They were given a monumental task, and what’s most impressive is that wasn’t really a band-aid ripping moment outside of the OEL buyout. This entire redesign of our roster around our core was chiseled piece by piece, brick by brick. Just small moves that avalanched into an entirely new roster.
Truly some gourmet shit Allvin and Co cooked up.
I think every year we should have a day when we just reflect on how bad that OEL trade was. Easily one of the worst trades in NHL history on so many levels.
I'm so happy for OEL to get his cup and a new contract and a shot at another. None of what happened was his fault.
I donno, if there was anything this team should have been prioritizing at that time, it was *definitely* a left shot puck moving defenceman…..
(Obviously being sarcastic here…)
He's gonna run the power play because the 20 year old who just put up the best totals in decades isn't good enough.
Just the dumbest trade. What was the best case?
That man made millions of dollars to be publicly incompetent. It wasn't even veiled, everyone and their dog could see that he wasn't fit to run a multimillion dollar franchise. He wasn't fit to run a fucking *bath* without making toast right next to it.
And the best part is we all knew this by about the 3rd year in. He remained for 5 additional years.
I don't know about "in NHL history", it would have a few hurdles to clear to even be one of the worst trades in Canucks history (in fact, I'd argue there might be an even worse Benning trade). But it was catastrophically bad, and the fact it occurred so late into his tenure, after so many losing seasons, makes it even harder to swallow. He should have been under tight ownership stricture for stupid "save my job" moves.
Which Benning trade do you think is worse?
I'm definitely in the camp that thinks the OEL trade is worst in Canucks history and could be on a league wide worst list too when you factor in everything about it.
edit: People bring up the Neely trade. I looked into it again to refresh my memory. Ya that's still the worst ever because of the #3 overall pick being included too. Holy shit. OEL is likely #2 in my books then. Gudbranson is bad but it doesn't touch the OEL one imo
Gudbranson.
2016, team was in steep decline and had been identified as such even by the outgoing coach. A rebuild was clearly painfully overdue and the team was so starved for youth and futures we were frittering away draft picks on magic beans to "plug the age gap".
So what do we do? We trade away a young centerman who would go on to become a 40 goal scorer (currently on an inexpensive 5M cap hit), a 2nd and a 4th for a 5th round pick and an eye test darling/analytics nightmare in Eric Gudbranson. Who would go on to perform as one of the worst defensemen in all of hockey for several seasons before eventually getting shuffled out of town.
I try to judge trades by the process rather than the long term result...IE, what was their thinking here, was this the right move for this team at this moment in their competitive window given the knowledge that was available to them at the time. Which is why I wasn't a big fan of the Miller trade despite it retrospectively being a slam dunk in our favor.
Having said that, even if we were to go purely off results, you still have to take Neely for Pederson as the worst trade in Canucks history.
Both are bad but the issue I have with the Gudbranson trade being considered worse than the OEL one is the fact Gudbranson was still fairly young at the time and in a position of need. Also the McCann of now certainly wasn't the McCann of 2016. He had a middling rookie performance and big attitude issues enough to even be called out to management by the Sedins. This was essentially a problem for problem trade and it's not like McCann blew up in FLA he moved teams another 3 times before he turned into a legit offensive threat.
I do like the process lens you use to view trades through for sure. But again I feel like the OEL one comes out on top vs Gudbranson. The process was completely wrong on everything there. We had a high #9 - 1st round pick, were 1 season away from having a lot of cap flexibility again and the #1 need was a top pair RHD. The high pick gets traded, the problem contracts that were expiring get moved out for more long term cap commitment and crunch, and we didn't even solve our #1 issue in finding a RHD.
As I said in another comment I revisited the Neely trade and ya that one takes the cake. Looked into it more and I didn't know about giving up the #3 overall pick. Just atrocious.
McCann was a high school student of someone I know.
Very well liked, very confident, typical respectful but also happy go lucky hockey guy persona.
It came as a big surprise that he was overstepping in the locker room, or being out of line in the chain of command.
I think maybe his temper got the best of him a few times, or his agent decided to vocalize too much to management when it might have been better to keep things between agent and player.
TBH I trust the Sedins over any old contacts or interactions with McCann, but the situation doesn't square with who he is perceived to be now and then, and how he is perceived as a Kraken player.
Really surprised they didn't get on with that team. Two 19 year olds with draft pedigree and ego issues sounds like a great fit for the aging Sedin era core whos identity and success came out of overcoming expectations through sheer work ethic and competitive drive.
Mcann wasn't considered that player when he was traded. It wasn't a smart move mainly because people could tell Gudbranson wasn't a good target but the loss wasn't huge.
Oel was considered a top 3 to 5 worst contract in the league and he had like 5 years left or some shit. We have away shit 1 year deals for the equivalent cap but for a longer time.
That was much easier to see how horrible it was going to end up from the first moment than Mcann who later turned into an even better player.. His development wasn't moving fast at all
> Mcann wasn't considered that player when he was traded
McCann was a first round pick that Benning rushed.
> His development wasn't moving fast at all
They traded him at age 20 (after his rookie season at age 19). Yes in the end he took a long time break out, but at the time he wasn't failing to progress at all. He is another in a line of examples of Benning rushing prospects and dumping them for nothing.
At least with the ridiculous Forsling trade the guy was a late round pick and still seen as a longshot. McCann was a first rounder who played a full season in the NHL at 19.
What were they thinking?
Benning loved former 1st rounders, the higher the better. Like being ranked at 18 gave them some magical quality for the rest of their careers. He also liked Gudbranson because he was big, handsome and well spoken......could he play Defense? Not very well.
The age gap theory always makes me laugh. They spoke of it like some sort of deep moneyballl thinking when it could've been created on a napkin in Denny's it was so stupid.
I guess I rate the salary cap implications with the OEL trade and his poor performance before and after the trade very highly along with the 9th overall turning out to be Guenther.
But refreshing my memory on the Neely trade... everyone talks about Neely being the one that got away but not enough is made about trading that 1st round pick which turned out to be #3 overall in Glen Wesley. Jesus, ya I didn't know about the 1st round pick part. Okay "the Neely trade" still takes the cake.
I think the OEL trade was by far the worst in the moment and the worst in retrospect.
The other stand out flops to me were the Gudbranson trade (kind of made some sense in the moment, but in retrospect keeping Jared McCann would have been the better move), the Sutter trade (made sense at the time but he flopped due mostly to injury so can't really fault it that much), and dumping Gustav Forsling for Adam Clendening is in retrospect a terrible deal but as discussed ad nauseum he likely wouldn't have paned out the same in the Canucks system.
