The rising NHL powerhouse that Jim Benning constructed

[Roger Neilsons Towel]

4 minutes ago, RowdyCanuck said:

You think your towl can handle another cup final run? 

Oh it will be ready. 

[ItTakesAnArmy]

 

 

 

Revisionist History

 

 

Some analysts believed he was rushed into the NHL, resulting in lost confidence while playing for a struggling Leafs team. - Who are the core? How old?

the team requested that Benning be demoted to their International Hockey League affiliate Milwaukee Admirals, although he declined. - Tryamkin?

but was scratched again for the remainder of the season afterward due to the organization's belief that he was too small

Benning believed he was playing well, resulting in confusion between the two sides - Tryamkin? Dahlen?

 

You would think that his personal experiences would not allow some of those above mentioned things from happening

 

 

• Pass it to Bulis

Jim Benning’s revisionist “rebuild” history doesn’t hold water

Let’s be clear right from the top: I’m not accusing Canucks GM Jim Benning of propaganda, and certainly not at the level of the totalitarian government of Orwell’s 1984. He did, however, try to revise a little history during his post-contract-renewal media scrum and encouraged a bit of doublethink.

 

At one point, Benning was asked if his plan for the Canucks had taken longer than expected to come to fruition, referencing his initial declaration when he was hired in 2014 that “this is a team we can turn around in a hurry.”

It’s a quote that has come back to haunt Benning in the following years, as the team decidedly has not been turned around in a hurry. In more recent years, the team has preached patience. In 2016, Benning even said, “We’ve never once said this was going to be easy or fast.”

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Benning was prepared for that line of questioning with a little bit of spin. Just call him Chris Barron.

“We did turn it around that next year, we signed some players, we made the playoffs,” said Benning. “But at that point, I realized that, you know, with the group we had, we were going to have to try to rebuild the team and that was going to happen through drafting well and signing some free agents to help these young players develop. And that's the course of action we took.”

In other words, the Canucks’ rebuild under Jim Benning started in 2015, after they were ousted from the playoffs in the first round by the Calgary Flames.

That certainly seems like revisionist history. After all, this is a management group that refused to even use the word “rebuild” until 2017, two years after Benning supposedly had this revelation that a rebuild was necessary.

It’s classic doublethink, which is “the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.” Despite everything indicating the team wasn’t rebuilding, you must think of it as a rebuild. And if you can accept the contradiction and believe that the team was both rebuilding and not rebuilding at the same time, then you’ll believe anything at all.

It’s also not how Benning spoke at the time. Instead of taking the first-round playoff exit as a sign of a need to rebuild, Benning and his management team seemed to take making the playoffs at all as a sign they were moving in the right direction, at least publically. In an interview with Bob McKenzie heading into the 2015-16 season, Benning suggested the Canucks would once again be a 100-point team and make the playoffs thanks to an infusion of youth, speed, and toughness.

For the moment, however, let’s ignore what Benning said and look at what he did. What did Benning do immediately after they made the playoffs that first season?

There were a few early moves that could be interpreted as rebuilding moves. Benning sent Eddie Lack to the Carolina Hurricanes for a 3rd and a 7th-round pick. He somehow got the San Jose Sharks to give him a 7th-round pick for Patrick McNally. Kevin Bieksa was moved to the Anaheim Ducks for a 2nd-round pick in 2016.

Those are decent moves to add picks, particularly when you consider how Lack and Bieksa saw their play drop off significantly after they were moved and McNally lasted just two seasons in the AHL before dropping to the ECHL and going overseas to Europe. Benning also traded Zack Kassian and a 5th-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens for Brandon Prust, but their reasoning had more to do with Kassian’s personal struggles off the ice than the team itself.

Benning’s biggest move, however, was the polar opposite of a rebuilding move. He traded Nick Bonino, Adam Clendening, and a 2016 2nd-round pick for Brandon Sutter and a conditional 3rd.

That’s a move designed for short-term success, not for a rebuild that prioritizes long-term success at the cost of short-term pain.

