[Poll] Jim Benning

[Josepho]

10 minutes ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

Or the majority of people don't see the point in presenting logical arguments to people who are close minded and unreasonable.

I just went into large detail in multiple posts explaining why Benning's approach to the salary cap situation is flawed and was met with "it's not a big deal that he's overpaying these subpar players" and "you're dumb if you don't think these players are good". Who's actually closed-minded and unreasonable in this case?

Edited June 29, 2019 by Josepho

[kingofsurrey]

4 minutes ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

Or the majority of people don't see the point in presenting logical arguments to people who are close minded and unreasonable.

When i was 8 yrs old....  90 % of my friends believed the  Easter Bunny was real  .....    Doesn't mean they were correct in their belief.

[Baggins]

11 hours ago, reyezone said:

Isn't it interesting that whilst the negativity is devastatingly loud on these forums, the majority of us support Benning.

This microcosm sums up a lot of the problem with human behavior/culture and the www..

Squeaky wheels......

[Baggins]

10 hours ago, Tomatoes11 said:

Man. The Benning defenders are hopeless. They actually truly thinking pissing away our future for middling players was the right move. Wow. Just wow. 

 

Ferraro said it best in that video. Dim Jim doesn’t even know what this team is and should be. He is like a buyer rebuilder which is just baffling because that direction is inherently flawed. Shocked how people can agree with this direction. Sad sad times if this is what our fan base has become.

What team is Ferraro successfully running? 

 

The narrow minded see one way, and one way only, to get something done.

[WeneedLumme]

11 hours ago, reyezone said:

Isn't it interesting that whilst the negativity is devastatingly loud on these forums, the majority of us support Benning.

This microcosm sums up a lot of the problem with human behavior/culture and the www..

It's not exactly surprising, since obnoxious clowns are generally much louder and pushier than civilized, intelligent people.

[Alflives]

33 minutes ago, kingofsurrey said:

When i was 8 yrs old....  90 % of my friends believed the  Easter Bunny was real  .....    Doesn't mean they were correct in their belief.

And you didn’t think Alf was real then too.  Well

[ilduce39]

22 hours ago, Josepho said:

He'd have to develop superior negotiation skills, a sense of asset management, a better pro-scouting record and a different attitude towards the salary structure of this team. Don't really know what you mean by "realistic".

 

Benning has consistently bled value in all of his transactions. And, though most of them aren't a huge deal in a vacuum, they add up.

 

A 5th for Philip Larsen = Not good, but tolerable in isolation.

A 2nd, Jared McCann, a 3rd, a 4th, a 5th, Forsling for Pedan, Larsen, Clendening, Gudbranson and Pouliot = bleeding value, value that could've been used in so many other places. I'm not sure any other GM in the history has displayed this kind of track record with acquiring defencemen.

 

Good job re-hashing moves that didn't pan out over a 5 year period.  

So your bar for a GM over a 5 year period is that they're allowed to miss on one 5th round pick?  Have some realistic expectations and look at the big picture.  Obviously upgrading the back end is JB's biggest hole right now, but really only Gudbranson had any significant cost and he's been flipped for a guy who looked pretty good with Bo last season.  

 

Then you're quoting CA's resident hack Jackson McDonald and somehow reach even further with two of the most toxic haters on twitter (and that's saying something) in "Taj" and "Sir Earl."  God, I can't, for the life of me, take any of those guys seriously their entire online personalities are built around crapping on JB. 

 

As for cap, there's no need to re-hash Eriksson. As for Sutter and Beagle I think there's a lot of value in having quality match-up C's on every line.  Funny that you pump up Bozak's contract as a good deal when he's older, more expensive and not producing much more than a healthy Sutter.  Nothing agasint Bozak.  Again, healthy, I think that's not a bad place to spend some cap.

 

I think the bottom line is simple:  have we lost anyone due to poor cap management?  Are there any moves we couldn't make because of it?  The closest I've heard is Subban.. but, again, you have a guy getting traded out of conference which usually is how it goes.

