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[Discussion] Aqualini and Benning Missing the mark


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2 hours ago, timberz21 said:

My question is when does the losing stop?  When do we stop being the Edmonton Oilers who kept getting 1st overall, after 1st overall?

 

People seem to forget that Part of the reason oilers are where they are at is because the got tired of waiting and tried to speed things up by filling holes to there projected core. 

 

Hall for Larsson was to give there new core better support. 

signing lucic was to protect there young stars. 

Trading picks for Talbots was to shore up there goaltending. 

Reinhart was stupid but also to solidify there young d group. 

Signing Sekara was meant to improve there D core and he was the best option on the UFA market at the time (not unlike Myers this year)

 

Had oilers not rushed the gun in the final few years they’d be in a much better position

 

 

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8 hours ago, janisahockeynut said:

As most of you know, I have been a huge supporter of Jim Benning, but I think they have missed the mark.

 

The Canucks, have decided to compete for a playoff spot, which in my opinion they will not do. They will come closer, but in the end, I do not see any of the top teams getting weaker, in fact teams like Arizona, Chicago and Edmonton, now have some cap room to add, so there is some concern they will be stronger, that is not to even mention Colorado being 1 year better, with their own prospects coming of age. The addition of Maker cancels out the addition of Hughes to our blueline, so I see the west stronger in general.

 

So, where the Canuck management misjudged the situation is that they should be focussing on adding prospects, via draft picks. I question the decision not to go after those cash dumps that bring prospects via the draft.

 

Missing out on Marleau is the first mistake, and It is my opinion, that the Leafs would rather have traded with us rather than Carolina, just from a compete perspective alone. Now, today, we are interviewing Myers, who will most assuredly be asking for big money, when he is not a 7 Million dollar player. When Vancouver will have Tryamkin and Woo knocking on the door next year, this alone will put pressure on us to restructure our defense for the second time in 2 years, all along missing on the big picture...….

 

"IF" the Canucks were to have stated that they were interested in the various cap dumps, there would have been a real possibility of adding picks, which could be used as bargaining chips when looking for even better prospects, which will become available due to the expansion draft being 1 year closer.

 

Are we ready to compete? I do not believe so, and I believe that one more year of building would have been a much better idea, when considering our maturity, and incomplete roster, now we are forcing the subject, when I believe most Canuck fans, would have good, with just watching Demko, Hughes, and possibly Juolevi enter the NHL.

 

I personally, would rather the Canucks trade for picks, and continue the rebuild a bit longer, and watch the development of the mentioned players, and see what I believe would have been an amazing year with just our team developing naturally. I am not sure being pinned to a long term contract (s) is good going into the expansion draft, especially when we just survived the possibility of Edler not signing , because of us not wanting to give him an extended contract with a NTC, at the expansion draft

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the acquisition of Miller, but I believe we could have used our cap to add prospects this year, and went after the trades, and UFA's next year. 

 

I would love to hear  your thoughts on this subject. Do you feel we have shot the gun too earlier? Is it your concern?

 

Chicago has $11.9MM in cap space and only 7 forwards signed.  Seabrook is 34 at $7MM/ yr with 5 yrs remaining and Keith is 34 at $5.5MM / yr with 4 yrs remaining.  Edmonton has $8MM in cap space and is desperate for wingers in their top six.  Arizona currently has $2MM in cap space.  

 

I am not sure which cash dumps outside of Marleau you are speaking of?  You may want to provide some examples of who, what and what the return was because the ones I have seen are not a great return.   Marleau's actual cap hit is $6.25MM this year along with Luongo's would be almost $10MM.  You better be certain that pick becomes a decent player - but you will likely only know in 3 - 5 years.  

 

Colorado has been building for quite some time.  They will be good.  But they have had 4 top 4 picks to work with.  They have not taken any cap dumps to supplement picks.  I like what the Canucks are doing and think the team has turned the corner especially after this last draft class.  The defence hasn't been completed yet but wait until the season starts I think you may be surprised. 

 

Ask Petey and Boeser and Horvat and Hughes and any of the other young players how they would feel about being bad for a few more years.  Then try and convince young players in college this is where they want to be as they exit over those same few years. 

 

Edited by Borvat
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i like the job JB is doing but regarding myers, burke echoed my thoughts. h4 said myers is a good player but bengy has to look at the term and be sure if he is good for 2 or 3 years, your not carrying him for an extra 3 or 4 years. hopefully they can structure the contract so they aren’t handcuffing the next gm. they are trying to improve the defense. i’m sure they want to improve it through trades and f.a.’s. just be careful jimmy.

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14 minutes ago, ForsbergTheGreat said:

 

People seem to forget that Part of the reason oilers are where they are at is because the got tired of waiting and tried to speed things up by filling holes to there projected core. 

 

Hall for Larsson was to give there new core better support. 

signing lucic was to protect there young stars. 

Trading picks for Talbots was to shore up there goaltending. 

Reinhart was stupid but also to solidify there young d group. 

