what did we gain by not re-signing any of Markstrom/Tanev/Toffoli?

[Ajax-]

13 hours ago, Squamfan said:

Nope u have it wrong. No offer was made , no communication with Chris

Trumpism at it's finest.

 

and not even from an old white guy

[JM_]

13 hours ago, King Heffy said:

Cap space in 2 years when the core is ready to contend for a cup.

[IBatch]

26 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

Kinda funny to be told repeatedly how bad CANUCK ownership and management are. Interfering ownership, incompetent management in ALL aspects of the game and yes a very poor coach who really doesn’t know what he is doing. After all he is not a veteran coach. 
 

What happens in Calgary when they miss playoffs? After all they are further along the development curve than Vancouver. Johnny Hockey, gone! Are they in for another rebuild? Does Sutter commit to another 5-7 years? 
 

How does the tire fire in Buffalo get put out? Vancouver has problems??? 
 

Trade the vets that are not in the plans. Play the prospects. Reassess at years end as per normal. Get Podz and Tryamkin signed. Draft a top 10 prospect. Oh ya, cut Hughes TOI down to 20 minutes! If the decision is to let Green go kidnap Trotz! When the choice was between Willie and Barry they should have offered him 5% of the team as a signing bonus! Hey, sign me up as Pres!

Nice that at least a fair amount of regular posters don't just get fixated on our team, and know what else is going on around the league.   Don't buy the hiding behind the wall with unreasonable and completely unsubstantiated "high standards" thing either.  It is what it is.  We have a very good group of young kids who carry the mail, now including our goaltender, with some decent - good vets to help still under contract.   It's hockey and you just never do know, but i'd be a little shocked if when things go back to business as usual in our own division next season (US will for sure be vaccinated, a lot of CAN by then too), that we won't be in a favourable position for 3-4 years while ANA, LA, SJ play catch up, and we already have a decent record against the central (and CHI wont be long behind... giving out their last gasps at the moment, maybe this is their last kick at the can after all we managed 7th overall with the Sedins around 33 years old right?).   

 

Next year I see as a must win make the playoffs.   And think we have excellent odds of doing it.   If we don't, and it's not because 1/2 our regulars are out ( because of bad luck),  maybe i will start to worry about things.   This year fine.   Sure i'd prefer playoffs, but if there ever was a time to add to our pool it's right now, need another blue chip C or D in the pipe. 

[Mrwipeout]

What we GAINED??? we gained capspace for EP40 and hughes...and soon brock again. THe goal is cup within 3 years from now so im guessing they are just gonna let this season slide and hope new talent will rise up and be able to afford to keep others. we wouldnt have had such a crappy season if we would have had more time to prepare and get the Defense more organized. we could have been in  the middle but instead we are in the bottom. 

[gameburn]

19 minutes ago, AbrasiveAjax said:

sarcasm? or just more bashing on Sutter Beagle and Roussel?

 

How's' the last few games been without a healthy Sutter, Beagle in the linup?

March was good and was good without Pettersson.  The problem is numbers of NHL-ready players and the teams we're playing.  

 

Beagle and Roussel have not been difference makers this year.  Both have more penalties than points.  Sutter has been better than the other two put together, that's why so many on the forum are keen on trading him.  The problem this team has is the albatross contracts -- including the Luongo recapture.  If Beagle, Eriksson, and Roussel (and maybe Sutter) had not been signed, we might not have done as well in the last playoff run, but we'd be better set up right now and next year.

 

Consider Vegas: no first round pick the first year, no high pick since.  But still better than us and most of the division they play in.  The trick? Depth, speed; in part because they started with no LE or Beagle contracts. Younger overall because of the same.  A team without bad accumulated contracts they can't get rid of has flexibility, in particular the ability to respond to the market/draft etc. Seattle will be better than us too, probably, assuming the rules remain the same as they were for Vegas.