If we fast forward a year to 2016, when the Canucks would supposedly be on year into their rebuilding process, there’s no sign whatsoever of a rebuild taking place.

2016 was the year Benning traded Jared McCann, a 2nd-round pick, and a 4th-round pick for Erik Gudbranson and a 5th. That’s a move that sacrificed multiple pieces with future potential for a player that was meant to help the Canucks win immediately.

2016 was also the year Benning signed Loui Eriksson to a six-year, $36 million contract. That’s not the signing of a rebuilding team. With an eye towards how Eriksson had performed with Daniel and Henrik Sedin in international competition, that was a win-now-and-damn-the-future-consequences signing.

The intent here isn’t to revisit a couple of Benning’s most-derided moves as Canucks GM, but to instead drive home the point that the Canucks were absolutely not in rebuild mode in 2015 or 2016. There is no possible way to interpret the moves made in those years as those of a rebuilding team.

That’s not even to mention the 2016 trade deadline, when the Canucks didn’t make a single move, eventually losing both Dan Hamhuis and Radim Vrbata to free agency, acquiring neither picks nor prospects.

That’s not even to say that all of Benning’s moves at the time were bad. Trading Hunter Shinkaruk to the Calgary Flames for Markus Granlund worked out pretty well, as did moving a second-round pick for Sven Baertschi. But neither of those moves look like rebuilding moves either. In both cases, Benning moved a prospect or a pick for an older player that could help the team immediately.

This revisionist history doesn’t do Benning any favours. In fact, it unravels one of the standard defences of Jim Benning’s early years as GM.

Fans of the work Benning has done as Canucks GM will argue that he had no choice but to try to make the playoffs in his early years on the job, whether because of an edict from ownership or because the team owed it to the Sedins. Therefore, Benning shouldn’t be judged for not starting the rebuild sooner, because it was out of his control. In this view the Canucks’ rebuild didn’t start in earnest until 2017, when Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen were traded at the deadline and Trevor Linden finally uttered the word “rebuild.”

Revising history so that the rebuild started two years earlier doesn’t do Benning any favours. In fact, it makes those years look even worse.

The moves made by Benning in 2016 and 2017 make sense if the team was trying to get back to the playoffs. You can argue whether they were the right moves or not, but at least they make sense. If the team was rebuilding, however, then his moves make no sense whatsoever.

As I see it, there are three ways to interpret Benning’s revisionist history. One is that he’s being dishonest and trying to spin his early years as GM to look better. That’s not a particularly good look.

Another possibility is that he’s being absolutely honest and that everything he and the Canucks did after his first year on the job was, in fact, a rebuild. That’s not a good look either. Apart from drafting fairly well, the Canucks didn’t do any actual rebuilding in 2015 or 2016.

The third possibility is that Benning is being completely honest, but that he has a definition of the word “rebuild” in his mind that bears no resemblance to how anyone else defines the word “rebuild.”

Maybe that’s it. Maybe Benning sees “drafting well and signing some free agents” as rebuilding. For some reason, that’s the possibility that scares me the most.

I guess there’s one other possibility: I’m reading way too much into one thing Benning said. But what am I supposed to do? He said it. Am I a fool for thinking that the words coming out of Benning’s mouth reflect what he thinks and believes?

I just think it's worthwhile to have a clear view of the past. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic about the future of the Canucks and believing that they are currently on the right path for success, but those that revise the past are doomed to repeat it.

 

Just throwing out there the other opinions as well.

IMO the team needs another two players under 23 to become the core

The Playoffs this year are a crap shoot, it isn't really hard to be as good a half the league but this division is tightening up and the conference as well. It is looking like the Canucks only route to the playoffs is a top three in the division.

They are still fragile only an injury to a main player away, players like Beagle, Sutter, Eriksson, Motte while are small upgrades on those that replace them, they are not the core players and at sometime other players MUST take their places and if not by playing prospects now then by signing UFA's, taking up roster spots and NOT developing and another possibility, trading away the future.