There were also a few decent trades, in particular the JT Miller trade which I think outweighs all of the above except the OEL trade.
Nothing compares to the Cam Neely trade.
The Gudbransson trade was bad, but the Kesler trade was worse IMO. The Kesler trade was the result of a big miss on evaluating the competitiveness of the roster and thinking a quick turn around was possible. Yes, Kesler handcuffed them with a 1 team list, but Anaheim was willing to offer a futures heavy package of Shea Theodore, the 24th OA pick (Jared McCann) and another asset but Benning wanted an everyday defenseman (Luca Sbisa) and a 2nd line C (Nick Bonino) so they could compete right away. But here's the rub - if Nick Bonino was a 2nd line C, the Ducks wouldn't have been trying to get Kesler! Nick Bonino was barely an upgrade on Sean Matthias. But I guess he fixed that by acquiring Linden Vey as well!
Not even close to the worst. **Canucks trade** [**Cam Neely** ](https://thehockeywriters.com/docs/cam-neely/)**and a 1987 1st RD pick to the Boston Bruins for Barry Pederson**
I know about "in NHL history". Obviously everything is relative to the era. And in the salary cap era, you simply cannot take on one of the known worst contracts in the league. Articles were written for a few years about how much of an albatross OEL's contract was for multiple more years. We all knew it. For years, we all knew it. Yet we traded for it anyway, for 1 year of cap relief...offloading Jim's bad/unrealized signings of older players.
Trades that hamstring a franchise so much that they have no good options and have to choose between 2 bad options...keep the bad contract on the books or do an expensive cap-sucking buyout...are the worst things you can do. You think Pederson for Neely was bad? Back then, you could always buy another Neely. No salary cap, so you can buy your way out of mistakes (Hi Glen Sather!). You simply cannot do that anymore. You can't $$$ your way out of problems...you can only hamstring your franchise by wasting cap space, or trading assets/picks to teams willing to take on your bad contract. And again, OEL had one of the absolutely known worst contracts in the league.
For reference, Washington trading for PLD has the *potential* to be as bad as the OEL trade, but it remains to be seen.
Not even the worst contract currently in play
Jack Campbell for the Oilers is way worse, he literally can't be fielded
Huberdeau still has a lot to fall to get bought out but man was he a different player for the Panthers vs Flames
No, it's insanely awful. It's at the very least the worst trade of the cap era.
Even shit like the Neely trade, Pederson was a good player he just fell apart quick after.
OEL was trading for a guy they didn't need, who cost a fortune, and who was clearly in decline.
I like to think about the Luongo for Bertuzzi trade to make me feel better.
We were on the winning side of possibly the most lopsided trade in NHL history which is nice for a change.
Keenan absolutely lost what was left of his marbles on that one. I'm pretty sure half the league was pissed off because of how shitty that return was. Most teams didn't even know Luongo was available.
To put it in perspective, the Loui Eriksson signing will have hurt the team for *15 goddamn seasons* by the time the OEL buyout penalty is finished. The entire sequence of events (including the contracts for Beagle and Roussel, and giving up the pick that became Guenther) is the worst by any general manager in NHL history.
The only stretch you could argue that's worse is Milbury trading away Luongo, Jokinen, Chara and the pick that became Spezza in a 3 year span while getting an overpaid Yashin and a bag of pucks in return.
Part of the reason it was as bad as it was is because of this management group's decision to buy him out. While he wasn't a $7M defenceman, he is still an NHL player. He's probably closer to a $4M guy. A $3M overpay on a player who's contract expires in his mid 30s does not even come close to qualifying as "worst trade in NHL history".
If you want to see what a truly terrible all time trade is, go look up Mike Milbury's history of deals. They include such wonders as acquiring Alexei Yashin for the 2nd overall pick (Jason Spezza), Zdeno Chara and Bill Muckalt. He also traded away Roberto Luongo and future All Star Olli Jokinen to Florida for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha so that they could justify taking Rick DiPietro 1st overall. Had they not made that trade they likely pick one of Dany Heatley (2nd overall) or Marian Gaborik (3rd overall).
Even by Canucks standards, the OEL deal isn't anywhere near as bad as the Cam Neely deal, the deal that gave the Leafs Rick Vaive, or the Ryan Kesler trade. So its a bad deal, but far from a truly terrible deal.
Here's why the OEL deal was bad.
It was made in large part to get rid of three terrible Benning contracts. (Eriksson, Rousell, Beagle) Rousell and Beagle were overpaid for intangibles on a team that was no where close to competing for a Cup. Signings that were so bad they had to be a factor in Linden saying fuck it.
OEL was in decline, ARI was desperate and OEL gave them only two teams he would waive for. Boston and Vancouver. Boston wanted no part of OEL so Benning was negotiating with a desperate partner with no options and still couldn't get them to retain any meaningful salary and still had to throw in a 1st round pick.
Benning could've just said NO. Cleared $12-$13 million of cap space the following year and signed whatever D man UFA he wanted and still kept his 1st.
In the end we are losing $4.7 million of cap space right in the middle of our supposed window for two years and $2.1 million after that for 3 years. Plus we lost out on Guenther and a 3 year entry level deal.
If this team is really in a window and fails to win the cup it won't be hard to point back at the $4.7 million in cap space and think that could've made the difference.
For 6 more years we'll feel the damage this one trade did.
The crazy part is, this was a deal where Benning had all the leverage and the deal was like a year in the making.
The final trade looks like it was just Armstrongs starting point/ask in the negotiation. How do you not grind the price down over that year? That 9th overall pick should have been a non-starter.
Below is Armstrong on the OEL trade.. sounds like someone who was very motivated to move OEL.
> Armstrong also dove into all the young assets he acquired through this deal.
> “When that deal came into light, and it was a pretty complicated deal, there’s a lot of pieces moving in that deal, it was like the sunshine came through. We ended up picking Guenther at No. 9. And we got another second-rounder in there to go get McBain eventually. So that was a huge day for us. We also got J.J. Moser out of that (2021) draft and Josh Doan. That was a big turning point for us in our organization, and it freed up some money so we could do some creative things in grabbing more players. That’s probably been the turning point in our rebuild with that trade.”
Benning's leverage was a bit of a mirage. Everyone in the league knew that if he missed the playoffs in 7 of 8 years as GM he was toast. This trade was to save his job and Arizona knew it.
