken before they landed Seabrook, Toews and Kane.

Scorecard: 9 seasons out of playoffs, 3 good picks in 13 years.

Is this what we are prepared to go through? I say h-e-double hockey sticks NO! Re-tool NOW! Get some players for ours and get some decent talent from a very deep UFA pool this year. I don't want multiple years of tanking and hoping to pickup a saviour through the draft.

PS...I forgot to do LA...gotta go to work...I'll do them later.

Love this post. People will ignore it as they tend to do because of all the cups they won. Cups that were largely won by people who weren't drafted top ten. Toews and Kane could have ended up like Crosby and Malkin, franchise players who lack the support staff needed to win the war in the playoffs. I'm sure Pens fans are thrilled that they're pissing away prime years of two superstars.

Exceptional status card holder John Tavares has been in the league for seven years and has yet to win a single playoff series despite the Islanders drafting fairly decently the last few years. Do people seriously believe that we'll only have to be bottom of the league for a few years before we're magically on the upswing again? That Oilers and Flames fans don't actually like missing the playoffs for high draft picks? Would these same people tell their children that the best way to succeed in the world is to give up in the face of adversity and hope that a miracle fixes everything? The lines It'll be different for us, I know it! and You don't care because you aren't willing to suffer like we are! remind me of the kind of people who raised me. The ones who gave up when life got too hard and bitterly crusaded to bring down people who managed to overcome their circumstances while throwing the blame on everyone except themselves. 

Not to mention how much one has to $&!# on the history of the best Canucks teams in the name of this sad endeavour. I refuse to rewrite history to say that the 1994 team only got to the finals because Linden went second overall, or that 2011 only happened because the Sedins went second and third. How much of your own history are you willing to throw out because you've deluded yourselves?

[I.Am.Ironman]

43 minutes ago, ABNuck said:

And another point...weren't we all laughing at / disgusted with Buffalo's version of this last year? Now we wanna be the laughing stock of the NHL?

IMO Buffalo was smart. With how the draft lottery system was set up last year they guaranteed themselves a budding superstar in either Mcdavid or Eichel. Here they are on the upswing with Jack making some spectacular plays.

I think everybody is arguing based on their own interpretation of tanking. Some think of it as purposefully losing, others as just selling off assets to ice a less experienced team. The whole try hard and still lose most of the time strategy. Which I am kind of for.

The Canucks have nothing to gain from a 1st (or 2nd if we are lucky) round exit. What would be even worse is us finishing just outside playoff contention with a 2% chance at the lottery and a likely 10-13 overall pick. I think we are in danger of actually doing this if we don't sell off Vrbata etc at the trade deadline. Eventually, as previously mentioned, sbisa, miller, sutter come back and we are actually a decent team again with just enough to win most of our games but not enough to threaten any power houses.

[Stanky Legs]

35 minutes ago, Shift-4 said:

Tanking is for losers

So are we tanking now? We're like 25/30. We're definitely not winning.

[Provost]

3 minutes ago, Stanky Legs said:

So are we tanking now? We're like 25/30. We're definitely not winning.

No we aren't.  We are trying to win and failing, just like what happens to exactly half the teams in the league every game that is played.

Tanking is purposefully trying to lose when you have a chance to win.  If you trade away assets at the deadline because you are out of the playoff mix, that is not even tanking... you have already lost the season, it is just trying to salvage something and do some asset management.... not with the intention of losing like tanking is, with the intention of getting better for the next season and another run at the playoffs.

[ForsbergTheGreat]

 

33 minutes ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

IMO Buffalo was smart. With how the draft lottery system was set up last year they guaranteed themselves a budding superstar in either Mcdavid or Eichel. Here they are on the upswing with Jack making some spectacular plays.

I think everybody is arguing based on their own interpretation of tanking. Some think of it as purposefully losing, others as just selling off assets to ice a less experienced team. The whole try hard and still lose most of the time strategy. Which I am kind of for.

The Canucks have nothing to gain from a 1st (or 2nd if we are lucky) round exit. What would be even worse is us finishing just outside playoff contention with a 2% chance at the lottery and a likely 10-13 overall pick. I think we are in danger of actually doing this if we don't sell off Vrbata etc at the trade deadline. Eventually, as previously mentioned, sbisa, miller, sutter come back and we are actually a decent team again with just enough to win most of our games but not enough to threaten any power houses.

Flames had nothing to gain last year for making a playoff run….Oh wait, there 3 rookies who were all picks outside of the top 3 have just catapulted past the oilers previous 4 top 3 draft picks in development.  Now the flames have players that want to sign there and there rookies are looking that much better for it. 

People can say all they want about the winning environment but a hardworking, competitive team is the best place for youth develop.  Without that, you have a bunch of individuals that care more about points and PP minutes over putting in the effort to win a game. 

[DIBdaQUIB]

26 minutes ago, Provost said:

No we aren't.  We are trying to win and failing, just like what happens to exactly half the teams in the league every game that is played.

Tanking is purposefully trying to lose when you have a chance to win.  If you trade away assets at the deadline because you are out of the playoff mix, that is not even tanking... you have already lost the season, it is just trying to salvage something and do some asset management.... not with the intention of losing like tanking is, with the intention of getting better for the next season and another run at the playoffs.

Assuming we will continue to struggle, I hope this ^^ is what Benning does.  Even if by some miracle we are close to a playoff spot, I hope Benning makes moves for the long-term benefit of the franchise over a wish and a prayer for a brief playoff stint.

[Winter Soldier]

Just now, DIBdaQUIB said:

Assuming we will continue to struggle, I hope this ^^ is what Benning does.  Even if by some miracle we are close to a playoff spot, I hope Benning makes moves for the long-term benefit of the franchise over a wish and a prayer for a brief playoff stint.

You aren't really paying attention, are you?

10 minutes ago, ForsbergTheGreat said:

Flames had nothing to gain last year for making a playoff run….Oh wait, there 3 rookies who were all picks outside of the top 3 have just catapulted past the oilers previous 4 top 3 draft picks in development.  Now the flames have players that want to sign there and there rookies are looking that much better for it. 

People can say all they want about the winning environment but a hardworking, competitive team is the best place for youth develop.  Without that, you have a bunch of individuals that care more about points and PP minutes over putting in the effort to win a game. 

 

[DIBdaQUIB]

Just now, Winter Soldier said:

You aren't really paying attention, are you?

 

Perhaps your comprehension skills aren't all they're cracked up to be?

There is a huge difference between our core vets and Calgary's.  Explain to me how having Higgins, Weber etc mentor our youth is going to benefit us or want other players to sign here?

 

[Winter Soldier]

Just now, DIBdaQUIB said:

Perhaps your comprehension skills aren't all they're cracked up to be?

There is a huge difference between our core vets and Calgary's.  Explain to me how having Higgins, Weber etc mentor our youth is going to benefit us or want other players to sign here?

 

It's not about who you have, but who you want to attract.

Unless you'd celebrate Andrej Sekera as a major UFA win.