Edited March 28, 2021 by gameburn

[IBatch]

2 minutes ago, Mrwipeout said:

What we GAINED??? we gained capspace for EP40 and hughes...and soon brock again. THe goal is cup within 3 years from now so im guessing they are just gonna let this season slide and hope new talent will rise up and be able to afford to keep others. we wouldnt have had such a crappy season if we would have had more time to prepare and get the Defense more organized. we could have been in  the middle but instead we are in the bottom. 

And against the North our record is much better then it was last year.    But our coaches suck, we should have handcuffed the team with familiar but guys going UFA, and expect better results with the same darn team lol.   This year is the best one we could get to add, and it looks like that's going to happen.  Next year, back to a division with three patsies.   Should be four with ARI, i won't say Seattle will or won't be, expect them to be decent at least. 

[Ajax-]

30 minutes ago, gameburn said:

March was good and was good without Pettersson.  The problem is numbers of NHL-ready players and the teams we're playing.  

 

Beagle and Roussel have not been difference makers this year.  Both have more penalties than points.  Sutter has been better than the other two put together, that's why so many on the forum are keen on trading him.  The problem this team has is the albatross contracts -- including the Luongo recapture.  If Beagle, Eriksson, and Roussel (and maybe Sutter) had not been signed, we might not have done as well in the last playoff run, but we'd be better set up right now and next year.

 

Consider Vegas: no first round pick the first year, no high pick since.  But still better than us and most of the division they play in.  The trick? Depth, speed; in part because they started with no LE or Beagle contracts. Younger overall because of the same.  A team without bad accumulated contracts they can't get rid of has flexibility, in particular the ability to respond to the market/draft etc. Seattle will be better than us too, probably, assuming the rules remain the same as they were for Vegas.

We did well as a whole team in the playoff run, but your statement is like a double edged sword, pros and cons both ways. Bottom line is we had no other NHL ready players better than those 3 guys that everyone seems to hate on or find fault because of their salaries. 

 

Consider Vegas: The Trick? Have the NHL ED and pick your team wisely. Every team has bad contracts or Cap issues, even Vegas. ie Schmidt for a 3rd.

 

Sorry but comparing Vegas's hand picked ED team to ours is not realistic at all, imho

 

 

[Dazzle]

2 hours ago, gameburn said:

A good piece of contrarian logic.  I do like the way you bring up the way rebuilds seem to take longer and feel a lot less certain.

 

Let's look at things from a slightly different angle: has our "new" GM of X number of years ago learned enough to keep him for another year, or should he be fired at the end of the year or even sooner?  This is where your comment on "growing pains" comes in.

 

Pros: 

(1) Has learned not to trade away 2nd and 3rd round picks for other teams' reject prospects (Linden Vey was the worst, but there were many.) 

(2) Has learned not to sign 30-plus year-olds to long-term deals (rejected Markstrom and Tanev for these reasons, unlike Eriksson, Beagle.)

(3) related to (2): now signs 30-year olds to short-term deals (Hamonic, and to a degree Schmidt here.  Edler for 2 years, too, and Holtby for 2.) 

(4) Has learned to trade better: e.g., dumping Gudbranson in favour of Tanner Pearson.  Although it looks on the surface like we are lacking D, in fact, Gudbranson didn't work out here. (We'll leave aside the trade that brought G. here.)

 

Cons:

(1) still trades away draft picks/prospects for players that other teams seem to get off of us for free in the off-season.  (J.T. Miller, Schmidt, and of course Toffoli for Madden AND a second round pick, lol.)

(2) still seems to value "experience" and a player's past achievements on a winning team above the real value of a player -- e.g., Holtby, and to some extent J.T. Miller, Toffoli, Pearson, and of course Beagle.  Not the money ball type of evaluator. 

(3) "the growing pains" were made worse by the Eriksson deal HE SIGNED.  And worse again by signing Sutter, Roussel and in particular Beagle.  All we need is for Myers to begin aging prematurely and we really have a catastrophe. 

 

Intangibles: (a) he's actually been unlucky in the draft: no number 1 pick in spite of finishing bottom of the league a couple of times.  New Jersey got those lol. Another piece of bad luck: (b) the Luongo re-capture debacle.  This was Gillis's work, not Benning's.  That 3 million would have kept us Tanev or Toffoli.