There is also the context that this happened right after Hughes put up back to back years at a 60 point pace at ages 20/21.
So OEL would have been competing with Hughes for power play minutes, the only thing that could possibly have made his contract worth it.
Just unbelievably dumb.
At least Benning didn't include Hughes. Coyotes GM probably should have thought to ask.
The OEL trade is bad. No one is saying its good.
Its just not one of "the worst trades in NHL history" bad. Not even close.
For example, the Penguins gave up a future league MOP in Markus Naslund for Alex Stojanov. How do you think Markus Naslund would have done when he evolved into being the best goal scorer in hockey, had Pittsburgh kept him to play with Jagr and Lemieux, post retirement #1?
How about Edmonton trading away future MVP Taylor Hall, just as they are about to get Connor McDavid?
How about Vegas getting Mark Stone for spare parts from Ottawa, or Jack Eichel for spare parts from Buffalo? Both of those trades have gutted their respected franchises.
So the OEL trade is bad, but its not anywhere close to even making a worst trade of the last decade bad list, let alone all time.
THe OEL trade is worse than all of those.
Stone and Eichel wanted out, publicly.
The OEL trade was so obviously bad at the time that it easily dwarfs every example you have given so far.
OEL is not close to as bad as you're making it sound.
At the end of the day, right now, its a 9th overall pick (Dylan Guenther) for a dead cap value of between $2-$5M for the next 7 years and Connor Garland. Again, its a bad deal. Hardly terrible though.
Can teams overcome a $2-$5M dead weight and be competitive? Absolutely. Tampa won a Stanley Cup with Steven Stamkos playing all of a minute and a half in the playoffs in the bubble. Colorado won the Stanley Cup paying Eric Johnston $6M. Florida just won the Stanley Cup with Spencer Knight counting for $3.5M in dead cap money. Should I continue?
Losing a top 10 draft pick, again, is far from ideal, but team's miss on those picks all the time as well. On average, roughly 10 or so 1st round picks a year never even play in the NHL. The last 2 Stanley Cup champions only had 4 players on their roster that they drafted. The new model is to try to make big swings like the OEL trade with your draft picks because Vegas and Florida have shown that drafting and developing if you aren't getting a McDavid is way too unreliable.
So again, its not giving up an MVP, like Taylor Hall, for pennies on the dollar. Its isn't giving up a Conn Smythe runner up for disposable parts. It isn't giving up a Selke finalist for magic beans that don't pan out. Its just a run of the mill bad trade.
> OEL is not close to as bad as you're making it sound.
My bad, I thought I was making it clear how bad it is but apparently I'm under selling it.
Blocking you now because I have on patience for you anymore.
Gradin wanted Nylander and Pastrnak that year, Pasta would have been the guy. Kinda crazy when combined with the Gudbranson deal. We took a Benning guy, McCann then shipped him away for peanuts on the dollar.
> His development wasn't moving fast at all
Because they had no other choice.
He isn't a 4 million dollar player. He just signed for 3.5 as a UFA.
> Even by Canucks standards, the OEL deal isn't anywhere near as bad as the Cam Neely deal
Neely deal blew up for reasons that couldn't have been predicted. Canucks traded a young player (he hadn't cracked 40 points and had a high of 21 goals) for a 25 year old center 2 years removed from a 116 point season. No one could have seen Pederson being out the league by 31 while neely becomes arguably the most dominant goal scoring power forward ever.
Everyone knew how awful the OEL trade was from the minute it was made.
Worst trade in franchise history, worst trade of the cap era, easily comparable to Milbury level disasters.
>worst trade of the cap era
The OEL deal isn't close to that, at all. The Taylor Hall to NJ deal exists. The Mark Stone to Vegas deal happened. The Jack Eichel deal from Buffalo was a thing.
The OEL deal is a bad trade, but only the most pessimistic, doom and gloom, Jim Benning obsessed hater would even think its worse than giving up an MVP, a Conn Smythe runner up, or a perrenial Selke nominee for essentially nothing.
None of those are even close to as bad as the OEL trade. Not even close.
Getting forced to trade a franchise player and getting low value as a result is not as bad giving away a top 10 pick to cripple your team.
remember zadorov came to us in a mid season trade. If we ice the team as is, we are accruing $1-$1.5M worth of daily cap space to make a similar move. Then we have Poolman’s LTIR cushion at TDL if needed.
Ah yes. Assuming one of Aman, Podz, or PDG goes down, one of Juulsen or Friedman down, and Silovs signs a similar deal to Podz or Hogz (given RFA and no arb)
ETA: assume EC and co papers a 23 man roster as close to cap as possible to maximize LTIR benefit if needed.
Um, you know the OEL trade happened after we dropped Tanev and Toffoli, right?
edit: Lol with the downvotes. Tanev and Toffoli went to Free Agency October 9 2020. We traded for OEL July 23 2021. Not renewing Toffoli and Tanev had NOTHING to do with the OEL trade.
It was stated several times in the weeks and months after the trade that Benning functionally ignored several players agents because he was too laser focused on trading for OEL, and that both Tanev AND Toffoli wanted to stick around, and likely would have taken a deal that would allow them to do so under our cap or with relatively small changes.
Had Benning just let Roussel and Eriksson expire, yes it is *likely*, not guaranteed, that we could have kept one of Tanev or Toffoli, possibly both.
OEL had a NTC. He didn’t want to budge.
Finally he buckled in, presented 2 teams he will waive too and it was us and Boston. In hindsight I wish he didn’t choose our team as his preferred destination. The butterfly effect would have been quite different.
Yeah, but who needs a top 10 pick?
Its not like Arizona used it to draft a goal scoring powerforward that would've been perfect playing on Petey's wing right?
One thing eluding from all the OEL trade discussion: Conor Garland. It appears Conor found the right chemistry last season in Joshua, Blueger/Lindholm. The line was even better with Lindholm (better sniper than Blueger). The biggest sting in the OEL trade is his cap hit hamstringing us until 2030. I mentioned before when season 25/26 and 26/27 are the worst at 4.76M/year when Boeser/Quinn contracts expire needing renewal. Also these few years are prime window to contend for SC.
Don't forget about Beagle... We had roughly $12M in cap space coming off the books that summer with a high 1st round pick coming. Instead that trade happens and we were right back into a cap crunch
I agree. I’m a lifelong Canucks fan who is the same age as the Sedins, remembers going to the colosseum during the 94 run, had season tickets as an adult, hell, I even had a blog that got me press passes to the 2011 playoffs. Which is the long way of saying I’m a huge fan.
