Do you buy into what management is selling?

[IBatch]

17 hours ago, Warhippy said:

I am 50/50

 

Depending on the rumours of Benning potentially wanting another top 6 winger and the endless comments from industry insiders about management desiring and ownership demanding playoff runs with the twins still here BEFORE they commit to a true rebuild; I am swayed to say nope

 

40+ years of watching us shed depth and skilled youth for shots at the playoffs only to wallow in mediocrity for multiple seasons after has me very worried about more of the same

Man didn't have to read far down in the replies to see something very good.  I wonder how much pressure management has put on Benning and co to just keep us in the playoffs, more than anything else, so the big revenues at the end of the season can keep them in extra coin.  The only time we really went into tank tank tank mode that I re-call was when Martin Gelinas was our leading scorer...which turned into the Naslund era which included drafting the Sedins and the team Burke put together which won us presidents trophies.

 

Hate to see us tank mode again but it eventually gave us the best return this club has ever seen.  I don't know what happens behind closed doors but think that there is pressure to make the playoffs and that keeps the grenade from exploding the Sedins off the team for high draft picks and or stellar young prospects.  I like what Benning has done as I personally want to see the twins retire as Canucks and be given the best chance to win here before they are done.  After that...tank tank tank.

[WhoseTruckWasIt]

18 hours ago, WTG said:

Look, whatever your problem is please don't take it out on me. If you don't think that there are conflicting philosophies between management and ownership that's fine. I just tried to explain my reasoning.

 

I typed up a whole paragraph just to try to make my argument bigger but I just had to delete it because it won't convince you anyway. You can believe what you want to believe, just please, quit being a dick.

You are creating confusion where none exists, and you are doing it to further your agenda, which is basically an all-around gripe.

 

Those three terms are inter-changeable.  They are different ways of saying the same thing.  You are trying to show that Linden is inconsistent because he uses synonyms and yes, I'll go ahead and criticize that, since this is a public forum and the point you're making is ***

[Monty]

18 hours ago, Canuckler87 said:

Even the most negative haters have to admit our future is brighter than before Benning took over.

Future in 5+ years? Absolutely. MG wasn't trying to construct a team that was poised to win in 5+ years. He had a team where he tried to win now. And by all accounts (1 Stanley Cup appearance and 2 Presidents Trophies) he did just that. Most GMs fail at trying to win now or building for the future.

 

So, is the future brighter? Yes. That said, it is not nearly as bright as other Western Conference teams.

[riffraff]

7 hours ago, SaintPatrick33 said:

 

For a guy who dresses like a preppy he sure brings it in the Playoffs! 

 

I miss this guy

I miss nothing about that douche whatsoever.  Big deal.  One series against Nashville.  The rest of time I wanted him gone.  There are no descriptives a for his douchness.  He's just "Kesler".....I'm sure in the urban hockey dictionary that "Kesler" is a thing.

[riffraff]

7 hours ago, Honky Cat said:

We are building through the draft..but we also have to construct a team,.. its a given that you have to acquire certain kinds of players to complete the puzzle..Either through trade of FA..these players are not always available via the draft...You have to give (a lot).. to get.

 

Are we sure that McCann and Shink will be first line players?...I guess JB had some doubts..He tried to acquire a Sedin replacement at the lottery and draft,but lost Matthews,the two Fins,and PLD..(not Bennings fault..obviously).....He's been on the job for two years,and the fact he does not have a Sedin replacement is pathetic?....Those kind of players only come around every once in a while.

 

There is no objectivity on HFboards...there are some intelligent posters on the site,but its also where the 'maggots' of the fanbase reside as well....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ghostsof1915]

We've gone through a lot of GM's. Benning has made mistakes, who hasn't? Benning will make some mis-steps. But what I'm happy about is the overall direction. Especially in drafting.  People talk about "asset management". But no hockey team keeps everyone and maximizes value. I was listening to Steve Kouelas on Sirius XM (A refreshing change from the 1040 crap) and they were talking about with Ben Bishop's salary, they doubt Tampa will get any trade offers. And they would not be surprised if he walks as a UFA at the end of the year and signs with Vegas. Do you hear people screaming about that possibility? No. 

 

You don't have to agree with every move that Benning does. At least we're not throwing away picks and prospects for guys like Roy Baby, or over the hill d-men for a playoff run. 

 

Just relax and enjoy the ride. 