 

I think the emphasis of JB's detractors is way off.  All the focus is on perceived "contract" and "asset" value, in which he never gets any benefit of the doubt and is constantly scrutinized against cross-conference trades.  Further, the perception STILL remains that we're "way off" and should still be in a selling roster players for future assets mode.  

 

Nobody ever talks about the Canucks as a group of PLAYERS coming together.  If you look at a rebuild as bringing an actual team together there's some key elements that JB has knocked out of the park, or looks to have a good chance of shoring up.

 

1-2 C punch: Pettersson, Horvat

 

Top scoring W:  Boeser

 

Add Miller and Pearson to those 3 and you add in a decent sandpaper element to your top 6 that we haven't had in years, both with 20+ goal potential. 

 

Match-up Defensive forwards:  Sutter, Beagle, (Gaudette)

 

Physical / Energy players:  Virtanen, Roussel, Motte

 

PPQB:  Hughes

 

Where we're still missing:  Quality top 4. ( Edler - Hughes - ? - ? )  If Myers can be added at a reasonable (6-ish x 5) deal, the holes become a lot smaller.

 

Goalie:  Markstrom / Demko

 

Most importantly, the team has fantastic work-ethic and leadership.  All these guys listed play "the right way" and none are cherry-picking floaters.  Most are still pretty darn young. The heart of this team is strong.  They routinely outplay their talent level even in a "rebuilding" phase and critical injuries where they're routinely picked to finish dead last.  The guys we've added in Miller (and maybe Myers?) are quality character guys as well.  

Edited June 29, 2019 by ilduce39

[Mad Jon]

1 hour ago, kingofsurrey said:

I read it more as the sheep in our society can get so easily manipulated by the mainstream media.......

King of Surrey........Sheep.....Hmmm?

[I.Am.Ironman]

35 minutes ago, Josepho said:

I just went into large detail in multiple posts explaining why Benning's approach to the salary cap situation is flawed and was met with "it's not a big deal that he's overpaying these subpar players" and "you're dumb if you don't think these players are good". Who's actually closed-minded and unreasonable in this case?

I didn't see your post but they may be valid arguments. I didn't mean for what I said to come across as painting everyone on that side of the fence with a broad brush, although KOS's enlightening response below shows a good example. There are valid arguments to be had on either side but from my observations the percent of the close minded and unreasonable is much higher on the anti benning side. It's kind of like modern day politics... the loudest are on the far right/left but there are many reasonable  valid positions in toward the middle 70% of the continuum that don't get heard.

Again I didn't see your post but a common anti-benning argument is he overpaid for mediocre players, which is true. But what a lot of people don't acknowledge is that for the past 4 years the Canucks have not been a desirable free agent destination and we needed to fill the squad somehow. Sure we could have filled the squad from within but JB inherited nothing 'within' to fill it with. IIRC our top prospects at the time were ?Hutton (did JB or MG draft him?), Gaunce, Shinkaruk, Jensen, and Markstrom. This has likely contributed to the need to overpay for a lot of FA signings, hopefully that has changed with the emergence of EP. That being said no one is sitting here defending the LE signing, but to be fair, LE fooled everybody and I'm not sure our conversations would be much different, possibly worse, if JB had signed Lucic or Ladd or Okposo that year. We all make mistakes and hopefully JB learned from that one. We will see in the coming days.

 

People complain about the Sutter, Roussel, Beagle contracts but like I said we likely needed to add the extra year to get these guys given the Canucks success or lack thereof. Contracts aside these are effective role players. Sutter is overpaid by 500K and Roussel/Beagle probably got 1 year extra term to their 'true' market value. In the big scheme of things these overpayments are pretty inconsequential (including Gagner) considering the Canucks position.