 

On balance, he's learned a lot, but has not corrected the tendency to over-value older players like Beagle, Eriksson and Edler.  This is a fatal flaw in an era where players now peak at 23 to 27 years of age.  His other tendency of trading away picks for short-term fixes is not nearly as problematic, because the likes of J.T. Miller and even Toffoli really do make a difference.

 

I've expanded my original post from here. Please see the other post instead.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Dazzle

[Josepho]

There's a difference between signing an actual good player in Toffoli to a very reasonable deal while you're trying to contend and signing guys like Beagle and Roussel to massively overpaid 4 year deals.

 

The whole reason people were upset over the Beagle/Roussel signings is that they were worried that something like this would happen as a direct result of those signings.

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Josepho

[Dazzle]

2 hours ago, gameburn said:

A good piece of contrarian logic.  I do like the way you bring up the way rebuilds seem to take longer and feel a lot less certain.

 

Let's look at things from a slightly different angle: has our "new" GM of X number of years ago learned enough to keep him for another year, or should he be fired at the end of the year or even sooner?  This is where your comment on "growing pains" comes in.

 

Pros: 

(1) Has learned not to trade away 2nd and 3rd round picks for other teams' reject prospects (Linden Vey was the worst, but there were many.) 

(2) Has learned not to sign 30-plus year-olds to long-term deals (rejected Markstrom and Tanev for these reasons, unlike Eriksson, Beagle.)

(3) related to (2): now signs 30-year olds to short-term deals (Hamonic, and to a degree Schmidt here.  Edler for 2 years, too, and Holtby for 2.) 

(4) Has learned to trade better: e.g., dumping Gudbranson in favour of Tanner Pearson.  Although it looks on the surface like we are lacking D, in fact, Gudbranson didn't work out here. (We'll leave aside the trade that brought G. here.)

 

Cons:

(1) still trades away draft picks/prospects for players that other teams seem to get off of us for free in the off-season.  (J.T. Miller, Schmidt, and of course Toffoli for Madden AND a second round pick, lol.)

(2) still seems to value "experience" and a player's past achievements on a winning team above the real value of a player -- e.g., Holtby, and to some extent J.T. Miller, Toffoli, Pearson, and of course Beagle.  Not the money ball type of evaluator. 

(3) "the growing pains" were made worse by the Eriksson deal HE SIGNED.  And worse again by signing Sutter, Roussel and in particular Beagle.  All we need is for Myers to begin aging prematurely and we really have a catastrophe. 

 

Intangibles: (a) he's actually been unlucky in the draft: no number 1 pick in spite of finishing bottom of the league a couple of times.  New Jersey got those lol. Another piece of bad luck: (b) the Luongo re-capture debacle.  This was Gillis's work, not Benning's.  That 3 million would have kept us Tanev or Toffoli.

 

On balance, he's learned a lot, but has not corrected the tendency to over-value older players like Beagle, Eriksson and Edler.  This is a fatal flaw in an era where players now peak at 23 to 27 years of age.  His other tendency of trading away picks for short-term fixes is not nearly as problematic, because the likes of J.T. Miller and even Toffoli really do make a difference.

 

Some problems in your analysis that I wish to elaborate from the previous post I made.

 

1) Other teams' "rejects" - this is a label you have put in hindsight, and not something that indicates you knew anything about the player before the trade. Vey was absolutely a proven AHL player, therefore he wasn't a reject. If you recall, we lacked AHL/NHL (aka tweeners) in our roster, thanks to our terrible drafting/development before Benning.

We also do not know what kind of impact the criminal proceedings have had in his professional life. Maybe he could've been a homerun. Given how Vey had played several seasons with the Canucks, producing at times, and not helping at others, at what point does the 2nd round become 'worth it'? Does Vey have to score 30 goals? Furthermore, all draft picks are gambles. You never know what you can get with a pick, but the scouting department can basically analyze what kind of player Vey is, since there is a sample. We can extend this point to other professional players like Eriksson and Baertschi. Without knowing what happened afterwards, your point couldn't possibly have existed. For all we know, Eriksson could have been a 50+ goal scorer with the Sedins, in an alternate world.