[WhoseTruckWasIt]

7 hours ago, Hairy Kneel said:

We all knew there would be a downturn after 2011..the question was for how long. How long it would take JB to fix this. For me the rebuild of the D was the best choice (Hut/Try/Gud) Tanev is steady and high trade value..Eddie is Eddie.

I wanted Tkatchuk but I'm letting that go thinking about our future pp qb.

I think JB will land his forward yet its a matter of when:  at theTD? (hopefully sooner)  Teams won't want to lose valuable players for nothing in the ED.

 

And yet they will.  Why is there this idea that there is a way to weasel out of this?

[TheGuardian_]

SOOoooo many mushrooms.

 

 

[mpt]

We can never do a rebuild as long as the Sedins are here, we will never be bad enough with them here.  So you might as well try a rebuild on the fly.  Sedins deserve to play wherever they want. If they want to stay in Vancouver then they deserve to stay here as long as they want.  If they want to be traded, then they deserve to be traded to the team of their choice that wants them; they've earned it.

 

It seems like they'll be here until they choose not to play hockey again.  Frankly I want them here has we have nothing yet to replace them with anyways.

[riffraff]

2 minutes ago, mpt said:

We can never do a rebuild as long as the Sedins are here, we will never be bad enough with them here.  So you might as well try a rebuild on the fly.  Sedins deserve to play wherever they want. If they want to stay in Vancouver then they deserve to stay here as long as they want.  If they want to be traded, then they deserve to be traded to the team of their choice that wants them; they've earned it.

 

It seems like they'll be here until they choose not to play hockey again.  Frankly I want them here has we have nothing yet to replace them with anyways.

It pretty much boils down to this.

 

its justifiable to be of the opinion that this team needs a ground up rebuild.  But so long as the sedins are here it won't happen.  I'm sure they will play out their contracts and during this time we will remain competitive enough to be a bubble team - the euphemism for mediocre.

 

the real change and turning point for the franchise is when the sedins are gone.  Right now it's all about maintaining a business that is on an uncertain "foundation.

 

im really looking forward to seeing JB face those future challenges.  I wish him good luck as a fan.  Can't wait till we make the playoffs for the first time on the backs of your new core.

[LaBamba]

7 hours ago, Barry_Wilkins said:

I thought you were tired of these arguments and this thread?

 

 

You seem to think that the draft is the only option for acquiring core players. You're wrong.

 

 

Benning traded McCann (a low 1st rounder) and an early 2nd rounder (very low probability of playing more than 100 NHL games) for a top 4 Dman  on a depleted Canucks back end, and who will be an important asset for a decade. It was an excellent trade by our GM, not just to try to make the playoffs next year, but for the long term.

 

 

Likewise, Eriksson isn't here to keep the Sedins happy for 2 years, but to to be an effective contributor for most, if not all, of his contract. You can argue that Eriksson'll fade, but it's debatable, and it's certainly not true that -- in this case, again -- he's just a bandaid.

 

 

LA Kings - 2 Stanley Cups. Their only high draft pick, Doughty at #2. Shrewd trades pushed them over the top.

Chicago - 3 Cups with #3 Toews and #1 Kane. But they didn't purposely tank. They just sucked, with Pulford as the GM, for decades.

Pittsburgh - Malkin at #2 and Crosby at #1. 2 Cups in 7 years. Only team which can be said to have benefited by tanking.

 

 

Oh, and your "accidental" or do-nothing tank doesn't count. As long as the Sedins are on the team, and the Canucks aren't decimated by injury (the case with Tortorella as well as  last season), they aren't competing for a high lotto pick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your argument is weak, but to salvage this conversation let's assume you are right. Only 1 team in the history of hockey has ever benefited from tanking. 

 

It is still 1 more than the 0 who have benefited from rushing a rebuild. 

[TimberWolf]

Sorry, no. We have a bad GM. Bad coaching and bad ownership. We have good fans, some good players but we're missing some major pieces and the only way to fill them right now is to hope against odds that some players exceed their potentials. 

We're trying to believe like Sutter's Flames and Burke/Nonis' Leafs (or keenen's Canucks) We can babble about winning environments but I fail to see how being the worst team in the league trying to win was even close to one. Nor a team getting annihilated out of the playoffs by a team that shouldn't have made it the previous season is one to claim a winner.

 

Even if trying to rebuild on the fly, the moves made to accomplish this are mediocre at best. 

