GDT & PGT: Preds vs Nucks, Saturday, Mar.12, 2016, 7 PM PST on CBC

[Pete M]

9 hours ago, -Vintage Canuck- said:

Imagine, with Tryamkin, we also have a healthy Sutter, healthy Edler, healthy Tanev and a healthy Hansen in the line-up.

 

Actually, if the Canucks were healthy for most part of the season, they likely would be higher up in the standings and in the playoff picture.

 

Kind of sucks that a lot of injuries occurred this season. But anyways, if they show effort like they did tonight and win games, I don't mind that.

the way the team is playing now with Baer, Virt, Etem, Horvat, Hutton and even Vey, playing with  energy and desire, the future looks bright...the four guys mentioned if healthy may not have allowed for the young guns  progression...it's a double edged sword scenario

[coastal1]

8 hours ago, *Buzzsaw* said:

Idiots at CBC were awarding the top 5 hilights of the night... and they included Pekke Rinne's save on Horvat... but not Miller's game saving cross crease stopper late. 

 

Wrong... Horvat shot the puck into the trapper, but Miller's stop was far more difficult and acrobatic... but that's CBC... they came into the broadcast ready to sing Nashville's praises... had all kinds of special profiles ready... and you could hear the disappointment in their voices when Vancouver won.

"Wrong... Horvat shot the puck into the trapper "

I would not be so hard on the guy. He is still young. Sure Horvat had lots of net to shoot at, but that will come with experience, it wasn't really the wrong play as much as a kid that is still jittery.

[Harvey Spector]

1 hour ago, Maniwaki Canuck said:

Better than advertised as far as I'm concerned.  He's actually a very smart player on top of the physical skills he's got.  Despite not picking up Sceviour tonight, his defensive and positional awareness are already NHL-level.  He gets in on the forecheck, is strong on the backcheck, drives play, and is an offensive threat.  You can tell that he's already got a reputation around the league for his physical play.  Did you see Josi looking on with concern in that fight?  This guy is stirring the drink for us.  There aren't many 19 yr. olds showing this kind of leadership in the NHL.  A whole lot more than meat and potatoes to this guy. 

But when I read these boards I was told he was a bust and had very low hockey IQ. Was I reading incorrectly??  After all CDC is where I get all my hockey news, don't need to look anywhere else...

[coastal1]

1 minute ago, Pete M said:

the way the team is playing now with Baer, Virt, Etem, Horvat, Hutton and even Vey, playing with  energy and desire, the future looks bright...the four guys mentioned if healthy may not have allowed for the young guns  progression...it's a double edged sword scenario

How scacrilegious to say something positive about Vey on here. Don't you know that he is useless and only plays because stupid WD likes him from his days in MH?

[Ghostsof1915]

In regards to Vey. I don't think fans have an issue with him as a player (He certainly improved in Utica.) I think the issue is this. Horvat even if he's not scoring, is making things happen, and is notable, and earns every minute he plays. Vey on the other hand seems to be given lots of good minutes, over other players who are working as hard if not harder. 

[coastal1]

9 minutes ago, Harvey Spector said:

But when I read these boards I was told he was a bust and had very low hockey IQ. Was I reading incorrectly??  After all CDC is where I get all my hockey news, don't need to look anywhere else...

You are correct overall. I mean there will be the odd overly fanatic opinion but you can get a good feel for everything reading what's on here, and you are bang on in your description of him.

[NHTyrany]

Despite the Coach's positive comments about McCann. I thought he was off his game all night--not by much, but enough to kill opportunities. Had some great rushes and passes but just didn't click to finish. I hope he can build some confidence and get his touch back. I was so excited about his potential at the beginning of the year but it must be tough for him to see other young centers taking over.     

[Crabcakes]

9 hours ago, *Buzzsaw* said:

Idiots at CBC were awarding the top 5 hilights of the night... and they included Pekke Rinne's save on Horvat... but not Miller's game saving cross crease stopper late. 

 

Wrong... Horvat shot the puck into the trapper, but Miller's stop was far more difficult and acrobatic... but that's CBC... they came into the broadcast ready to sing Nashville's praises... had all kinds of special profiles ready... and you could hear the disappointment in their voices when Vancouver won.

Did you see the camera angle from behind the net?  Rinne's coverage was tremendous.  He made it look easy.  Horvat was so close that he couldn't have missed the trapper.

[Harvey Spector]

8 hours ago, JamesB said:

I also am glad Willie is staying. I think he is an excellent developmental coach and we could see the results again tonight. The young guys, as a group, have made great progress with Willie as coach.

 

Tonight may have been the best Canuck game of the season considering that Nashville is a very good team and the Canucks are without their top defence pairing and without Sutter.  The first period was amazing as the Canucks dominated and were unlucky to only be ahead 2-0.