 

2) You claim "experience" as a fake way to analyze a player, but then you criticize players like Vey who had no proven experience in the NHL (prior to the Canucks). Why are you flipflopping? You aren't consistent on the very argument that you're trying to make. Does experience matter or not? If not, what is the price to pay for experience, and furthermore, how much would it actually cost to get it? You do not get proven players (I would say Holtby, Beagle, Pearson are proven players) for a lowball price. Holtby's price wasn't prohibitive, but his performance so far has been lackluster unfortunately.

 

3) Again, the point you've been making with this has been inconsistent. With regards to the Myers transaction, you are acknowledging he is doing well for his contract, but you are assuming (perhaps rightfully so) that he will decline. How is this any different than the Toffoli contract? Just because a player is doing well, it doesn't mean that his contract wouldn't become crap at the end of it. For all we know, as soon as we re-signed Toffoli, he could have ended up being a dud. (Pretty unlikely, but the risk is still there. Furthermore, injuries could play a factor, much like it did for Roussel).

 

There's a lot of labelling from the benefit of hindsight. And yet, there are some inconsistencies in how you are defining parameters on who is a good player or not. If players worked out, would you say the deal was good then, even with a huge cap hit?

If you look around the NHL, you'll see A LOT of missed draft picks, even though they might have been highly touted players. You'll also see a lot of players who have declined significantly from what they used to be (Eriksson). Then there's players like Eric Staal that people seem to sleep on, even though he's 36 years old and producing well above average of the players his age.

[Dazzle]

20 minutes ago, Josepho said:

There's a difference between signing an actual good player in Toffoli to a very reasonable deal while you're trying to contend and signing guys like Beagle and Roussel to massively overpaid 4 year deals.

 

The whole reason people were upset over the Beagle/Roussel signings is that they were worried that something like this would happen as a direct result of those signings.

 

This is a really subjective term, even though we think we know what the term means. What is reasonable? If someone underperforms on a 'reasonable' deal, would our understanding of the word change?

 

Take for example Jay Beagle's deal. His contract isn't that bad, considering he arrived from Washington, right after winning a Stanley Cup. His contract is pretty reasonable, but for some reason, people expected him to score 20+ goals, which he has never done. However, he is a mainstay player, one who eats a lot of minutes and takes important faceoffs, while bringing leadership. Is he exciting? No.

[Squamfan]

2 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

 

But Petterson, Hughes, Demko will take 24 million of that 

[canuck73_3]

23 minutes ago, Squamfan said:

 

But Petterson, Hughes, Demko will take 24 million of that 

I’ll take numbers pulled out of your ass for $1000

[Josepho]

48 minutes ago, Dazzle said:

This is a really subjective term, even though we think we know what the term means. What is reasonable? If someone underperforms on a 'reasonable' deal, would our understanding of the word change?

 

Take for example Jay Beagle's deal. His contract isn't that bad, considering he arrived from Washington, right after winning a Stanley Cup. His contract is pretty reasonable, but for some reason, people expected him to score 20+ goals, which he has never done. However, he is a mainstay player, one who eats a lot of minutes and takes important faceoffs, while bringing leadership. Is he exciting? No.

Reasonable is under 5 mil per year for 4 years for someone who has been a productive player his entire career. If Toffoli signed a 6x6 or whatever, I would have been okay with Benning letting Toffoli walk if that was the kind of deal he was getting.

 

Winning a Stanley Cup doesn't automatically mean that player should be overpaid. And, even if it did, there are other ways to get cup champions. We got one in Pearson, and all we had to do was trade one of our worst defencemen for it. In that same offseason, guys like Kunitz and Filppula signed cheap deals. Somewhat ironically, bringing in "cup pedigree" from Beagle and Holtby led to losing "cup pedigree" from Toffoli.