 

A dynasty? Pure imagination and hope to try to figure out who will be on this team in 3 years since a lot of players will be in the mid 30's or older. We know one player that will not be on the team, the Canucks 1rst round pick this year or next.

 

 

Edited December 2, 2019 by ItTakesAnArmy

[Yung1]

18 minutes ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

Injury prone 21 year old. It's even more painful considering who came right after them. Either the scouting reports were way off on Juolevi or they took a prospect based on positional need which is hugely stupid. 

How exactly does one project a player becoming injury prone in their scouting evaluation?

[Tortorella's Rant]

4 minutes ago, Curmudgeon said:

They took Pettersson because they wanted a number one centre. They took Boeser because they needed a scoring winger. They took Hughes because they needed an offensive defenceman to increase scoring from the back end. They took Jake because they wanted a power forward. The took Juolevi because they wanted  premier defenceman who could move the puck. When HAVEN'T they taken somebody based on positional need?

When there are arguably numerous better players, including defensemen. The scouting department, or ultimately Benning who makes this call, was way off here.

[Roger Neilsons Towel]

2 minutes ago, Yung1 said:

How exactly does one project a player becoming injury prone in their scouting evaluation?

A full DNA analysis. Obviously. 

[Tortorella's Rant]

4 minutes ago, Yung1 said:

How exactly does one project a player becoming injury prone in their scouting evaluation?

Obviously they don't. I'm not saying anyone is at fault for that so lets cut that out right now. 

[Yung1]

1 minute ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

Obviously they don't. I'm not saying anyone is at fault for that so lets cut that out right now. 

Juolevi's showed talent, smarts, and progress at every level he's played. What is it other than his injuries that make this pick a scouting failure?

[Tortorella's Rant]

1 minute ago, Yung1 said:

Juolevi's showed talent, smarts, and progress at every level he's played. What is it other than his injuries that make this pick a scouting failure?

Showed the same as those other numerous players. Then they're just very "unlucky" with this pick. Certainly isn't the first time. Rinse and repeat. It's disappointing.. 

[WeneedLumme]

11 minutes ago, Roger Neilsons Towel said:

A full DNA analysis. Obviously. 

That would be a good start. But I think it would need to be supplemented with a crystal ball. Perhaps one of the "realistic fans" could lend JB one of theirs.

[ItTakesAnArmy]

16 minutes ago, Captain Canuck #12 said:

And Benning's been doing more winning than losing in the last few drafts.  I'd surely rather have him miss out on drafting Tkachuk than to have him miss out on drafting either Pettersson or Hughes.  All the GMs who did that must  really be kicking themselves in their rear ends!

Both Pettersson and Hughes and for that matter all the 1rst round picks so far except McCann and Boeser have been lottery picks so there was no plan to get these guys.

13 minutes ago, Curmudgeon said:

They took Pettersson because they wanted a number one centre. They took Boeser because they needed a scoring winger. They took Hughes because they needed an offensive defenceman to increase scoring from the back end. They took Jake because they wanted a power forward. The took Juolevi because they wanted  premier defenceman who could move the puck. When HAVEN'T they taken somebody based on positional need?

If you look at several scouting reports and draft lists these players are pretty much BPA with the exception of Virtanen and Juolevi, with those two he went a little off the lists, not much, but a little. Both players were listed at their draft spots on a few lists but not the majority.

Boeser was listed at 25 or 26 on 9 lists so he WAS BPA.

 

They need  Podkolzin and this years 1rst to work out along with resigning Tryamkin.

[Yung1]

2 minutes ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

Showed the same as those other numerous players. Then they're just very "unlucky" with this pick. Certainly isn't the first time. Rinse and repeat. It's disappointing.. 

lol dude. He's hit on far more picks than he's missed. You have the pessimism infection and it's clouding your perspective from reality.

Do you really expect a 100% success rate? Do you really choose to ignore the massive wins in Boeser, Pettersson (off the board pick), and Hughes? Do you really choose to ignore the promise shown in a vast amount of our late round picks? I'm sorry man but you're totally out to lunch if you genuinely think drafting has been bad under Benning. To the contrary, it's best it's been in our franchises' 50 year history.