 

One counterexample does not "prove" that getting high draft picks doesn't work. Edmonton is an outlier. The teams that have been successful recently (Chicago, LA, etc.) have generally been teams that were bad for two or three years and picked up one or two franchise-type players with high picks, along with making other good decisions (cap management, asset management, etc.)

 

Not all high picks become franchise players and not all franchise players are high picks, but that is where the odds are best.

 

At this stage I am not expecting much from this year's draft. At the beginning of the season I had visions of a getting a high pick (top 5) and making getting a couple of low first round picks (for Vrby and Hammer) as well, and they we would have a high second round pick (our own) and might pick up some low picks for other vets (Prusa, Bart, Higgy, etc.) I even had visions of trading Miller for maybe a second round pick and a prospect. Well we know how that worked out.

 

And right now I am guessing we pick in the 7 - 12 range where we should get a decent prospect but no one who is likely to make a difference in a hurry.

Have you only been following hockey for like 10 years?  The great Oiler teams of the 80's never had a top 5 pick, ever. And the great Detroit team of the 90's and 00's only had one player taken top 5, Steve Yzerman, but the team still sucked for years after they drafted him. They didn't get real good until after 1989 when they drafted Nick Lidstrom in the 3rd round and Sergei Fedorov in the 4th round. Can you imagine drafting TWO generational talents in the SAME year in the THIRD and FOURTH rounds??  Amazing scouting.  Not to mention they took Konstantinov in the 11th round that same year.  And to fill out their roster for a Cup run or two they took Osgood in the 3rd round and Holmstrom in the 10th round. 

 

And then they did it again to prove it wasn't a fluke. For their next Cup runs they drafted Pavel Datsyuk in the 6th round in 1998 and Henrik Zetterberg in the 7th round in 1999. So at the end of the day they drafted FOUR generational players in the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th rounds. AMAZING scouting. Scouting is what made them a dynasty, not tanking and getting a top 3 pick for 5 years in a row. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats tanking every time. If you look at those teams you mentioned, LA and Chicago, yes they had top picks that helped them win Cups. But they also had picks in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds that helped them get to the top. Duncan Keith was a 2nd round pick. Seabrook was not picked in the top 10. Do you think Chicago would have won 3 Cups without those guys??  And what about LA??  They only had ONE player drafted top 3, Doughty.  Brown and Kopitar were drafted outside the top 10 picks and Quick was a 3rd round pick. So they didn't need to tank every year to get a top 3 pick to win 2 cups.  And Toffoli was a 2nd round pick. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats TANKING every single time. That's why I'm excited for the Canucks right now. Because we have arguably the best scout in the game in Jim Benning. 

[Pete M]

35 minutes ago, Harvey Spector said:

But when I read these boards I was told he was a bust and had very low hockey IQ. Was I reading incorrectly??  After all CDC is where I get all my hockey news, don't need to look anywhere else...

Virtanen's issue is his consistency...watched him play junior for the Hitmen and many games he was invisible (keep in mind, he was coming off of shoulder surgery).

[-DLC-]

9 minutes ago, Pete M said:

Virtanen's issue is his consistency...watched him play junior for the Hitmen and many games he was invisible (keep in mind, he was coming off of shoulder surgery).

That's where coaching matters....when a player is capable of more, the coaches have to be able to extract that from them.  And I think many here have to allow for peaks and valleys vs expecting perfection.  Guys will have moments...slumps, doubts.  As long as they keep contributing in some form (as Burr does, glad at least the coach sees it), you have to allow them to work through things at times.  People give up too easily.  They demand production that they can see in the form of the numbers, but sometimes allowing others to do their job out there is part of it.  Supporting stuff that isn't highlight reel material.  People don't always see it because, on TV, the camera moves with the play.  But the stuff that develops around it...that has to be part of it.

 

If we see this kind of effort from these guys, I'll be satisfied.  Doesn't mean they'll win every game, but if they show up with energy and physicality I think they'll be fine.  If they float, they should sit...that's where depth is key.

 

 

EDIT:  Very well said Harvey.  AMEN to that...excellent post.

 

 

[riffraff]

No edler.

 

no problem.

[Hugor Hill]

1 hour ago, Harvey Spector said:

Have you only been following hockey for like 10 years?  The great Oiler teams of the 80's never had a top 5 pick, ever. And the great Detroit team of the 90's and 00's only had one player taken top 5, Steve Yzerman, but the team still sucked for years after they drafted him. They didn't get real good until after 1989 when they drafted Nick Lidstrom in the 3rd round and Sergei Fedorov in the 4th round. Can you imagine drafting TWO generational talents in the SAME year in the THIRD and FOURTH rounds??  Amazing scouting.  Not to mention they took Konstantinov in the 11th round that same year.  And to fill out their roster for a Cup run or two they took Osgood in the 3rd round and Holmstrom in the 10th round. 