 

Additionally, people point to the 4 years of missed playoffs as JBs fault. But what was truly the expected outcome? The Canucks had like 37 NMCs/NTCs on the books and all those players exercised them. But people blame JB for that. I have called people out for blaming JB for the Hamhuis situation. JB had a deal in place to trade him to Washington but hamhuis nixed it as he wanted to stay in the West. By that time Dallas had traded for Russell and only offered JB a 3rd round pick for Hamhuis so JB rightfully declined... or so the story goes. Tanev probably could have been traded but who was going to be our top RHD? Stetcher? Hindsight is always 20/20 and we also don't know what offers were fielded.

 

He comes with flaws and has made mistakes but his strength in drafting far outweigh those flaws IMO. Hopefully he has learned from those mistakes.

34 minutes ago, kingofsurrey said:

When i was 8 yrs old....  90 % of my friends believed the  Easter Bunny was real  .....    Doesn't mean they were correct in their belief.

Sweet man, do you put that on your resume?

[Josepho]

11 minutes ago, ilduce39 said:

Good job re-hashing moves that didn't pan out over a 5 year period. 

Well, yeah. I think pointing out literally every defenceman Benning has acquired through trade is pretty topical when we're evaluating whether or not he's fit to manage this hockey team. Literally all of those defencemen are bad.

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So your bar for a GM over a 5 year period is that they're allowed to miss on one 5th round pick?  Have some realistic expectations and look at the big picture.  Obviously upgrading the back end is JB's biggest hole right now, but really only Gudbranson had any significant cost and he's been flipped for a guy who looked pretty good with Bo last season.  

This is not what I meant. All I was saying that having the occasional whiff of a transaction is fine, but this sort of thing adds up. The fact that he basically gave up an entire draft's worth of picks for defencemen, none of which are still on the team, is very concerning regarding both his negotiation skills and player evaluation skills.

 

Yes, Gudbranson was the only one with significant cost. However, again, these picks add up. If a restaurant is spending $1 too much each time they purchase carrots, $1 too much each time they purchase cheese and $1 each time they purchase milk, that restaurant is going to lose a lot of extra money in year's time -- maybe that restaurant won't be able to purchase other ingredients at some point due to the fact that they've constantly been spending more than they had to on cheese, milk and carrots.

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Then you're quoting CA's resident hack Jackson McDonald and somehow reach even further with two of the most toxic haters on twitter (and that's saying something) in "Taj" and "Sir Earl."  God, I can't, for the life of me, take any of those guys seriously their entire online personalities are built around crapping on JB. 

Taj literally was just tweeting an excerpt from an Iain MacIntyre article, an article that can be found here.

What Earl said was from a Season Ticket Holder meeting.

 

The fact that you don't like these people is completely irrelevant in what they're reporting.

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As for cap, there's no need to re-hash Eriksson.

It was a horrendous transaction that many people forecasted and it's still impacting the franchise today -- we can't just shrug it off. What's the point in debating whether or not Benning is fit to be our GM if we're just letting him off the hook for blatantly awful decisions like this?

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As for Sutter and Beagle I think there's a lot of value in having quality match-up C's on every line.  

Sutter had one good season here in 2017-2018. The rest of them, he's been generating very average results for a 3rd line Center in terms of both production and possession metrics. Jay Beagle literally had one 5v5 goal all of last season and was getting drilled in his own zone.

 

Again, a part of managing a team is looking at all options and there were significantly better and more affordable options around the league.

 

Every stat seems to indicate that Gaunce pushes the play to the other zone far better than Beagle with similar OZone Start ratios. Matt Stajan was a very average 3rd liner for the past decade and he was forced to go to Europe. Kyle Brodziak is in a similar boat and he signed for 1 year in Edmonton. Nic Dowd basically produced at a better rate than Beagle in Washington while taking up the exact same role. Brad Richardson has been a great depth player in Arizona.

 

There were so many more sensible options than signing these contracts.

 

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Funny that you pump up Bozak's contract as a good deal when he's older, more expensive and producing much more than a healthy Sutter.  Nothing agasint Bozak.  Again, healthy, I think that's not a bad place to spend some cap.