[Alflives]

Just now, WeneedLumme said:

That would be a good start. But I think it would need to be supplemented with a crystal ball. Perhaps one of the "realistic fans" could lend JB one of theirs.

Alf, the Swamy, will do it for free!  

[RowdyCanuck]

9 minutes ago, ItTakesAnArmy said:

 

 

 

Revisionist History

 

 

Some analysts believed he was rushed into the NHL, resulting in lost confidence while playing for a struggling Leafs team. - Who are the core? How old?

the team requested that Benning be demoted to their International Hockey League affiliate Milwaukee Admirals, although he declined. - Tryamkin?

but was scratched again for the remainder of the season afterward due to the organization's belief that he was too small

Benning believed he was playing well, resulting in confusion between the two sides - Tryamkin? Dahlen?

 

You would think that his personal experiences would not allow some of those above mentioned things from happening

 

 

• Pass it to Bulis

Jim Benning’s revisionist “rebuild” history doesn’t hold water

Let’s be clear right from the top: I’m not accusing Canucks GM Jim Benning of propaganda, and certainly not at the level of the totalitarian government of Orwell’s 1984. He did, however, try to revise a little history during his post-contract-renewal media scrum and encouraged a bit of doublethink.

 

At one point, Benning was asked if his plan for the Canucks had taken longer than expected to come to fruition, referencing his initial declaration when he was hired in 2014 that “this is a team we can turn around in a hurry.”

It’s a quote that has come back to haunt Benning in the following years, as the team decidedly has not been turned around in a hurry. In more recent years, the team has preached patience. In 2016, Benning even said, “We’ve never once said this was going to be easy or fast.”

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Benning was prepared for that line of questioning with a little bit of spin. Just call him Chris Barron.

“We did turn it around that next year, we signed some players, we made the playoffs,” said Benning. “But at that point, I realized that, you know, with the group we had, we were going to have to try to rebuild the team and that was going to happen through drafting well and signing some free agents to help these young players develop. And that's the course of action we took.”

In other words, the Canucks’ rebuild under Jim Benning started in 2015, after they were ousted from the playoffs in the first round by the Calgary Flames.

That certainly seems like revisionist history. After all, this is a management group that refused to even use the word “rebuild” until 2017, two years after Benning supposedly had this revelation that a rebuild was necessary.

It’s classic doublethink, which is “the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.” Despite everything indicating the team wasn’t rebuilding, you must think of it as a rebuild. And if you can accept the contradiction and believe that the team was both rebuilding and not rebuilding at the same time, then you’ll believe anything at all.

It’s also not how Benning spoke at the time. Instead of taking the first-round playoff exit as a sign of a need to rebuild, Benning and his management team seemed to take making the playoffs at all as a sign they were moving in the right direction, at least publically. In an interview with Bob McKenzie heading into the 2015-16 season, Benning suggested the Canucks would once again be a 100-point team and make the playoffs thanks to an infusion of youth, speed, and toughness.

For the moment, however, let’s ignore what Benning said and look at what he did. What did Benning do immediately after they made the playoffs that first season?

There were a few early moves that could be interpreted as rebuilding moves. Benning sent Eddie Lack to the Carolina Hurricanes for a 3rd and a 7th-round pick. He somehow got the San Jose Sharks to give him a 7th-round pick for Patrick McNally. Kevin Bieksa was moved to the Anaheim Ducks for a 2nd-round pick in 2016.

Those are decent moves to add picks, particularly when you consider how Lack and Bieksa saw their play drop off significantly after they were moved and McNally lasted just two seasons in the AHL before dropping to the ECHL and going overseas to Europe. Benning also traded Zack Kassian and a 5th-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens for Brandon Prust, but their reasoning had more to do with Kassian’s personal struggles off the ice than the team itself.

Benning’s biggest move, however, was the polar opposite of a rebuilding move. He traded Nick Bonino, Adam Clendening, and a 2016 2nd-round pick for Brandon Sutter and a conditional 3rd.

