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

[Ajax-]

1 hour ago, Squamfan said:

 

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

But, But, But..

What a terrible negative bad problem that is eh? Don't forget Boeser the year after, just a terrible position to be in as a team

[Gurn]

Yah, horrible to have really good players .

[Ajax-]

9 minutes ago, Moe Knows said:

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

 

[Phil_314]

We gained Demko (who's showing himself as a legit #1) and freed ourselves from another $6 million x 6 contract.
We opened a roster spot for Hoglander (looks good on Bo's wing).
We didn't tie up our cap space on a safe and mobile but injury prone D-man without physicality (Schmidt and Hamonic can hit and defend). 

[CptCanuck16]

10 hours ago, EmilyM said:

Based on what? He's still one of our best defensive defensemen even at 34. He'll more likely remain here at a reduced rate but I heard nothing of him retiring, so I'm not sure how you're almost certain of it.

Based on his comments during his last contract negotiations. He stated publicly at the time that he didn't want to play anywhere else and plans to retire in Vancouver.  Perhaps he will try for one more year. I certainly wouldn't mind as he is still our best defensive defenseman despite having been slowed down significantly due to age. 

[Nuxfanabroad]

Why not imagine if Minny had beat us in the EDM bubble(no PO's)?

 

Would've let Demko get away.

Would've been giving up our 1st this season. League would prob ensure our pick won the LOTTO(evil b*stards)

 

We're lucky how things played out. A sh*t sched..but just one poor(shortened) season, of inconvenience.

Should be able to draft another good, young D this July with our 1st rd pick.

[Drewman]

5 minutes ago, Phil_314 said:

We gained Demko (who's showing himself as a legit #1) and freed ourselves from another $6 million x 6 contract.
We opened a roster spot for Hoglander (looks good on Bo's wing).
We didn't tie up our cap space on a safe and mobile but injury prone D-man without physicality (Schmidt and Hamonic can hit and defend). 

Just want to qualify this statement, in that yes, Hamonic can definitely hit and defend. Out of all 4 defensemen in question though (Schmidt, Hamonic, Tanev and Stetcher) Schmidt has far less hits than the other 3. 

 

I'm not saying we should've kept Tanev and Stetcher, I just want to be clear that Schmidt is not a physical force (or all that great in his own zone as far as I'm concerned). 

 

Benning definitely made the right call With Demko and Marky, and I think almost everyone saw that decision coming. Toffoli; I'm a bit surprised how well he's playing for the Canadiens, but I figured we'd have Hog or Podz coming in this season so some kind of space needed to be made, I would have preferred moving Roussel or Sutter to make that space though.

[CptCanuck16]

4 hours ago, AbrasiveAjax said:

AG walk? sorry i do not agree with that statement. 

Edler will play 1 more year imho

Pearson's injury timing sucks and i agree that he will probably not be back

We'll see what happens. Its all just speculation at this point so no need to be sorry for disagreeing.  Personally I don't see how AG fits on the team. He's not skilled enough for the top 6 and isn't gritty/defensively responsible enough for the bottom 6. Maybe JB will want to keep him for depth in the $1-1.5 range to see if his numbers last year were just a fluke or if he can repeat or improve them.  Maybe he gets a better offer elsewhere. Time will reveal all.

Edited March 28, 2021 by CptCanuck16

[aGENT]

37 minutes ago, Josepho said:

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.

Yeah... And what are their cap hits?

 

Perhaps your cap hit/overpaying in the bottom 6 argument, isn't in fact the 'problem'. That they don't have expensive guys in their bottom 6 so can afford to retain other good players is a complete fabrication.

 

We have affordable guys like Gaudette, Motte, MacEwan, Hawryluck etc too. And more coming.

 

The difference is one team is an in their prime contender with depth, the other is simply not there yet. You can in fact build a cup winning team with 'expensive' depth. Tampa and St Louis probably the clearest examples. Your premise is flawed.

[Josepho]

1 hour ago, Dazzle said:

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.

 

The main problem with Eriksson's contract is that it was too long, the player was 31 (3 years older than Toffoli at the time of their UFA), had injury issues, already was showing decline (only had a productive year on Bergeron/Marchand's line after having two underwhelming prior seasons), and the main issue was that this team was awful. If a contending team at the time signed him to a ~4 year deal, it wouldn't have worked out but it at least would've been an understandable decision.

 

Why are cheap players inherently bad or unproven to you? Look at how much production Toronto is getting out of guys like Thornton and Spezza for instance, see what Florida is doing with guys like Verhaege. A good GM should be able to identify bargains like that. I'm not just saying to throw any rookie out there.