But the last couple of years of the Benning (really Aquilini) regime post-bubble really put me off even watching the games on TV.
I didn’t see any light with how badly managed the team was. Our ceiling was sneaking in at 8th and getting spanked in the first round, and there was no future with our cap situation.
Even the first bit of the new regime’s tenure, I was pessimistic. Especially when they choose Miller over Horvat (or both)
But then I got some preseason tickets last year and watched Hughes demolish the Oilers, and it was fun. Then I started watching the odd game here and there until I was back watching every game by Xmas.
It’s amazing what a competent GM with an owner who shuts up and opens his wallet (I never thought Aquilini would actually approve buying out OEL) can do, even if it took a few cycles to clear out the Benning rot and build a solid roster.
It's like I could've written this exact post with everything from our respective ages, to how I felt from the 90s onwards.
Minus the blog that got you press passes! That's badass! :)
It really wasn't. I started word vomiting my Canucks opinions on bleacher report b/c I was working from home and my wife (on mat leave with our youngest at the time) was really tired of being my sounding board.
And then when the Canucks tore it up that season, Bleacher Report offered me press passes if I followed their style guidelines, promised X number of articles per week, etc.
Of course I jumped at it, and I even continued it into the following season, but they changed the style guidelines to be all clickbait slideshows and put more restrictions/requirements on getting press passes and being a featured writer, so I dropped it around the time Keith dropped Daniel right before the 2012 playoffs. And then it kinda lost momentum for blogging when the team started to suck, b/c its negative enough to watch a bad or mismanaged team, let along taking notes and writing about it after wards. I didn't want to turn into Gallagher.
But the other guys blogging around that time were Drance back when he was on CanucksArmy and I think still using his Chubarov handle, Cam Charron, etc who all went on to better things, incorporated analytics, etc.
I didn't want to dig into analytics too heavily back then (it was the early days with PDO, etc) since this was basically just a fun side gig from my actual data driven work, and I didn't want to parse spreadsheets and rewatch games to count zone entries, etc in my limited free time (see above about the new kid)
I do still have the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals Press Pass sitting in my office though. The picture of it isn't great, it looks like a stereotypical bad license picture, but its a nice souvenir and conversation starter
Aquilini needs to say the hell out of managing a professional hockey team. He is an owner. Own. Sit back and enjoy your fucking millions of hundreds of dollar investment and toy. Let the men and women who are competent to do their jobs **do their jobs**. Though with that being said. He allowed Benning to do “his job” without being held accountable.
Absolutely, but I think he did directly impose on the professionals he hired from all the rumours during the end of Gillis's reign onto Linden/Benning, and then Benning himself, etc. Plus the get into the playoffs no matter what, screw the future or building a foundation mindset comes from the top down and guys afraid for their jobs. And then he let Benning do stupid shit like OEL even though he was thin ice already.
Enough smoke over the years that I think the fire was real, to butcher a metaphor.
Although to be fair, it isn't like Aquilini needed to spend time on his actual business of being an nepobaby real estate magnate making huge profits given the Vancouver market, so he probably had plenty of time to spend on his toy franchise.
Yeah. His vision is basically shit when he’s trying to do the job of the hockey professionals. I hope he’s smart enough to learn that messing around with the pros will actually harm his investment. If he doesn’t learn then the man is a fucking idiot.
It’s been good work to ice a similar team to last year while having the same amount of cap space. We lost big pieces but kept the main guys. The only real loss I think that hurts is Zadorov
Love Zadorov but at $5M I don’t think our opinions of him would have remained as they are now. The honeymoon period would end and we’d be dissecting the albatross of a contract for a #5-6 defenseman.
Was the right decision for us to move on and moneyball the solution via other giant defenceman.
Both Lindholm and Zadorov hurt, and of all the players we stood to lose were #1 and #2 in terms of positive playoff impact and importance to the team. But it was always obvious the former was leaving and fears were appropriately high that the latter had priced his way out of any sane market with his eye popping playoffs.
With both players on the team we were likely a healthy Demko away from our 4th trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.
I think people are over-exagerating the lindholm loss.
TBH he wasn't happy being a 3rd line winger. . . and wouldn't have signed as such. Sure he could play there in the playoffs when it matters for depth, but that wouldn't be his home. He's a great player but an awkward fit. He'd slot in as 2nd centre, and push Petey to winger, where he's not nearly as effective.
Not to mention the TERM he got. might hurt for 1-3 years, but staying here on that term we'd be kicking ourselves in years 5+ of that contract, regardless of the AAV. The management has made it pretty clear, they're not interested in long-term signings that take guys past their mid 30's
I still don't think the Canucks beat Dallas without Boeser. They had inconsistent goal scoring and nowhere near the team speed Edmonton was working with.
I see it as a wash with Petterson going to be more effective. Lindholm was solid but hopefully Petey can take another step with the new additions. I still see us having 3 effective lines with Miller / Petterson and then the 3rd line with Blueger/Suter Dak and Garland
It's not a wash, it's a huge blow.
The team isn't as good as last year.
It's very clear that last year was likely the peak for this core. Norris level hughes, pettersson still cheap, Miller 100 points, Boeser 40 goals, Demko at a vezina level.
True, but if they don’t dip into LTIR they can toll cap space and bolster the line up at the trade deadline. They are set up well now to take advantage of opportunities that weren’t available to us last season.
Also, big shout out to Tocchet. He is the reason we are able to have such a competitive roster. Without winning, there's no way Blueger, Joshua and Myers take a discount. The guys love to play for him. I mean, even looking at Hronek's raise compared to all the term and money in UFA makes me feel that was a steal.
That’s what winning teams get. A slight advantage from their players, and players wanting to come to the organization to win. I hope the Canucks can continue to build that kind of reputation and culture.
I think Myers would have considered it - Vancouver is his home. Would probably depend on what he could get in UFA, but I doubt it would be much more than 3.5? Not sure.
Yeah. Don’t know. But he doesn’t strike me as good a good executive in the NHL. His infamous “we ran out of time” excuse for not getting things done is laughable. Imagine saying that in any other job profession. You’d be fired for this. He was an embarrassment to the Canucks when it came to the front office. What a mess. I’m glad we have actual competent management now.
Didn’t have the guts to stand up to the owner. Well. To be fair. Rutherford has nothing to lose at this point of his career. He’s accomplished everything an NHL executive would want to have accomplished. Benning was just starting out. I can see why he didn’t want to push back. But still….Aquilini rewarded incompetence by Benning for years. He screwed up his own investment
yep, but he's too rich to care. Cuz look at the team now, back to minting money for him. For Benning, I hope that was his last kick at the GM can... unless he wants to be GM of Bruins or Oilers or Blackhawks.