 

It's not that his contract on its own is necessarily the worst thing in the world, but when you combine it with all the other bottom 6 players that we've overpaid, then it adds up. For example, if Beagle and Roussel are replaced by 1mil players, we then have 4mil to play with -- that's very important in a cap-based NHL.  Look at how teams like Vegas, Boston and Tampa are never overpaying for 4th liners or 3rd pairing defencemen, so they can keep money to retain actual good players. Hell, shouldn't it say something that Washington had no problem letting Beagle sign elsewhere after winning their cup?

 

He might play minutes and try hard, but there's no statistical evidence indicating that he's anything other than an average 4th liner. Faceoffs rarely correlate with actual possession time. If we want "leadership", there's no reason we can't bring in leadership from actual important players. We've had good leaders like Hamhuis and Richardson that we've treated like $&!# and let leave in place of inferior players -- why couldn't they be our leaders?

Edited March 28, 2021 by Josepho

[Pears]

17 minutes ago, canuck73_3 said:

I’ll take numbers pulled out of your ass for $1000

This guy really needs to stop embarrassing himself but I think he’s too far gone at this point. 

[alt kilgore]

14 minutes ago, Josepho said:

Reasonable is under 5 mil per year for 4 years for someone who has been a productive player his entire career. If Toffoli signed a 6x6 or whatever, I would have been okay with Benning letting Toffoli walk if that was the kind of deal he was getting.

 

Winning a Stanley Cup doesn't automatically mean that player should be overpaid. And, even if it did, there are other ways to get cup champions. We got one in Pearson, and all we had to do was trade one of our worst defencemen for it. In that same offseason, guys like Kunitz and Filppula signed cheap deals. Somewhat ironically, bringing in "cup pedigree" from Beagle and Holtby led to losing "cup pedigree" from Toffoli.

 

It's not that his contract on its own is necessarily the worst thing in the world, but when you combine it with all the other bottom 6 players that we've overpaid, then it adds up. For example, if Beagle and Roussel are replaced by 1mil players, we then have 4mil to play with -- that's very important in a cap-based NHL.  Look at how teams like Vegas, Boston and Tampa are never overpaying for 4th liners or 3rd pairing defencemen, so they can keep money to retain actual good players. Hell, shouldn't it say something that Washington had no problem letting Beagle sign elsewhere after winning their cup?

 

He might play minutes and try hard, but there's no statistical evidence indicating that he's anything other than an average 4th liner. Faceoffs rarely correlate with actual possession time. If we want "leadership", there's no reason we can't bring in leadership from actual important players. We've had good leaders like Hamhuis and Richardson that we've treated like $&!# and let leave in place of inferior players -- why couldn't they be our leaders?

 

 

 

 

[aGENT]

53 minutes ago, Squamfan said:

 

But Petterson, Hughes, Demko will take 24 million of that 

I thought it was $26m in the other thread? Either way, it's likely closer to $18m. So now you're wrong twice, with two different amounts, in two threads. Great work as usual!

 

19 minutes ago, Josepho said:

 Look at how teams like Vegas, Boston and Tampa are never overpaying for 4th liners or 3rd pairing defencemen, so they can keep money to retain actual good players. 

You might want to actually go look at the cap hits of the bottom 6 of some of the last few cup winners. Tampa and St Louis in particular. You might be surprised how wrong you are.

[Dazzle]

24 minutes ago, Josepho said:

Reasonable is under 5 mil per year for 4 years for someone who has been a productive player his entire career. If Toffoli signed a 6x6 or whatever, I would have been okay with Benning letting Toffoli walk if that was the kind of deal he was getting.

 

Winning a Stanley Cup doesn't automatically mean that player should be overpaid. And, even if it did, there are other ways to get cup champions. We got one in Pearson, and all we had to do was trade one of our worst defencemen for it. In that same offseason, guys like Kunitz and Filppula signed cheap deals. Somewhat ironically, bringing in "cup pedigree" from Beagle and Holtby led to losing "cup pedigree" from Toffoli.