 

And then they did it again to prove it wasn't a fluke. For their next Cup runs they drafted Pavel Datsyuk in the 6th round in 1998 and Henrik Zetterberg in the 7th round in 1999. So at the end of the day they drafted FOUR generational players in the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th rounds. AMAZING scouting. Scouting is what made them a dynasty, not tanking and getting a top 3 pick for 5 years in a row. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats tanking every time. If you look at those teams you mentioned, LA and Chicago, yes they had top picks that helped them win Cups. But they also had picks in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds that helped them get to the top. Duncan Keith was a 2nd round pick. Seabrook was not picked in the top 10. Do you think Chicago would have won 3 Cups without those guys??  And what about LA??  They only had ONE player drafted top 3, Doughty.  Brown and Kopitar were drafted outside the top 10 picks and Quick was a 3rd round pick. So they didn't need to tank every year to get a top 3 pick to win 2 cups.  And Toffoli was a 2nd round pick. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats TANKING every single time. That's why I'm excited for the Canucks right now. Because we have arguably the best scout in the game in Jim Benning. 

Yeah but AMAZING scouting is not a strategy. You can't just turn on the AMAZING scouting switch and expect to build a Cup contender. If it's so easy then every team would be using AMAZING scouting all the time. AMAZING scouting is luck more than anything else. Even Ken Holland has admitted in public that it was mostly luck that Datysuk, Zetterberg and Holmstrom all became superstars.

 

[Hugor Hill]

Just wanted to drop by and say that my fav part of the game was Virtanen nailing one of their best players and then beating up their de-facto best player right after.

 

Awesome! Who needs Lucic if he keeps that up.

[JamesB]

6 hours ago, Harvey Spector said:

Have you only been following hockey for like 10 years?  The great Oiler teams of the 80's never had a top 5 pick, ever. And the great Detroit team of the 90's and 00's only had one player taken top 5, Steve Yzerman, but the team still sucked for years after they drafted him. They didn't get real good until after 1989 when they drafted Nick Lidstrom in the 3rd round and Sergei Fedorov in the 4th round. Can you imagine drafting TWO generational talents in the SAME year in the THIRD and FOURTH rounds??  Amazing scouting.  Not to mention they took Konstantinov in the 11th round that same year.  And to fill out their roster for a Cup run or two they took Osgood in the 3rd round and Holmstrom in the 10th round. 

 

And then they did it again to prove it wasn't a fluke. For their next Cup runs they drafted Pavel Datsyuk in the 6th round in 1998 and Henrik Zetterberg in the 7th round in 1999. So at the end of the day they drafted FOUR generational players in the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th rounds. AMAZING scouting. Scouting is what made them a dynasty, not tanking and getting a top 3 pick for 5 years in a row. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats tanking every time. If you look at those teams you mentioned, LA and Chicago, yes they had top picks that helped them win Cups. But they also had picks in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds that helped them get to the top. Duncan Keith was a 2nd round pick. Seabrook was not picked in the top 10. Do you think Chicago would have won 3 Cups without those guys??  And what about LA??  They only had ONE player drafted top 3, Doughty.  Brown and Kopitar were drafted outside the top 10 picks and Quick was a 3rd round pick. So they didn't need to tank every year to get a top 3 pick to win 2 cups.  And Toffoli was a 2nd round pick. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats TANKING every single time. That's why I'm excited for the Canucks right now. Because we have arguably the best scout in the game in Jim Benning. 

Just as the outlier example of Edmonton is misleadingly used all the time to argue that drafting high doesn't help much, the example of Detroit picking Datsyuk and Zetterberg in low rounds is misleadingly used to argue that you can get franchise players with low picks if you just have good scouting.

 

Scouting has moved forward a lot in the past 10 years. There is now much less uncertainty about Russian players than there used to be (whether they would come over, how good they were, etc.) It much harder to find great players in the low rounds than it used to be. I don't think we will ever see two low round forwards being franchise players on the same team at the same time again.

 

Defenceman are a bit different. They take longer to develop and are harder to assess at the draft than forwards. So there is still a decent chance of getting excellent Ds in the lower rounds. That is one reason why the first round is usually dominated with forward picks and is one reason why I am not enthusiastic that Benning is leaning for a first round D this year. I would be happy to get Chychrun at 5 or Juolevi or Sergachev a bit lower, but I worry about taking a D over excellent forward prospects like Nylander, Dubois or Gauthier in the 6 to 10 range. 

 

 

[TheAce]

1 hour ago, riffraff said:

No edler.