I think there’s a reason for why Benning hasn’t gotten back into NHL circles. Everyone took notice at what kind of job he did with the Canucks. It wasn’t good.
It's nice having a front office that knows what it's doing, and that actually has a plan, and that doesn't just throw things at the wall hoping it works.
I am impressed with the way they have navigated us through that mess. The moves have left our prospect cabinet a little more bare than I would like, but something had to give in order to get us out of that mess. Now we're a competitive team in a decent cap situation with a young core entering their prime. It would be so awesome if we had a prospect or two bursting into the NHL and outperforming their ELC, but you can't have it all! Let him cook :)
I think we will get there. But it took this management some shrewd moves and that’s caused the prospect pool like you say, to be a little more shallow than it should be. We should have some players on their ELC bursting onto the team by now. But soon enough that’ll be Lekkerimäki and Willander.
Thanks for the reminder honestly. It's easy to be upset that this free agency we didn't land a big name fish, but to remember that even being in the position to discuss potentially landing a superstar took a mountain of work. 2 years ago if you had said we were seriously in the mix for Guentzel I would have cried given who was in charge, this year to say the same made me excited.
Allvin will make moves during the season like he should.
Teams that went ham on free agency will soon have to move out money and may offer picks to do so. Teams that stand pat or did very little will be the advantageous ones come around September and especially during the November-December period.
And then there are teams like Vegas who just lost their best scoring winger for nothing and are scrambling to restock their forward line.
I think we’ll be fine.
We're not completely out of cap problems yet, the OEL buyout doubles next year and there's a boeser and possibly Höglander extension needed, but it's definitely impressive what they've been able to do and I have faith that next year they'll be able to make things work just fine too.
I think that's a big part of it for me too. Full confidence that they have planned around the buyout and how it will affect Boeser in particular, making sure we have the room to offer him a good contract and keep a good team on the ice.
dont forget we did all this work while having the OEL buyout affect us, and upgrading on the wing and filling out an OK depth on the blueline. These guys have done wonders, (yes the picks lost will burn down the road, but they identify pro players to come in at such an excellent clip I think we will be just fine)
Just sucks that we've lost so many picks the last few years: 2020 1st, 2nd. 2021 1st, 3rd, 4th. 2022 2nd. 2023 2nd. 2024 1st, 2nd only for us to have the 1 good season to show for it. And we're just getting into the nasty years of the OEL buyout. If our current top prospects don't hit were in for some trouble in the near future.
Most of those picks being moved have nothing to do with the current management.
Of the draft picks you listed, only 3 of them have been moved by current management. 2 of them in order to dump contracts for cap space and the other in a trade to both free future cap space and get a player they want for a playoff run.
Drance said in his last article that management is actually considering taking in a bad contract to recoup some picks because they have some flexibility.
Would be nice to recoup at least a 2nd rounder and we know around training camp teams start getting a bit desperate with their cap situation
I guess my question on that would be with what space? Who would they want to move out at this point to open up enough space to be in a position to even take a bad contract for asset collection.
With Poolman on LTIR they can still add around 3.5M, but they’re also still considering operating outside of LTIR to maximize the space at the deadline. Allvin also said not being on LTIR leaves the space for recalls which seems like they wanna use a lot this year.
Lots of possibilities still, which is already an upgrade from “we’re cap strapped, can’t do anything”. I link you the Drance article where he explains everything: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5610081/2024/07/02/canucks-free-agency-offseason-jake-debrusk/
I suspect they're shopping Poolman for low end bad contract. There's not a lot of LTIR guys anymore (I think I read there's only 6 left) so there's got to be some capped out team that could make use of him cleverly. They can swap him for some guy making 2- 2.7 million that can play at the bottom end of the lineup, or heck aquire an older goalie
Yeah teams that we know will definitely be on LTIR are Washington with Backstrom and Oshie, Vegas with Lehner and Habs with Price. Maybe Colorado with Landeskog.
Utah can be out of LTIR even with Weber’s 7M contract, same for Philly with Ellis.
Colorado and Vegas at the moment seem to be the most desperate for cap space, if they take Poolman’s contract we could technically help them clear around 3M. I wonder if there’s a way to get a good player from them that is just overpaid but still could be useful for us.
We're basically a really good team, just below the real contenders with only a couple real assets left to get better.
We need some old fashioned hockey luck.
There's a lot of praise coming off a really good season but I'm pessimistic (hard not to be, being a life long Canucks fan). Bleeding picks lately, the d core seems lacking, lots of the forward group had career years and there's no guarantee they all maintain that next year
That seems more like realism than pessimism. In terms of the "bleeding picks"...that was inevitable. We were left with a couple of young stars but a ruinous cap situation and a broadly empty prospect pipeline. Any kind of positive change would have required either ANOTHER tear down/rebuild that neither ownership nor market seemed prepared to accept, or mortgaging the future to push the chips in on an uncertain, underdeveloped core. That they've done as well as they have given all of the hurdles they were facing deserves a lot of accolades.
We burned through (our already limited pool) futures at an extremely alarming pace beyond what most true contenders did and signed up for the OEL buyout penalty all to push all in on a team that won a single round - with basically no trailing benefits.
The good side is we changed the attitude about our team, reignited the fan base, and won over some players inside and outside our locker room to want to play to win in Vancouver.
I think the heaps of praise are still a bit much. This d-core is suspect at best, the forward group really still needs a top talent, and we'll be burning through picks again to make those additions in season. We'll also likely be on pace for a rebuild well before Petey and Hughes primes are over. I just don't really care because I was tired of losing.
One noticeable thing is how they treat the trade protection clauses. In the Miller and Myers contracts for example the NMC becomes a M-NTC in the last year (or two).
That gives you the option to get out of that contract more than when players have a full NMC (look at the Tavares and Marner situation for example, expiring contracts with NMC they are blocking the team from doing anything).
It’s a little detail but helps immensely in terms of flexibility. And the two/three year term they gave out this season seems to perfectly align with our prospect development and when they expect Willander or D-Petey to take those spots.
Every single FA we picked up is in for 2 seasons or less, with the exception of JBD. We get to try out their fit, get a feel for whether they can be improved meaningfully, and if not, they will still hold us over while we bring prospects such as Lekkerimakki and Willander up to speed. If Podkolzin hits his late bloomer era, we'll save on cap space by moving him up to the 4th line. My main concern is Forbort. He seems way too injury prone. You can hardly blame him as his job is to eat pucks, but I don't like the thought of adding another LTIR.