That’s a move designed for short-term success, not for a rebuild that prioritizes long-term success at the cost of short-term pain.

If we fast forward a year to 2016, when the Canucks would supposedly be on year into their rebuilding process, there’s no sign whatsoever of a rebuild taking place.

2016 was the year Benning traded Jared McCann, a 2nd-round pick, and a 4th-round pick for Erik Gudbranson and a 5th. That’s a move that sacrificed multiple pieces with future potential for a player that was meant to help the Canucks win immediately.

2016 was also the year Benning signed Loui Eriksson to a six-year, $36 million contract. That’s not the signing of a rebuilding team. With an eye towards how Eriksson had performed with Daniel and Henrik Sedin in international competition, that was a win-now-and-damn-the-future-consequences signing.

The intent here isn’t to revisit a couple of Benning’s most-derided moves as Canucks GM, but to instead drive home the point that the Canucks were absolutely not in rebuild mode in 2015 or 2016. There is no possible way to interpret the moves made in those years as those of a rebuilding team.

That’s not even to mention the 2016 trade deadline, when the Canucks didn’t make a single move, eventually losing both Dan Hamhuis and Radim Vrbata to free agency, acquiring neither picks nor prospects.

That’s not even to say that all of Benning’s moves at the time were bad. Trading Hunter Shinkaruk to the Calgary Flames for Markus Granlund worked out pretty well, as did moving a second-round pick for Sven Baertschi. But neither of those moves look like rebuilding moves either. In both cases, Benning moved a prospect or a pick for an older player that could help the team immediately.

This revisionist history doesn’t do Benning any favours. In fact, it unravels one of the standard defences of Jim Benning’s early years as GM.

Fans of the work Benning has done as Canucks GM will argue that he had no choice but to try to make the playoffs in his early years on the job, whether because of an edict from ownership or because the team owed it to the Sedins. Therefore, Benning shouldn’t be judged for not starting the rebuild sooner, because it was out of his control. In this view the Canucks’ rebuild didn’t start in earnest until 2017, when Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen were traded at the deadline and Trevor Linden finally uttered the word “rebuild.”

Revising history so that the rebuild started two years earlier doesn’t do Benning any favours. In fact, it makes those years look even worse.

The moves made by Benning in 2016 and 2017 make sense if the team was trying to get back to the playoffs. You can argue whether they were the right moves or not, but at least they make sense. If the team was rebuilding, however, then his moves make no sense whatsoever.

As I see it, there are three ways to interpret Benning’s revisionist history. One is that he’s being dishonest and trying to spin his early years as GM to look better. That’s not a particularly good look.

Another possibility is that he’s being absolutely honest and that everything he and the Canucks did after his first year on the job was, in fact, a rebuild. That’s not a good look either. Apart from drafting fairly well, the Canucks didn’t do any actual rebuilding in 2015 or 2016.

The third possibility is that Benning is being completely honest, but that he has a definition of the word “rebuild” in his mind that bears no resemblance to how anyone else defines the word “rebuild.”

Maybe that’s it. Maybe Benning sees “drafting well and signing some free agents” as rebuilding. For some reason, that’s the possibility that scares me the most.

I guess there’s one other possibility: I’m reading way too much into one thing Benning said. But what am I supposed to do? He said it. Am I a fool for thinking that the words coming out of Benning’s mouth reflect what he thinks and believes?

I just think it's worthwhile to have a clear view of the past. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic about the future of the Canucks and believing that they are currently on the right path for success, but those that revise the past are doomed to repeat it.

 

 

 

 

I guess you missed interviews where iirr Trevor called the beginning  a retool cause the team didn't want to do that to the Sedins. 

The hammer trade didn't happen cause if the rumors  are true cause of Dallas and iirr vrbata had a ntc or something didn't he?

the Gubby trade at the time was a decent trade on paper, we needed a D man and Jim saw a chance to add a big mean d man that could fight, those guys don't come around often anymore. So I would say it was worth the risk.

The loui signing.......well on paper should have worked but remember jim wanted Lucic instead.

if you look at it from a paper stand point , the moves should have done better.  