 

Will not deny that Granlund was an awful player, but I have no idea how you can watch Bonino be a great roleplayer on some very good Pittsburgh/Nashville teams, and conclude that he was the issue. Trading Bonino (who wasn't even bad here) away for a more expensive Sutter was an extremely obvious blunder by Benning and I have no idea how one can argue otherwise. The Canucks getting rid of him before his subsequent successes in Pittsburgh and Nashville indicates that the Canucks &^@#ed up, not that Bonino was a poor player or the issue with this team.

 

No one will accuse Aquilini of being a cheap owner, because under these circumstances the Canucks would be spending that money on actual good players higher in the lineup.

 

Ottawa's problem isn't their cheap 4th liners. Ottawa's issue is that they only have one good defenceman while bums like Gudbranson/Zaitsev make a combined 8mil, and that Matt Murray has been complete garbage for a 6mil goaltender.

 

You're using another appeal-to-authority argument here. Winning a lot of faceoffs might be important if you could actually win a lot, say 80% of them. But nobody actually wins that many. In 2017-2018, Beagle won 58.2% of his faceoffs per game and averaged 12.6 per game. If Beagle takes 13 faceoffs in a game, the difference between 58.2% and 40% (a range in which basically all NHL centers fall into) is 2 faceoffs per game, which is extremely inconsequential considering the amount of possession changes in a hockey game. And Beagle having awful possession stats should indicate that there clearly isn't that much of a correlation between faceoffs in possession. Sure, there is the occasional time where a goal against is a direct result of a faceoff. But, given how little variance there is in actual faceoff success leaguewide, we probably score off of faceoffs about as much as we get scored on.

 

The Willie teams didn't suck because of guys like Michael Chaput, they sucked because they had guys like Gudbranson/Sutter/Eriksson/Sbisa playing higher in the lineup than they should've. Our cheap players weren't good because Benning is incapable of regularly finding actual good cheap players, it's not because they were cheap. Plenty of teams around the league have found good enough fourth liners making virtually no money.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Josepho

[Josepho]

14 minutes ago, aGENT said:

Yeah... And what are their cap hits?

 

Perhaps your cap hit/overpaying in the bottom 6 argument, isn't in fact the 'problem'. That they don't have expensive guys in their bottom 6 so can afford to retain other good players is a complete fabrication.

 

We have affordable guys like Gaudette, Motte, MacEwan, Hawryluck etc too. And more coming.

 

The difference is one team is an in their prime contender with depth, the other is simply not there yet. You can in fact build a cup winning team with 'expensive' depth. Tampa and St Louis probably the clearest examples. Your premise is flawed.

I was specifically referring to 4th liners in my post. I don't mind bringing in really good 3rd liners at ~4mil/year, as long as we've managed the rest of our cap fine and aren't losing any of our actual best players.

[NewbieCanuckFan]

4 minutes ago, Josepho said:

The main problem with Eriksson's contract is that it was too long, the player was 31 (3 years older than Toffoli at the time of their UFA), had injury issues, already was showing decline (only had a productive year on Bergeron/Marchand's line after having two underwhelming prior seasons), and the main issue was that this team was awful. If a contending team at the time signed him to a ~4 year deal, it wouldn't have worked out but it at least would've been an understandable decision.

I don't have a problem with the length.  It's just that we didn't get any real kind of cap savings by handing out that long a term.  Better to have offered him a short-term deal with a far bigger cap hit.  If he wouldn't go for that, move on to the next guy.

Edited March 28, 2021 by NewbieCanuckFan

[canuktravella]

we saved almost 15 mill over next 4-6 yrs  that will help us resign petey hughes boeser pods and hoglander and demko when all their contracts up  thankfully luongo roussel eriksson beagle hits gone after next yr thats ankther 15 mill dead cap space gone 

[aGENT]

4 minutes ago, Josepho said:

I was specifically referring to 4th liners in my post. I don't mind bringing in really good 3rd liners at ~4mil/year, as long as we've managed the rest of our cap fine and aren't losing any of our actual best players.

And what exactly do you think the plan is moving forward?

 

Then = rebuilding.... Overpay to attract quality veteran depth to insulate and mentor kids.

 

Now - coming out of rebuild... transition out older, expensive vets and pay young core while complimenting with cheaper veteran support players/players on ELC bridge deals.

 

How is this not completely obvious to some of you?! 