 

We can blame ownership but I highly doubt that after firing Gillis the owners willfully hired a guy that didn't share their vision. 

 

 

[LaBamba]

1 hour ago, riffraff said:

 

It's funny but I actually didn't need that to come to that conclusion. 

[Fred65]

All I can say as a ticket holder ie some one that actually plonks his money where his mouth is. I'm glad they're taking the approach of lets look to making the play-offs as well as development ie simultaneously. I'd find it tough to watch basically junior games at NHL prices

[snipes2539]

17 minutes ago, LaBamba said:

Your argument is weak, but to salvage this conversation let's assume you are right. Only 1 team in the history of hockey has ever benefited from tanking. 

 

It is still 1 more than the 0 who have benefited from rushing a rebuild. 

Uh zero, I'll refute his statement about Pittsburg, winning the lottery for Crosby was blind luck, the previous season was wiped out by a lockout.

 

And you're so caught up on semantics it's not even funny.  You have nothing to support your claim that he's rushing anything, you're just so against what he's doing you're refusing to see then plenty of positive things that are happening, you think everyone thinks this team is awesome, again putting yourself on such a high pedestal that oh you're so smart and everyone else is just dumb and naive.  No actually, the majority of us are focusing on the positives while accepting the reality that this is a process that will take some time to unfold, and the absolute fact is no one, not you, not I not anyone else knows how this will pan out.  Just because there's a correlation between teams who've had high picks and teams who've won cups recently doesn't mean that's a cause an effect relationship.  Because guess what, only 1 team wins the cup each year, yet there are 5 teams that pick in the top 5 each year.  I don't see Columbus or Buffalo or Atlanta (when they were around) winning any cups.  You're not sold on what the Canucks are selling, but you've certainly bought in to what the goofs over on TSN and Sportsnet are saying though, you should really switch to being a Leafs fan, then you'll have all the media glory coverage too.

 

In the cap era, not a single team has been successful by way of tanking and losing year after year, so to argue that tanking and burning things to the ground to rebuild is the "right" way to do it, has no factual support whatsoever.  Every team that has won a cup or gone to the finals has done so by retooling what they already had, those top picks who're now superstars were all picked prior to the cap era, that's a fact.

 

 

[WhoseTruckWasIt]

13 hours ago, LaBamba said:

This method is also a way to indirectly tank. Save the cap space and develop the players you have and draft. To be honest I'm so tired of arguing about this. The truth will emerge. We will be full rebuilding whether we like it or not, we cannot escape it. 

Nothing indirect about it.  

[LaBamba]

3 minutes ago, snipes2539 said:

Uh zero, I'll refute his statement about Pittsburg, winning the lottery for Crosby was blind luck, the previous season was wiped out by a lockout.

 

And you're so caught up on semantics it's not even funny.  You have nothing to support your claim that he's rushing anything, you're just so against what he's doing you're refusing to see then plenty of positive things that are happening, you think everyone thinks this team is awesome, again putting yourself on such a high pedestal that oh you're so smart and everyone else is just dumb and naive.  No actually, the majority of us are focusing on the positives while accepting the reality that this is a process that will take some time to unfold, and the absolute fact is no one, not you, not I not anyone else knows how this will pan out.  Just because there's a correlation between teams who've had high picks and teams who've won cups recently doesn't mean that's a cause an effect relationship.  Because guess what, only 1 team wins the cup each year, yet there are 5 teams that pick in the top 5 each year.  I don't see Columbus or Buffalo or Atlanta (when they were around) winning any cups.  You're not sold on what the Canucks are selling, but you've certainly bought in to what the goofs over on TSN and Sportsnet are saying though, you should really switch to being a Leafs fan, then you'll have all the media glory coverage too.

 

In the cap era, not a single team has been successful by way of tanking and losing year after year, so to argue that tanking and burning things to the ground to rebuild is the "right" way to do it, has no factual support whatsoever.  Every team that has won a cup or gone to the finals has done so by retooling what they already had, those top picks who're now superstars were all picked prior to the cap era, that's a fact.

 

 

You retool when you have Pavelski, Burns, Getz, Perry, Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Stamkos, Doughty and Kopitar. We have the Sedin's, Hansen and Burrows. 