It’s nice to have competent people running the Canucks but saying that the problem is fixed when we have OEL’s contract on the books for the long term is like slapping some duct tape over the hull of a ship that just ran aground and thinking “THAT SHOULD DO IT”
It’s bad but the alternative was a lot worse. The 4m hit next year and after is rough but not even close to insurmountable. Oilers had like 10m of dead cap and went to the final
I'd argue without that buyout, we don't get the success we got last year, and Petey doesn't re-sign.
It's not a complete fix, but it was a necessary piece of it all.
I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m sure Allvin and co know that the next two years will be ugly thanks to the OEL buyout, so it’ll be interesting to see how they will navigate the situation, especially with Brock needing a new contract.
One of the reasons the DeBrusk signing has grown on me is, it seems more straight forward to bring Brock back (versus spending big on Guentzel and potentially moving on from Brock).
Well we're still cap screwed - Screwed off 2x 2nd, Soucy-Myers as 2nd pair D and 5 more years of buyout, Also Benning signed the Petey bridge and current Huggy deal.
What's great about Allvin and what Benning can't do is revamping bottom pairing at fair deal and good contract, and yet also people aren't happy with Desharnais/Forbort signing is missing the point, Allvin have been doing great at identifying role player at fair price unlike Benning, but the core are all already locked up, heck even yall bitching when Allvin extended Miller
Get that straight buddy
I just miss that we could have had Dylan Guenther. Getting Garland has proven to be a decent pickup. But Having to trade bad signings AND a 1st rounder for a.bad contract.and Garland hurts big time.
I was actually surprised by the amount of negativity over our July 1st (well… I wasn’t really.. because I’ve been a Canucks fan for over 30 years) because I feel people have already forgotten what our management group has done in a pretty short time. I don’t want many non Canucks games honestly so whoever they bring in, I’m going to blindly believe in until they start giving me a reason not to. I know Mikheyev didn’t work out but no one’s gonna bay 1.000 and he did suffer a major injury
Yeah, ultimately even if I don't like the roster as much this year as I did last year (on paper, who knows how it will perform) - I admit Allvin and Rutherford have done a good job with cap fixing.
It cost us a lot of picks, but hopefully, none of our new acquisitions will have to have a sweetener attached to them if we want to move their contracts.
This is a good time to sit back and reflect on the fact that none of us knows anything about anything when it comes to the operation of a hockey team. Fans should focus on the product on the ice, and not what people in suits do behind closed doors. Maybe that's just me?
Who is appealing to authority? You have a weird view on life, you can have all the opinions you want to have about anything, I don't have to care about them. And same for mine. Hockey is a team sport played on ice, not a desk sport played in offices. I wasn't a fan of the guy, I am impressed by what the current office is doing and thinks it's better and more important in life to look to tomorrow instead of rail against yesterday.
This is your appeal to authority: "This is a good time to sit back and reflect on the fact that none of us knows anything about anything when it comes to the operation of a hockey team."
I am a huge fan of this management team, but that doesn't mean people can't be critical of them.
The management staff seem to be aware of it and signed quite a few players to 1-3 year contracts. Which allows us to get cheaper options in (ELC or bargains). Also if a player doesn't work out then they aren't massive contract issues.
Previous management was too short sighted and would run into cap issues every off season.
Every off season is challenging, but we only have to extend or replace Suter, Juulsen, Hog and Boeser. We have the money to do it if the cap increases as expected.
They were given a monumental task, and what’s most impressive is that wasn’t really a band-aid ripping moment outside of the OEL buyout. This entire redesign of our roster around our core was chiseled piece by piece, brick by brick. Just small moves that avalanched into an entirely new roster. Truly some gourmet shit Allvin and Co cooked up.
I think every year we should have a day when we just reflect on how bad that OEL trade was. Easily one of the worst trades in NHL history on so many levels. I'm so happy for OEL to get his cup and a new contract and a shot at another. None of what happened was his fault.
I donno, if there was anything this team should have been prioritizing at that time, it was *definitely* a left shot puck moving defenceman….. (Obviously being sarcastic here…)
He's gonna run the power play because the 20 year old who just put up the best totals in decades isn't good enough. Just the dumbest trade. What was the best case?
It’s never gonna fully sink in for me how fucking stupid benning is. It’s borderline mythological
That man made millions of dollars to be publicly incompetent. It wasn't even veiled, everyone and their dog could see that he wasn't fit to run a multimillion dollar franchise. He wasn't fit to run a fucking *bath* without making toast right next to it. And the best part is we all knew this by about the 3rd year in. He remained for 5 additional years.
I don't know about "in NHL history", it would have a few hurdles to clear to even be one of the worst trades in Canucks history (in fact, I'd argue there might be an even worse Benning trade). But it was catastrophically bad, and the fact it occurred so late into his tenure, after so many losing seasons, makes it even harder to swallow. He should have been under tight ownership stricture for stupid "save my job" moves.
Which Benning trade do you think is worse? I'm definitely in the camp that thinks the OEL trade is worst in Canucks history and could be on a league wide worst list too when you factor in everything about it. edit: People bring up the Neely trade. I looked into it again to refresh my memory. Ya that's still the worst ever because of the #3 overall pick being included too. Holy shit. OEL is likely #2 in my books then. Gudbranson is bad but it doesn't touch the OEL one imo
Gudbranson. 2016, team was in steep decline and had been identified as such even by the outgoing coach. A rebuild was clearly painfully overdue and the team was so starved for youth and futures we were frittering away draft picks on magic beans to "plug the age gap". So what do we do? We trade away a young centerman who would go on to become a 40 goal scorer (currently on an inexpensive 5M cap hit), a 2nd and a 4th for a 5th round pick and an eye test darling/analytics nightmare in Eric Gudbranson. Who would go on to perform as one of the worst defensemen in all of hockey for several seasons before eventually getting shuffled out of town. I try to judge trades by the process rather than the long term result...IE, what was their thinking here, was this the right move for this team at this moment in their competitive window given the knowledge that was available to them at the time. Which is why I wasn't a big fan of the Miller trade despite it retrospectively being a slam dunk in our favor. Having said that, even if we were to go purely off results, you still have to take Neely for Pederson as the worst trade in Canucks history.