 

[Josepho]

20 minutes ago, aGENT said:

And what exactly do you think the plan is moving forward?

 

Then = rebuilding.... Overpay to attract quality veteran depth to insulate and mentor kids.

 

Now - coming out of rebuild... transition out older, expensive vets and pay young core while complimenting with cheaper veteran support players/players on ELC bridge deals.

 

How is this not completely obvious to some of you?! 

 

If their plan was to rebuild by overpaying 4th liners in free agency (talking specifically about term here, not necessarily the AAV), then it was a stupid plan without foresight., especially since we already had leaders, and other leaders were available cheaper and with shorter term.

 

We ended up losing a lot of our momentum from 19/20 because of the "leaders". We should've been adding to our lineup, not taking away. Nothing good gets accomplished by twiddling your thumbs waiting for bad contracts to end. All you're doing is pissing off your core by doing that. Do you think Miller/Pettersson/Horvat/Boeser/etc are happy seeing guys like Toffoli walk and the team not improving for a few years?

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Josepho

[aGENT]

4 minutes ago, Josepho said:

If their plan was to rebuild by overpaying 4th liners in free agency (talking specifically about term here, not necessarily the AAV), then it was a stupid plan without foresight., especially since we already had leaders, and other leaders were available cheaper and with shorter term.

No, it's actually a plan full of foresight. I asked this earlier elsewhere:

 

Without the likes of Sutter, Beagle, Edler, Tanev etc to play the hard minutes/situations and shelter Petey in his rookie year, how do you two propose we allow him the near 80% O zone starts he received that allowed him to be so successful and get acclimated to the NHL on his way to a Calder?

 

Those vets were also largely excellent last playoffs BTW.

 

4 minutes ago, Josepho said:

 

We ended up losing a lot of our momentum from 19/20 because of the "leaders". We should've been adding to our lineup, not taking away. Nothing good gets accomplished by twiddling your thumbs waiting for bad contracts to end. All you're doing is pissing off your core by doing that.

 

 

Honestly, early results withstanding, we are a better roster than the one we had last year. And far better positioned moving forward after this year as we look to become contenders. That's kind of the point.

 

Last year to this year

Forwards = largely a wash

Marky/young, inexperienced Demko = This year's Demko and Hotlby

Defense = upgraded I take Schmidt + Hamonic + Juolevi over Tanev, Stecher and Fanta any day.

[NHL'er]

Er simple? Long-term cap flexibility? 

[Dazzle]

1 hour ago, Josepho said:

The main problem with Eriksson's contract is that it was too long, the player was 31 (3 years older than Toffoli at the time of their UFA), had injury issues, already was showing decline (only had a productive year on Bergeron/Marchand's line after having two underwhelming prior seasons), and the main issue was that this team was awful. If a contending team at the time signed him to a ~4 year deal, it wouldn't have worked out but it at least would've been an understandable decision.

 

Why are cheap players inherently bad or unproven to you? Look at how much production Toronto is getting out of guys like Thornton and Spezza for instance, see what Florida is doing with guys like Verhaege. A good GM should be able to identify bargains like that. I'm not just saying to throw any rookie out there.

 

Will not deny that Granlund was an awful player, but I have no idea how you can watch Bonino be a great roleplayer on some very good Pittsburgh/Nashville teams, and conclude that he was the issue. Trading Bonino (who wasn't even bad here) away for a more expensive Sutter was an extremely obvious blunder by Benning and I have no idea how one can argue otherwise. The Canucks getting rid of him before his subsequent successes in Pittsburgh and Nashville indicates that the Canucks &^@#ed up, not that Bonino was a poor player or the issue with this team.

 

No one will accuse Aquilini of being a cheap owner, because under these circumstances the Canucks would be spending that money on actual good players higher in the lineup.

 

Ottawa's problem isn't their cheap 4th liners. Ottawa's issue is that they only have one good defenceman while bums like Gudbranson/Zaitsev make a combined 8mil, and that Matt Murray has been complete garbage for a 6mil goaltender.

 

You're using another appeal-to-authority argument here. Winning a lot of faceoffs might be important if you could actually win a lot, say 80% of them. But nobody actually wins that many. In 2017-2018, Beagle won 58.2% of his faceoffs per game and averaged 12.6 per game. If Beagle takes 13 faceoffs in a game, the difference between 58.2% and 40% (a range in which basically all NHL centers fall into) is 2 faceoffs per game, which is extremely inconsequential considering the amount of possession changes in a hockey game. And Beagle having awful possession stats should indicate that there clearly isn't that much of a correlation between faceoffs in possession. Sure, there is the occasional time where a goal against is a direct result of a faceoff. But, given how little variance there is in actual faceoff success leaguewide, we probably score off of faceoffs about as much as we get scored on.