I don't think Bozak's contract is particularly good -- I'm just stating that he was one of two players in St. Louis' bottom 6 making a remotely high salary. And yes, the fact that he's far more productive than Brandon Sutter makes the acquisition more excusable.

 

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I think the bottom line is simple:  have we lost anyone due to poor cap management?  Are there any moves we couldn't make because of it?  The closest I've heard is Subban.. but, again, you have a guy getting traded out of conference which usually is how it goes.

Chances are that we still have Dan Hamhuis (who's better than any defenceman Benning has ever traded for) if not for that stupid contract we gave Sbisa in 2015, so there's an example right there.

 

There absolutely are a ton of moves we couldn't afford to make because of the situation, primarily moves revolving around taking additional assets to take on teams' bad contracts. I pointed out that last week Carolina got a 1st round pick for taking on the Patrick Marleau contract -- that could've been us. Carolina also got Teuvo Teravainen for taking on the Bryan Bickell contract in 2016 -- that also could've been us.

 

This offseason, all reports seem to indicate that Benning wants Tyler Myers and Gustav Nyquist. Because of how much he's invested in bottom sixers, he's not going to be able to acquire both of them.

 

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I think the emphasis of JB's detractors is way off.  All the focus is on perceived "contract" and "asset" value, in which he never gets any benefit of the doubt and is constantly scrutinized against cross-conference trades.  Further, the perception STILL remains that we're "way off" and should still be in a selling roster players for future assets mode.  

Why should he get the benefit of the doubt? He has consistently bled value on the majority of his transactions like no other manager in hockey. I pointed out how other teams are managing their salary cap -- guys like Doug Wilson and Julien Brisebois are actually managing their money properly, and aren't making excuses at every possible opportunity like this.

 

As for the latter point, I actually agree with you. The team has a lot of young talent and should be turning a corner now.

 

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Nobody ever talks about the Canucks as a group of PLAYERS coming together.  If you look at a rebuild as bringing an actual team together there's some key elements that JB has knocked out of the park, or looks to have a good chance of shoring up.

 

1-2 C punch: Pettersson, Horvat

 

Top scoring W:  Boeser

 

Add Miller and Pearson to those 3 and you add in a decent sandpaper element to your top 6 that we haven't had in years, both with 20+ goal potential. 

 

Match-up Defensive forwards:  Sutter, Beagle, (Gaudette)

 

Physical / Energy players:  Virtanen, Roussel, Motte

 

PPQB:  Hughes 

No complaints here (aside from Motte who doesn't really do anything aside from skate fast), but I don't think a GM should be getting credit for drafting good players with high picks -- especially since scouting is a team effort and the reason we have Pettersson/Hughes is because Benning's roster was so bad it finished in the bottom 10 four consecutive seasons.

 

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Where we're still missing:  Quality top 4. ( Edler - Hughes - ? - ? )  If Myers can be added at a reasonable (6-ish x 5) deal, the holes become a lot smaller.

I pointed out every defenceman Benning has traded assets for -- what makes you think he's capable of filling this out adequately?

 

Tyler Myers has been declining for years and was one of Winnipeg's worse defensive players despite having around 60% of his starts in the OZone and not playing against the opposition's top competition. 6x5 would be atrocious for him.

 

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Goalie:  Markstrom / Demko

No complaints here, the Canucks have always been good with goalies.

 

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Most importantly, the team has fantastic work-ethic and leadership.  All these guys listed play "the right way" and none are cherry-picking floaters.  Most are still pretty darn young. The heart of this team is strong.  They routinely outplay their talent level even in a "rebuilding" phase and critical injuries where they're routinely picked to finish dead last.  The guys we've added in Miller (and maybe Myers?) are quality character guys as well.

Sure that's nice, but actually being effective and cost-efficient hockey players is more important. Beagle, Sutter and Motte have not shown the ability to transition the puck to the offensive zone and show consistent pressure there.