 

It's not that his contract on its own is necessarily the worst thing in the world, but when you combine it with all the other bottom 6 players that we've overpaid, then it adds up. For example, if Beagle and Roussel are replaced by 1mil players, we then have 4mil to play with -- that's very important in a cap-based NHL.  Look at how teams like Vegas, Boston and Tampa are never overpaying for 4th liners or 3rd pairing defencemen, so they can keep money to retain actual good players. Hell, shouldn't it say something that Washington had no problem letting Beagle sign elsewhere after winning their cup?

 

He might play minutes and try hard, but there's no statistical evidence indicating that he's anything other than an average 4th liner. Faceoffs rarely correlate with actual possession time. If we want "leadership", there's no reason we can't bring in leadership from actual important players. We've had good leaders like Hamhuis and Richardson that we've treated like $&!# and let leave in place of inferior players -- why couldn't they be our leaders?

Let's assume that this will be the parameter set then on the definition of "reasonable". By your logic, you wouldn't have been able to say that Eriksson was an "unreasonable" signing. He's had multiple years of 30+ goals, so he was very much an established player. Furthermore, he was arguably the best signing of the three at the time (Lucic and James Neal being the other UFAs). Given the competition for these three players, 6M is pretty standard for a highly sought after UFA, particularly if there aren't other comparable players, outside of these three.

 

Your logic that Beagle and Roussel can be replaced by 1 million players, thus unproven ones, has problems. If you lowball an established player, that player doesn't sign with you, simple as that. You can absolutely roll the dices with unproven players, but that in itself will open a new set of problems, namely, how do we know they can handle that position effectively? We have had a number of 'cheap' centres play for the Canucks, namely Granlund and Bonino. I don't think either of these have shown they were the answer for the Canucks, otherwise they would've kept them, yes?

 

Here's the next question: when slotting in unproven players (ala the WD days of overplaying plugs), do fans here suddenly accuse Aquilini of being a cheap owner? Because that's what Ottawa seemed to have done. Where has it gotten them?

 

Moreover, if you think faceoffs aren't important, why was there so much emphasis on having Malhotra around (who most people will agree was a valuable part of this team), as well as having so many faceoff winning centers in the roster? People seem to forget that we had a number of centres that weren't actually great at faceoffs (Granlund comes to mind). Once you lose those faceoffs, you lose possession most of the time. We've also seen a number of games where once a faceoff is lost, the puck goes to the point and it ends up in the back of the net. Faceoffs ARE important - there is little room to argue otherwise. You can't simply water down the importance of faceoffs like you did to try and make up a new point.

 

There's no 'one way' to constructing a roster, and as we can see, there are many wrong ways to make one. Slotting in cheap, unproven players was what happened to teams under WD. We had a lot of 'cheap' players there, but did we go anywhere with them? NO. The team was obviously very interested to develop an environment that would be helpful for the new players, namely having the established players around to mentor from. This is the result of that experiment.

 

[Josepho]

4 minutes ago, aGENT said:

I thought it was $26m in the other thread? Either way, it's likely closer to $18m. So now you're wrong twice, with two different amounts, in two threads. Great work as usual!

 

You might want to actually go look at the cap hits of the bottom 6 of some of the last few cup winners. Tampa and St Louis in particular. You might be surprised how wrong you are.

Tampa had really productive players like Gourde/Killorn/Cirelli playing lower in the lineup just based on how deep the team was. We're talking about a team that had a player as good as JT Miller stashed on the third line. Guys like Sutter/Beagle/Roussel were never even close to as good as those players. And the reason Tampa could afford to have slightly pricier guys on the third line is because their 4th liners and bottom pair was extremely cheap. 

 

Same thing with St. Louis. Guys like Maroon and random guys on ELCs like Barbashev led to way more cap flexibility in the lineup. If they paid more for their 4th line, they probably wouldn't even have been able to acquire O'Reilly in the first place.

[Moe Knows]

With Demko Markstrom had to go ($$$$$). Would have been nice to keep Tanev but thought at the time Schmidt was an upgrade (not so sure now). Toffoli at 4.5 Mill was a no brainer IMO and Benning totally dropped the ball big time there. I mean who would we rather have Virtanen or Toffoli? Answers obvious to me but then I'm sure others have a different opinion