Signing Sekara was meant to improve there D core and he was the best option on the UFA market at the time (not unlike Myers this year)

 

Had oilers not rushed the gun in the final few years they’d be in a much better position

 

 

Kruger (who actually had them going in the right direction) to Eakins was a complete disaster & I 

loved every minute of it.:P

 

 

Lol...Eakins swarm defense!

(Any feeble excuse to post a Seinfeld clip)

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, janisahockeynut said:

As most of you know, I have been a huge supporter of Jim Benning, but I think they have missed the mark.

 

 

I would love to hear  your thoughts on this subject. Do you feel we have shot the gun too earlier? Is it your concern?

 

I think Jan the idea that there's only 1 "mark" isn't correct. If you look at the contending teams they are all built different ways. Boston e.g., is an interesting mix of old and ELC players. 

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11 minutes ago, ForsbergTheGreat said:

 

People seem to forget that Part of the reason oilers are where they are at is because the got tired of waiting and tried to speed things up by filling holes to there projected core. 

 

Hall for Larsson was to give there new core better support. 

signing lucic was to protect there young stars. 

Trading picks for Talbots was to shore up there goaltending. 

Reinhart was stupid but also to solidify there young d group. 

Signing Sekara was meant to improve there D core and he was the best option on the UFA market at the time (not unlike Myers this year)

 

Had oilers not rushed the gun in the final few years they’d be in a much better position

 

 

Rushed the gun?  They drafted Taylor Hall in 2010 and traded him in 2016.  He played 6 years for them with with 3 others 1st overall and 2 top 10 picks in between.  I know a rebuild is a slow process, but not that slow.  Did they make mistake, absolutely, but you don't rebuild a team by drafting and waiting for them to magically turn the team around.  You need to build around these picks, which the Oilers failed to do.

 

You seem to forget that the Oilers made the playoffs rightaway when they traded Hall and got Talbot and they were close to the Conference finals.

 

 

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7 hours ago, luckylager said:

Yeah, trying to build a winning team after a half decade of being &^@#ing awful is missing the mark. Sure.

 

We've got a high quality young core, a few good players coming down the pipeline and a competitive environment for those prospects. Petey accelerated the rebuild in a huge way and I'm fine with trying to build around the studs we've got.

 

The forward lineup is looking competitive, the D isn't. If we end up in the incredibly fortunate position of having too many good dmen in two or three years we get to deal from a position of strength. That's not a bad thing.

 

Why do you assume JB was given the opportunity to eat contracts? Other factors could and probably were at play. Does Aqua want to pay a buyout for a late 1st round pick? 

 

I don't know if we'll manage to snag Myers, but he would be a massive benefit to our defense. I'm so &^@#ing tired of just resigning myself to watching a loss before the game even starts.

 

Teams build, grow, win in all sorts of ways and I don't care how we get there, but I'm tired if losing all the time.

Sounds good, Lucky..but I'm iffy on Myers. If we can be patient, Tree would be better for that role.

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Ed Willes has similar views on Benning and the team. It's a cup half empty view point IMO. They are not the perfect team, and making the playoffs does sound like a tall order, but it can happen. Every year Benning has been trying to fill holes, make the team as competitive as they can be. They've been close in a lot of games, so I don't think they're that far off from turning things around.The D was the biggest issue last year, so Benning got rid of Pouliot and Gudbranson, and this year will be a full year of Hughes, and Maybe Juolevi makes the jump. They're also bringing in 1-2 UFA D-men. I think they'll be very competitive this seaosn, but maybe just miss out on the post season, and that's okay. It's progress.    

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52 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

This is all you need to see when you want to question Jim Benning and what he has done.  This is the future.  And all 3 players were drafted by Jim Benning.  Vasili Podkolzin may be added to this list to make it a foursome.  And all 4 players were drafted outside of the top 4 picks.  The future looks bright and it looks exciting.

For a more potent shake, add a little bit of this....and shake well!

 

 

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The team was on fire for the 1st quarter of the season or so (with Boeser off to a slow start and questionable goaltending). Now I know that's only a section of the season, but we ran into injuries again. A few less injuries and maybe we squeak into a wild card spot last year as we also ended the year decently despite having AHL level defense at the bottom pairing, but moreso due to stellar goaltending.

 

We've bolstered our top 6, possibly more reinforcements coming. Hopefully a consistent Markstrom with a determined Demko throughout the year. Barring major injury issues (although I think we've gotten some good insurance with Miller capable and even having Gaudette in Utica to start possibly at center, defense could use more depth), I see no reason why this team shouldn't at the very least be competing for a wild card spot. If we just miss it this year, next year we should only be getting better.

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This isn’t new, hes didn’t just start doing this this year. 

This had been what he’s been doing since he got here, it’s the reason linden left it’s been the mandate from ownership.

its why we have a hand full of bad contracts already. Looking to add a few more by the sounds of things. 

And it’s based on the hope the goaltender can repeat his “career” year. 

It hasn’t worked yet I highly doubt he can BUY a playoff spot this year. 

I’m not sure jims the real problem FA has been a part of the problem owner since 2012. 

Still no depth the cupboards are far from stocked with a grade prospects especially for a team that’s picked top 10. 

Not as much cap space as he’d hoped especially with boeser still needing a contract.

Spender Jims ufa lottery winners might be fewer than years past. 