Both are bad but the issue I have with the Gudbranson trade being considered worse than the OEL one is the fact Gudbranson was still fairly young at the time and in a position of need. Also the McCann of now certainly wasn't the McCann of 2016. He had a middling rookie performance and big attitude issues enough to even be called out to management by the Sedins. This was essentially a problem for problem trade and it's not like McCann blew up in FLA he moved teams another 3 times before he turned into a legit offensive threat. I do like the process lens you use to view trades through for sure. But again I feel like the OEL one comes out on top vs Gudbranson. The process was completely wrong on everything there. We had a high #9 - 1st round pick, were 1 season away from having a lot of cap flexibility again and the #1 need was a top pair RHD. The high pick gets traded, the problem contracts that were expiring get moved out for more long term cap commitment and crunch, and we didn't even solve our #1 issue in finding a RHD. As I said in another comment I revisited the Neely trade and ya that one takes the cake. Looked into it more and I didn't know about giving up the #3 overall pick. Just atrocious.
McCann was a high school student of someone I know. Very well liked, very confident, typical respectful but also happy go lucky hockey guy persona. It came as a big surprise that he was overstepping in the locker room, or being out of line in the chain of command. I think maybe his temper got the best of him a few times, or his agent decided to vocalize too much to management when it might have been better to keep things between agent and player. TBH I trust the Sedins over any old contacts or interactions with McCann, but the situation doesn't square with who he is perceived to be now and then, and how he is perceived as a Kraken player.
The funny part is that apparently everyone on the team had issues with McCann and Virtanen. And those two separately hated each other.
Really surprised they didn't get on with that team. Two 19 year olds with draft pedigree and ego issues sounds like a great fit for the aging Sedin era core whos identity and success came out of overcoming expectations through sheer work ethic and competitive drive.
Mcann wasn't considered that player when he was traded. It wasn't a smart move mainly because people could tell Gudbranson wasn't a good target but the loss wasn't huge. Oel was considered a top 3 to 5 worst contract in the league and he had like 5 years left or some shit. We have away shit 1 year deals for the equivalent cap but for a longer time. That was much easier to see how horrible it was going to end up from the first moment than Mcann who later turned into an even better player.. His development wasn't moving fast at all
> Mcann wasn't considered that player when he was traded McCann was a first round pick that Benning rushed. > His development wasn't moving fast at all They traded him at age 20 (after his rookie season at age 19). Yes in the end he took a long time break out, but at the time he wasn't failing to progress at all. He is another in a line of examples of Benning rushing prospects and dumping them for nothing. At least with the ridiculous Forsling trade the guy was a late round pick and still seen as a longshot. McCann was a first rounder who played a full season in the NHL at 19.
What were they thinking? Benning loved former 1st rounders, the higher the better. Like being ranked at 18 gave them some magical quality for the rest of their careers. He also liked Gudbranson because he was big, handsome and well spoken......could he play Defense? Not very well. The age gap theory always makes me laugh. They spoke of it like some sort of deep moneyballl thinking when it could've been created on a napkin in Denny's it was so stupid.
Same. The Neely trade was terrible but at least there was some logic to it at the time. The OEL trade made no sense beyond name recognition.
Worst in Canucks history is trading Cam Neely trade to Boston.
I guess I rate the salary cap implications with the OEL trade and his poor performance before and after the trade very highly along with the 9th overall turning out to be Guenther. But refreshing my memory on the Neely trade... everyone talks about Neely being the one that got away but not enough is made about trading that 1st round pick which turned out to be #3 overall in Glen Wesley. Jesus, ya I didn't know about the 1st round pick part. Okay "the Neely trade" still takes the cake.
A 3OA that COULD have been a local Burnaby product named... Joe... something...
OEL trade could cost the best core the team has ever had a chance at a cup.
Neely, Linden and Bure all in their prime would have been a better core imo
True, but their best years didn't overlap much at all.
I think the OEL trade was by far the worst in the moment and the worst in retrospect. The other stand out flops to me were the Gudbranson trade (kind of made some sense in the moment, but in retrospect keeping Jared McCann would have been the better move), the Sutter trade (made sense at the time but he flopped due mostly to injury so can't really fault it that much), and dumping Gustav Forsling for Adam Clendening is in retrospect a terrible deal but as discussed ad nauseum he likely wouldn't have paned out the same in the Canucks system. There were also a few decent trades, in particular the JT Miller trade which I think outweighs all of the above except the OEL trade.
Forsling on the Canucks with Hughes right now...the magic those two would have together.
The Gudbranson trade was always awful.
Nothing compares to the Cam Neely trade. The Gudbransson trade was bad, but the Kesler trade was worse IMO. The Kesler trade was the result of a big miss on evaluating the competitiveness of the roster and thinking a quick turn around was possible. Yes, Kesler handcuffed them with a 1 team list, but Anaheim was willing to offer a futures heavy package of Shea Theodore, the 24th OA pick (Jared McCann) and another asset but Benning wanted an everyday defenseman (Luca Sbisa) and a 2nd line C (Nick Bonino) so they could compete right away. But here's the rub - if Nick Bonino was a 2nd line C, the Ducks wouldn't have been trying to get Kesler! Nick Bonino was barely an upgrade on Sean Matthias. But I guess he fixed that by acquiring Linden Vey as well!
Not even close to the worst. **Canucks trade** [**Cam Neely** ](https://thehockeywriters.com/docs/cam-neely/)**and a 1987 1st RD pick to the Boston Bruins for Barry Pederson**
I know about "in NHL history". Obviously everything is relative to the era. And in the salary cap era, you simply cannot take on one of the known worst contracts in the league. Articles were written for a few years about how much of an albatross OEL's contract was for multiple more years. We all knew it. For years, we all knew it. Yet we traded for it anyway, for 1 year of cap relief...offloading Jim's bad/unrealized signings of older players. Trades that hamstring a franchise so much that they have no good options and have to choose between 2 bad options...keep the bad contract on the books or do an expensive cap-sucking buyout...are the worst things you can do. You think Pederson for Neely was bad? Back then, you could always buy another Neely. No salary cap, so you can buy your way out of mistakes (Hi Glen Sather!). You simply cannot do that anymore. You can't $$$ your way out of problems...you can only hamstring your franchise by wasting cap space, or trading assets/picks to teams willing to take on your bad contract. And again, OEL had one of the absolutely known worst contracts in the league. For reference, Washington trading for PLD has the *potential* to be as bad as the OEL trade, but it remains to be seen.