 

 

[Yung1]

Jim's made some mistakes but I'd also argue he's learnt from them. He's signing much better contracts than he did when he first started and he's made much better trades as of late. The team is coming along and JB is coming along with it. At the beginning he drafter for need and now he's stated multiple times that they are focusing on BPA. He's learning and at this point, I think he's an extremely strong GM. 

People forget how it took AV and GM MG a while before they really took off. I see a strong foundation in Green and Benning. Niether are perfect but they have good heads of their shoulders and are humble enough to learn from where they went wrong. The team's in good hands in my opinion.

[RowdyCanuck]

2 minutes ago, Yung1 said:

lol dude. He's hit on far more picks than he's missed. You have the pessimism infection and it's clouding your perspective from reality.

Do you really expect a 100% success rate? Do you really choose to ignore the massive wins in Boeser, Pettersson (off the board pick), and Hughes? Do you really choose to ignore the promise shown in a vast amount of our late round picks? I'm sorry man but you're totally out to lunch if you genuinely think drafting has been bad under Benning. To the contrary, it's best it's been in our franchises' 50 year history.

His a fan that remembers the years of bad drafting so he holds Jim to a higher standard. 

Also with Jim not adding firsts we need to hit on everyone of them unless he goes out and gets another first or two. 

Also it would help if MT didn't end up in Calgary and lighting things up and wasn't the straw that stirred the drink in Calgary and watching the Canucks play MT is the missing piece up front and we are waiting for a prospect that hasn't even played an NHL game yet.....

 

[RowdyCanuck]

2 minutes ago, Yung1 said:

Jim's made some mistakes but I'd also argue he's learnt from them. He's signing much better contracts than he did when he first started and he's made much better trades as of late. The team is coming along and JB is coming along with it. At the beginning he drafter for need and now he's stated multiple times that they are focusing on BPA. He's learning and at this point, I think he's an extremely strong GM. 

People forget how it took AV and GM MG a while before they really took off. I see a strong foundation in Green and Benning. Niether are perfect but they have good heads of their shoulders and are humble enough to learn from where they went wrong. The team's in good hands in my opinion.

That's cause gillis couldn't draft or trade for an real top six player to play with kes. 

If you switched jim with gillis , I'm willing to bet money the end of that story would have been different  

i agree jim has the team in a nice spot and once prospects start pushing and then we will be  add picks during our dynasty 

[Gaudette Celly]

1 hour ago, aGENT said:

https://www.nucksmisconduct.com/2019/12/2/20989214/jim-benning-vancouver-canucks-nhl-powerhouse

 

I predict that in a couple of years from now those who prefer to look backward will be amazed at the NHL powerhouse that Benning built because they didn’t see it coming and those looking forward will be wondering if the team can repeat its first Stanley Cup Championship.

 

Lost track of how many times I've said that exact thing the past five years...

[RWMc1]

37 minutes ago, Roger Neilsons Towel said:

 

I believe the Author is creatively implying that in the future he is describing we have already won our first Stanley Cup Championship (as the Canucks) and the fans are now wondering whether a repeat is possible. 

After re-reading that part, I agree.

[Darius]

Interesting that some keep up bringing up the 2014 and 2016 first round picks.....

 

The way I look at it is this

 

Unless something goes horribly sideways this year the Canucks will have 3 consecutive calder cup finalists.  BB,EP and QH.

 

Im too lazy to do the homework here but how many teams in the past have had 3 in a row?  How about how many teams have had three in a row without ever picking in the top 4?

 

To make matters more interesting one can argue that at least 2 out of those 3 were not obvious draft picks.  Many of the rankings I saw had EP ranked below 5th.  How about BB where he was picked?  Surely those players around him were ranked so closely how can anyone argue he was  sure pick?

 

At the end of the day the impact of JB's wins in the first round largely outweigh the perceived misses.

[RowdyCanuck]

1 minute ago, Gaudette Celly said:

Lost track of how many times I've said that exact thing the past five years...

Hey once you reach a decade your Canuck jersey will turn orange and blue