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3 hours ago, timberz21 said:

My question is when does the losing stop?  When do we stop being the Edmonton Oilers who kept getting 1st overall, after 1st overall?

 

At one point, it nice to have a cupboard full of prospect but you have to move forward, show progress.  If Benning is going to tank another year, what message does that send to Horvat, Petey, Hughes and Boeser?  Canucks won't just wake up one day and make the playoffs magically.  You gotta work hard at it, show progress and build on previous' year momemtum and JB gotta show that management is supporting them by adding significant pieces.

 

Every year there are surprise and deceptions.  Look at the Islanders last year, nobody picked them to make the playoffs, or the Devils 2 years ago.  Someone in the West will fall and the Canucks can take advantage of that.  You say that Colorado and Phoenix are getting better....but so are we.  Petey is entering his 2nd year, we added a legit top 6 players and might add a top 4 D via UFA.  We jump 8 points in the standing last year, that's progress and we gotta show more this year, even if we miss the playoffs by 1 pts, it'll still be worth it.  We gotta give our guys a little bit of compete and not just tank from the start.

I dont really count last year as tanking we tried to make the playoffs, our star players werent ready yet. Hughes played like 8 games and it was Petey's rookie season. I was very happy how the team was progressing. Management definitely jumped the gun on trading a first though. I would have liked to see the team keep progressing into a playoff spot without giving a first up and then trading a first later to acquire the final piece we are missing. Defense is still a major issue and everyone knows top pairing Dman are almost exclusively acquired through the draft.     

Edited by Bure_Pavel
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These past 6 yrs...

 

We haven't done...

We didn't manage to...

We w/c/shoulda' done...

 

So, what HAVE we done?

1- Completely reshuffled the deck

2- Despite this necessity, showed respect to our LT-vets, like Twins, Hammy, CT & Edler. Didn't treat them like excess bags of coffee beans

3- Completely restocked barren prospect shelves

4- Had a GM start doing biz with ALL his counterparts. His ****ing phone rings!

5- Recycled many pieces of our old core into useful future

6- Finally opened some cap space

7- Kept some placeholders(had to overpay a fair share), who could bear the brunt of 6 yrs of mediocrity. But also kept up appearances that we were always game & trying

8- Held back many of our drafted youth in various leagues. For this KEY reason, many of our mid-rd youth will probably outperform other rivals' 1st rounders

 

There are others, but we've done quite a bit, eh?!

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Strongly agree with OP on this.  But I do recognize that there are valid arguments on the other side.  Having Petterson on an entry level deal would tempt most GMs to accelerate the process.  If we were one D closer to respectability, I'd find it all more convincing.  But we are going to be up against Colorado in our conference when we're good again, and they are a lot deeper in top prospects than we are, like OP said.  So I think this move will limit us at that point. 

It's strange that as late as last Thursday when Aquilini was on air with Bettman before the draft, he was still preaching patience and no short-cuts.  Then the Miller trade goes down.  Either these guys are masters of mis-direction or the plan is a moving target.  I suspect the latter, and think back to Linden's departure last summer when there were all those rumors about conflicting strategic visions.  It looks more credible in the light of what's just happened. 

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8 minutes ago, timberz21 said:

Rushed the gun?  They drafted Taylor Hall in 2010 and traded him in 2016.  He played 6 years for them with with 3 others 1st overall and 2 top 10 picks in between.  I know a rebuild is a slow process, but not that slow.  Did they make mistake, absolutely, but you don't rebuild a team by drafting and waiting for them to magically turn the team around.  You need to build around these picks, which the Oilers failed to do.

Hall was drafted in 2010 and by 2013 they were already giving up picks for the now. Perron, scrivens, fistric, brown, smithson fasth cost them 2nd, 3x 3rds, 3x 4th, 5th, 7th (sounds familiar) and they also signed pouliot who they are still paying off today. 

 

8 minutes ago, timberz21 said:

You seem to forget that the Oilers made the playoffs rightaway when they traded Hall and got Talbot and they were close to the Conference finals.

Great and where are they today. Would canucks making the second round next year only to revert back to a bottom feeder the falling two years be considered a success to you?  

 

Is the goal not to build a legit cup contender? Or have people giving up on that and are just desperate for a few extra games in April.  I don’t know about you but I’m more interested in hardware. 

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as always over the past few seasons

injuries will be the key to the upcoming season

 

i still think the perfect addition to this team's core would have been stone

jt miller is not stone, but is stone like, maybe stone light, not quite the same player, but brings a lot of the same things

don't sell low on this acquisition

he will make a big difference to the top 6

and fills a big hole

 

the top 2 lines are looking pretty solid

that will make a big difference

 

let's see what happens on d

i'm not a big myers fan

but he will help for a couple of seasons

 

i see this team on the verge of making the playoffs

what no one knows yet is how the young ones will improve

if ep40 really is the real deal he will be better

so might brock, he'll start out healthy

bo is a bull and improves every season without exception

what's hughes going to do? he could do a lot

any strong growth from within this core

and this team will be fairly strong

i won't bet against this group making the playoffs

 

am disappointed you are janis

 

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