 

 

[cuporbust]

I think its hilarious people point out we missed the playoffs during a rebuild like that's not supposed to happen.  Some fans need to pull there head out 

[189lb enforcers?]

I think we owe The Guardian a shout out here.

 

He was critical of this management, but always presented his backing logic and for all the minus-magnet and insults hurled his way, he maintained a level of diplomacy and resolve on here. 

 

Add a No vote. 

 

 

[Honky Cat]

2 minutes ago, cuporbust said:

I think its hilarious people point out we missed the playoffs during a rebuild like that's not supposed to happen.  Some fans need to pull there head out 

They're usually the same people that say we didn't tank hard enough.?

Go figure.

[Josepho]

44 minutes ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

I didn't see your post but they may be valid arguments. I didn't mean for what I said to come across as painting everyone on that side of the fence with a broad brush, although KOS's enlightening response below shows a good example. There are valid arguments to be had on either side but from my observations the percent of the close minded and unreasonable is much higher on the anti benning side. It's kind of like modern day politics... the loudest are on the far right/left but there are many reasonable  valid positions in toward the middle 70% of the continuum that don't get heard.

Again I didn't see your post but a common anti-benning argument is he overpaid for mediocre players, which is true. But what a lot of people don't acknowledge is that for the past 4 years the Canucks have not been a desirable free agent destination and we needed to fill the squad somehow. Sure we could have filled the squad from within but JB inherited nothing 'within' to fill it with. IIRC our top prospects at the time were ?Hutton (did JB or MG draft him?), Gaunce, Shinkaruk, Jensen, and Markstrom. This has likely contributed to the need to overpay for a lot of FA signings, hopefully that has changed with the emergence of EP. That being said no one is sitting here defending the LE signing, but to be fair, LE fooled everybody and I'm not sure our conversations would be much different, possibly worse, if JB had signed Lucic or Ladd or Okposo that year. We all make mistakes and hopefully JB learned from that one. We will see in the coming days.

 

People complain about the Sutter, Roussel, Beagle contracts but like I said we likely needed to add the extra year to get these guys given the Canucks success or lack thereof. Contracts aside these are effective role players. Sutter is overpaid by 500K and Roussel/Beagle probably got 1 year extra term to their 'true' market value. In the big scheme of things these overpayments are pretty inconsequential (including Gagner) considering the Canucks position.

One serious flaw in your argument is that you're overlooking is the fact that we simply had the option to not sign these players and we had the option to fill our roster with guys in our own system like Archibald or Gaunce. Or we can look around the league for multiple examples of comparable players who weren't given obnoxious contracts. I know what's the worst that could happen if we were to go down that road.

 

I wouldn't say they're inconsequential because we could've been taking assets from other teams in exchange for taking on poor contracts from other teams. I pointed out that Carolina has done this multiple times, acquiring Teravainen and a 1st round pick collectively for taking on the salary of Patrick Marleau and Bryan Bickell.

 

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Additionally, people point to the 4 years of missed playoffs as JBs fault. But what was truly the expected outcome? The Canucks had like 37 NMCs/NTCs on the books and all those players exercised them. But people blame JB for that. I have called people out for blaming JB for the Hamhuis situation. JB had a deal in place to trade him to Washington but hamhuis nixed it as he wanted to stay in the West. By that time Dallas had traded for Russell and only offered JB a 3rd round pick for Hamhuis so JB rightfully declined... or so the story goes. Tanev probably could have been traded but who was going to be our top RHD? Stetcher? Hindsight is always 20/20 and we also don't know what offers were fielded.

You can look around the league for numerous examples of teams actually getting their players to waive their NMC/NTCs.

 

Not missing the playoffs with a stale core in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is that he's consistently brought in the wrong players who haven't helped with anything for this team -- it's highly questionable pro-scouting. 

 

Here is literally every defenceman who Benning has brought in through trade or free agency.