 

The Willie teams didn't suck because of guys like Michael Chaput, they sucked because they had guys like Gudbranson/Sutter/Eriksson/Sbisa playing higher in the lineup than they should've. Our cheap players weren't good because Benning is incapable of regularly finding actual good cheap players, it's not because they were cheap. Plenty of teams around the league have found good enough fourth liners making virtually no money.

Because the very same logic that you're using is being misused to fit an angle you're trying to push. Both of those players, Thornton and Spezza, are PROVEN players, yet they are older ones. Would they have actually signed with Vancouver? I doubt it. They chose their destinations for a reason - most likely because they are close to home. They are also aware of their age being a factor, so they presumably took the best offers that they received. Therefore, using the logic that they are 'cheap and unproven', is fallacious. The only thing correct you mentioned was cheap, but they are FAR from unproven.

 

Just because some players work out being cheap doesn't mean that they would've worked on other teams. That is cherry picking logic. Look at Motte who was underutilized in CBJ, and went on to do better things with Vancouver. Funny how you don't mention this in your argument though... these projects don't always work out. We've seen this with Granlund. We've seen this with Vey (to an extent). Look at Kassian. He's a project as well, but has he really elevated beyond his draft picking? That's a no.

Ok, so if you think having near 60 percent faceoffs is basically the same as 40 percent (you used the word inconsequential of a difference), I don't know what else to tell you. That is quite a laughable statement you made there. Faceoffs also aren't the only traits that Beagle brought to the table. He was widely used as a PKer as well. Funny how you've underrepresented statistics in order to push an argument. Do you see the theme with this? What Beagle does shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. He's never been an offensive player. The only criticism that Benning should get is why he can't generate more offense from his bottom six, which is really difficult to do.

 

Michael Chaput didn't do anything, even with his minutes that he was given. At least he was cheap though, right? Did you know that WD overplayed players like him that have led to a mediocre team? Some players just aren't that good, no matter how many minutes you play them. That was a big criticism of WD playing certain favourites (or maybe he didn't have a choice BUT to play them, because there weren't better options). Either way, your argument is incomplete and fallacious if you don't include evidence that doesn't support your perspective. Not to mention, having mediocre players take up minutes mean less development for players. WD didn't really develop that many young players, although he has somewhat helped Horvat.

 

And you've just admitted - some players just don't work that well, no matter how cheap they are, namely Granlund. So I don't see how you can justify that a player being cheaper would be necessarily more effective than a player who was paid more (and has proven more). You're basically going around in a circle, chasing a tail that is in front of you. You've underrepresented the significance of statistics and experience, in favour of chasing this cheap player narrative that doesn't necessarily support your argument. The problem is, we've already tried the cheap/unproven player model. It doesn't work if your roster is not structured.

 

I would also like to point out that any GM would've been under criticism no matter what he does. If he spends too much, like Benning has, people like you would point this angle out. If he spends too little (ala Ottawa), a bunch of people would've pounced on that too. There's no winning to this. The fans here are so reactionary.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Dazzle

[wallstreetamigo]

43 minutes ago, aGENT said:

And what exactly do you think the plan is moving forward?

 

Then = rebuilding.... Overpay to attract quality veteran depth to insulate and mentor kids.

 

Now - coming out of rebuild... transition out older, expensive vets and pay young core while complimenting with cheaper veteran support players/players on ELC bridge deals.

 

How is this not completely obvious to some of you?! 

 

So let me ask you this.

 

If Benning say resigns Sutter and Pearson to 4 year 4+ mil deals, or adds more big money vet depth in free agency this year, what will you think?

 

JB has given no indication at all that he is changing gears as you propose. And he has a coach who clearly wants veteran depth players.

 

I hope I am wrong and JBfinallyhas learned exactly what you are saying after being burned so many times especially on term.

[Gurn]

2 minutes ago, wallstreetamigo said:

If Benning say resigns Sutter and Pearson to 4 year 4+ mil deals,

Neither of those two are worth that term any more, too many miles on them.

Sutter for 2 yrs  at $3.25- 3.5 mill maybe, but I'd like Beagle gone if so.

I think Pearson should not be kept, that spot will be filled by Hoglander switching back to left wing, makes room for Podz on right.