 

no problem.

its such a world of difference on our PP having Hutton out there instead of Edler....... Hutton can carry the puck, can make moves and thinks the game much better than Edler does out there.

 

People look at Edlers point totals and think he is an offensive d-man but in reality he gets most of his points playing with the twins. I hope the coaching staff continues to play Hutton on the number 1 unit next season

[Maniwaki Canuck]

2 hours ago, Harvey Spector said:

But when I read these boards I was told he was a bust and had very low hockey IQ. Was I reading incorrectly??  After all CDC is where I get all my hockey news, don't need to look anywhere else...

Yeah, I was in the Ehlers camp so I was vulnerable to that stuff.  But Jake had plenty of vocal supporters too, probably the majority.  No matter where we come from on this issue, I hope we can all agree that the organization and above all Jake himself deserve a lot of credit for where he's at in his development now, as opposed to the beginning of the season.  Some good coaching and good learning have gone on. 

[Harvey Spector]

57 minutes ago, Hugor Hill said:

Yeah but AMAZING scouting is not a strategy. You can't just turn on the AMAZING scouting switch and expect to build a Cup contender. If it's so easy then every team would be using AMAZING scouting all the time. AMAZING scouting is luck more than anything else. Even Ken Holland has admitted in public that it was mostly luck that Datysuk, Zetterberg and Holmstrom all became superstars.

 

Amazing scouting is all due to luck?  That's funny. Sure you can turn the amazing scouting switch on. All you have to do is hire a guy like Holland or Lamoriello or Benning to do your drafting and "viola" amazing scouting switch has been turned on. 

 

If you draft one generational player outside the second round, you can call that "luck". When you draft FOUR of them outside the second round I call that "amazing scouting talent". 

 

And no not every team can't just turn on their amazing scouting switch and do it cause most teams have donkeys as scouts and GM's.  Not every team has a Holland, Benning or Lamoriello choosing the draft picks. Just ask the Oilers. 

[6YPE]

2 hours ago, Harvey Spector said:

Have you only been following hockey for like 10 years?  The great Oiler teams of the 80's never had a top 5 pick, ever. And the great Detroit team of the 90's and 00's only had one player taken top 5, Steve Yzerman, but the team still sucked for years after they drafted him. They didn't get real good until after 1989 when they drafted Nick Lidstrom in the 3rd round and Sergei Fedorov in the 4th round. Can you imagine drafting TWO generational talents in the SAME year in the THIRD and FOURTH rounds??  Amazing scouting.  Not to mention they took Konstantinov in the 11th round that same year.  And to fill out their roster for a Cup run or two they took Osgood in the 3rd round and Holmstrom in the 10th round. 

 

And then they did it again to prove it wasn't a fluke. For their next Cup runs they drafted Pavel Datsyuk in the 6th round in 1998 and Henrik Zetterberg in the 7th round in 1999. So at the end of the day they drafted FOUR generational players in the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th rounds. AMAZING scouting. Scouting is what made them a dynasty, not tanking and getting a top 3 pick for 5 years in a row. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats tanking every time. If you look at those teams you mentioned, LA and Chicago, yes they had top picks that helped them win Cups. But they also had picks in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds that helped them get to the top. Duncan Keith was a 2nd round pick. Seabrook was not picked in the top 10. Do you think Chicago would have won 3 Cups without those guys??  And what about LA??  They only had ONE player drafted top 3, Doughty.  Brown and Kopitar were drafted outside the top 10 picks and Quick was a 3rd round pick. So they didn't need to tank every year to get a top 3 pick to win 2 cups.  And Toffoli was a 2nd round pick. 

 

AMAZING scouting beats TANKING every single time. That's why I'm excited for the Canucks right now. Because we have arguably the best scout in the game in Jim Benning. 

Not just scouting,  but development.  You can scout all the players you want, but if you don't develop them correctly you still have nothing.  

[Sedintwinpowersactivate]

11 minutes ago, Maniwaki Canuck said:

Yeah, I was in the Ehlers camp so I was vulnerable to that stuff.  But Jake had plenty of vocal supporters too, probably the majority.  No matter where we come from on this issue, I hope we can all agree that the organization and above all Jake himself deserve a lot of credit for where he's at in his development now, as opposed to the beginning of the season.  Some good coaching and good learning have gone on. 

I was also in the Ehlers camp.  But I've also been impressed with Jake's development this year.  His WJC was very disappointing, but his skills seem to match the pro game better.  He may never be an offensive force, but he has shown flashes that maybe he could develop into one.  Ehlers will be a point producer while Virtanen will offer a lot more of the intangibles that are harder to measure.  Good job Jake!  If he continues to work hard he will reach his true potential in Blue and Green.