 

- Luca Sbisa

- Andrey Pedan

- Adam Clendening

- Philip Larsen 

- Erik Gudbranson 

- Derrick Pouliot

- Matt Bartkowski

- Michael Del Zotto

- Troy Stecher

 

The majority of these players aren't even regularly playing in the NHL anymore and the only one I'd classify as decent is Stecher -- a college free agent from the area who most likely was very interested in playing here.

 

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He comes with flaws and has made mistakes but his strength in drafting far outweigh those flaws IMO. Hopefully he has learned from those mistakes.

I don't think it does -- it's impossible to build a team solely through the draft. You have to surround your core with the proper talent. 

 

Drafting is primarily a team effort -- that's why the scouts have as many meetings as they do. Furthermore, how do you feel about the Virtanen and Juolevi selections considering who was available?

Edited June 29, 2019 by Josepho

[Sbriggs]

13 hours ago, kingofsurrey said:

Clearly its time to fire Jim Benning.

 

His drafting has been 5 out of 10 with of course the home runs  of EP and BB  ....

 

Other than that Dim Benning has been a disaster for our club.

 

Time to move one.  Who will be the next GM of the Canucks ?  Will it be next Dec ?

Thats a terrible point of view, Benning, by an overwhelming majority is doing a fine job and need to continue his rebuild. Far from a disaster.

[189lb enforcers?]

11 minutes ago, cuporbust said:

I think its hilarious people point out we missed the playoffs during a rebuild like that's not supposed to happen.  Some fans need to pull there head out 

It wasn’t a rebuild though... not for much of his tenure, remember. 

Both Linden and Benning said as much.

 

Can anyone think of a similar modern-era/cap-era rebuild where a team was basically at the cap ceiling for the majority of the time, loading up on quality UFAs like RV and Ryan Miller, etc? 

 

Was this the most expensive rebuild in modern history? 

 

Edit

”it’s not your money”.

”at least we didn’t Tank”

 

I suspect this is going to be a Spin The Wheel of excuses time instead of conceding the point about cost.

Edited June 29, 2019 by 189lb enforcers?

[Sbriggs]

2 hours ago, VancouverHabitant said:

A part of me does want to bring in a guy like Mike Gillis to oversee the signings. 

Keep Jim Benning and instead of bringing in a president, bring in a guy that’s allowed to oversee signings and or trades. 

Never Mike Gillis, theres a GM who didn't care about the future of our team and was extremely selfish. Left us in the worst position possible to start a rebuild

[Sbriggs]

1 hour ago, Josepho said:

I just went into large detail in multiple posts explaining why Benning's approach to the salary cap situation is flawed and was met with "it's not a big deal that he's overpaying these subpar players" and "you're dumb if you don't think these players are good". Who's actually closed-minded and unreasonable in this case?

still you of coarse

[cuporbust]

7 minutes ago, 189lb enforcers? said:

It wasn’t a rebuild though... not for much of his tenure, remember. 

Both Linden and Benning said as much.

 

Can anyone think of a similar modern-era/cap-era rebuild where a team was basically at the cap ceiling for the majority of the time, loading up on quality UFAs like RV and Ryan Miller, etc? 

 

Was this the most expensive rebuild in modern history? 

Personally i couldnt care less how much they spent.  They were also one of the most injury riddled teams in canuck history during that time which made a huge difference.  They litterally set injury records. If the owner was willing to spend the money,  and injuries played a massive role in the outcome , why does that matter ? Rebuilds last an average of 7 years . I am not concerned with where we are at or how we got here . Yes , there were mistakes like any other team, but overall,  Benning did just fine with the ridiculous contract messes he inherited.  

Edited June 29, 2019 by cuporbust

[Sbriggs]

1 hour ago, kingofsurrey said:

When i was 8 yrs old....  90 % of my friends believed the  Easter Bunny was real  .....    Doesn't mean they were correct in their belief.

ridiculous comparison, you must think were all 8 year olds