 

The normal up and down cycles of changing a core take +/- 10 years. The Oilers are on year 10 since their Stanley cup run. They aren't even that far off the average time it takes. The Sabres had to start all over after their owner thought he'd go 90's and build a team through FA. That backfired and they had to restart the process. They aren't even close to 10 years yet. Columbus lost their face of the franchise and haven't recovered since. Yes, Nash is garbage now but it's hard to compete when your franchise is not a favourite destination. The leafs are rebuilding their rushed Burke rebuild (possibly a view into our future). Our own franchise works in 10 year cycles 82,94,WCE,11. 

 

Imo we have to take advantage of this inevitable low point in the cycle. With how much scouting has advanced over the years, it's getting harder and harder to find the hidden gems. The harder you try to fight the dip, the harder and longer it will take to climb out when the Sedin's leave without any franchise players to replace them. The Sedin's were rookies and playing in the NHL with the WCE and it still took 11 years to reach the Stanley cup. We need to do whatever means necessary to grab that generational talent while the Sedin's are still here. Burke saw this and saved a lot of grief by taking the Sedin's 2 and 3. 

 

Statistics say the best chances you have in acquiring generational talent is a top 3 pick.

 

Forgive me if I'm looking too far ahead. 

 

Im not saying I'm smarter or better than anyone else, I have seen this before and I want something new. We have gone 40+ years without a Stanley cup and I'm done with mediocre. I'd love to suck for 10 years if it means I'll see a Stanley cup before I die. 

 

[riffraff]

1 hour ago, LaBamba said:

It's funny but I actually didn't need that to come to that conclusion. 

Absolutely

 

when the sedins are gone, there will be a massive abyss.  People take for granted its sedins plural.

[LaBamba]

Just now, riffraff said:

Absolutely

 

when the sedins are gone, there will be a massive abyss.  People take for granted its sedins plural.

This is my main concern, imagine where we would finish without them. 

[aGENT]

18 hours ago, oldnews said:

I think they signed an old Paul Martin (34 at the time) to a 4 year 20ish million deal last summer.

And Joel Ward - also 34 at the time, to a 3 year 10+ million deal....

As I said:

 

18 hours ago, J.R. said:

Selective memory...

 

17 hours ago, ThaShady1 said:

Furthermore, @LaBamba, what draft picks are we continuously giving up? Last I checked we were down a total of 1 pick since Benning took over. Obviously, they're lower "quality" picks, as in further along in the draft, but picks nontheless. With those picks, Benning has drafted 3 who have already played in the NHL, and arguably 5 more who look like they have the potential to make it. 

This seems to be a point missed by the 'tank and accumulate picks!' crowd. The entire point of 'building through the draft' or acquiring picks is to get eventual NHL talent. Real NHL players.

 

It's not like Benning is trading those picks for 32+ year old vets either. He's moved a few picks (as has been noted, down one in total) for guys under the age of 25. Guys who are actual NHL players or at least far closer to 'sure things' than the 18 year old kids in 2nd and 3rd rounds with bad odds to even play a couple hundred games as depth/borderline NHL'ers. 

 

People get too hung up on the idea of draft picks and can't see the forest for the trees. THE ENTIRE POINT IS TO GET NHL PLAYERS.

 

As for this concern about replacing the Sedins, have people not noticed how transformed our D core/prospects are in the last 2 years alone? I hardly think Jim Benning feels he's 'done' and is now sitting back in his desk chair relaxing. This was never going to happen over night folks. He's not done yet.

 

We've got roughly 2-4 years more of the Sedins IMO. We've just signed Eriksson as a top 6 bridge player to help fill a gap between them and the next core. Horvat, Boeser, Virtanen, Baer etc will continue to develop in that time. We'll be drafting (and yes trading/signing  ) additional forwards in those 2-4 years. When they do eventually retire, it's quite likely we'll be getting another ~top  10 draft pick or two as well.

 

Not to mention again, that aforementioned, transformed D pool. Tanev, Gudbranson, Hutton, Tryamkin, Juolevi, Pedan, Stetcher, Brisebois, Olson, Tate... That's 10 guys already who look to have pretty good chances of becoming or already are NHL'ers. We're not going to be able to fit all of them on the roster (top 6D = 2 spares = 8) in 3+ years folks. And that doesn't include lottery tickets like Subban or any UFA's, trades or near future drafts. Some of them will be moved...you guys happen to notice what young, developed D are fetching in trade?

 

There's a pretty clear plan, all one need do is open their mind and eyes.