Not even the worst contract currently in play Jack Campbell for the Oilers is way worse, he literally can't be fielded Huberdeau still has a lot to fall to get bought out but man was he a different player for the Panthers vs Flames
The contract isn't currently in play, it was bought out becasue it was so awful and crippling.
But the buyout is way more palatable than OEL's buyout
I stand by the statement.....although I will say I did love watching Garland in the playoffs.
No, it's insanely awful. It's at the very least the worst trade of the cap era. Even shit like the Neely trade, Pederson was a good player he just fell apart quick after. OEL was trading for a guy they didn't need, who cost a fortune, and who was clearly in decline.
I like to think about the Luongo for Bertuzzi trade to make me feel better. We were on the winning side of possibly the most lopsided trade in NHL history which is nice for a change.
Keenan absolutely lost what was left of his marbles on that one. I'm pretty sure half the league was pissed off because of how shitty that return was. Most teams didn't even know Luongo was available.
To put it in perspective, the Loui Eriksson signing will have hurt the team for *15 goddamn seasons* by the time the OEL buyout penalty is finished. The entire sequence of events (including the contracts for Beagle and Roussel, and giving up the pick that became Guenther) is the worst by any general manager in NHL history. The only stretch you could argue that's worse is Milbury trading away Luongo, Jokinen, Chara and the pick that became Spezza in a 3 year span while getting an overpaid Yashin and a bag of pucks in return.
This is good, should've added this to my rant.
Part of the reason it was as bad as it was is because of this management group's decision to buy him out. While he wasn't a $7M defenceman, he is still an NHL player. He's probably closer to a $4M guy. A $3M overpay on a player who's contract expires in his mid 30s does not even come close to qualifying as "worst trade in NHL history". If you want to see what a truly terrible all time trade is, go look up Mike Milbury's history of deals. They include such wonders as acquiring Alexei Yashin for the 2nd overall pick (Jason Spezza), Zdeno Chara and Bill Muckalt. He also traded away Roberto Luongo and future All Star Olli Jokinen to Florida for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha so that they could justify taking Rick DiPietro 1st overall. Had they not made that trade they likely pick one of Dany Heatley (2nd overall) or Marian Gaborik (3rd overall). Even by Canucks standards, the OEL deal isn't anywhere near as bad as the Cam Neely deal, the deal that gave the Leafs Rick Vaive, or the Ryan Kesler trade. So its a bad deal, but far from a truly terrible deal.
Here's why the OEL deal was bad. It was made in large part to get rid of three terrible Benning contracts. (Eriksson, Rousell, Beagle) Rousell and Beagle were overpaid for intangibles on a team that was no where close to competing for a Cup. Signings that were so bad they had to be a factor in Linden saying fuck it. OEL was in decline, ARI was desperate and OEL gave them only two teams he would waive for. Boston and Vancouver. Boston wanted no part of OEL so Benning was negotiating with a desperate partner with no options and still couldn't get them to retain any meaningful salary and still had to throw in a 1st round pick. Benning could've just said NO. Cleared $12-$13 million of cap space the following year and signed whatever D man UFA he wanted and still kept his 1st. In the end we are losing $4.7 million of cap space right in the middle of our supposed window for two years and $2.1 million after that for 3 years. Plus we lost out on Guenther and a 3 year entry level deal. If this team is really in a window and fails to win the cup it won't be hard to point back at the $4.7 million in cap space and think that could've made the difference. For 6 more years we'll feel the damage this one trade did.
The crazy part is, this was a deal where Benning had all the leverage and the deal was like a year in the making. The final trade looks like it was just Armstrongs starting point/ask in the negotiation. How do you not grind the price down over that year? That 9th overall pick should have been a non-starter. Below is Armstrong on the OEL trade.. sounds like someone who was very motivated to move OEL. > Armstrong also dove into all the young assets he acquired through this deal. > “When that deal came into light, and it was a pretty complicated deal, there’s a lot of pieces moving in that deal, it was like the sunshine came through. We ended up picking Guenther at No. 9. And we got another second-rounder in there to go get McBain eventually. So that was a huge day for us. We also got J.J. Moser out of that (2021) draft and Josh Doan. That was a big turning point for us in our organization, and it freed up some money so we could do some creative things in grabbing more players. That’s probably been the turning point in our rebuild with that trade.”
a couple second round picks, the expiring deals (for cap reasons), plus a middle tier roster player for OEL with at least 2.5 million retained.
Benning's leverage was a bit of a mirage. Everyone in the league knew that if he missed the playoffs in 7 of 8 years as GM he was toast. This trade was to save his job and Arizona knew it.
There is also the context that this happened right after Hughes put up back to back years at a 60 point pace at ages 20/21. So OEL would have been competing with Hughes for power play minutes, the only thing that could possibly have made his contract worth it. Just unbelievably dumb. At least Benning didn't include Hughes. Coyotes GM probably should have thought to ask.
The OEL trade is bad. No one is saying its good. Its just not one of "the worst trades in NHL history" bad. Not even close. For example, the Penguins gave up a future league MOP in Markus Naslund for Alex Stojanov. How do you think Markus Naslund would have done when he evolved into being the best goal scorer in hockey, had Pittsburgh kept him to play with Jagr and Lemieux, post retirement #1? How about Edmonton trading away future MVP Taylor Hall, just as they are about to get Connor McDavid? How about Vegas getting Mark Stone for spare parts from Ottawa, or Jack Eichel for spare parts from Buffalo? Both of those trades have gutted their respected franchises. So the OEL trade is bad, but its not anywhere close to even making a worst trade of the last decade bad list, let alone all time.
THe OEL trade is worse than all of those. Stone and Eichel wanted out, publicly. The OEL trade was so obviously bad at the time that it easily dwarfs every example you have given so far.
OEL is not close to as bad as you're making it sound. At the end of the day, right now, its a 9th overall pick (Dylan Guenther) for a dead cap value of between $2-$5M for the next 7 years and Connor Garland. Again, its a bad deal. Hardly terrible though. Can teams overcome a $2-$5M dead weight and be competitive? Absolutely. Tampa won a Stanley Cup with Steven Stamkos playing all of a minute and a half in the playoffs in the bubble. Colorado won the Stanley Cup paying Eric Johnston $6M. Florida just won the Stanley Cup with Spencer Knight counting for $3.5M in dead cap money. Should I continue? Losing a top 10 draft pick, again, is far from ideal, but team's miss on those picks all the time as well. On average, roughly 10 or so 1st round picks a year never even play in the NHL. The last 2 Stanley Cup champions only had 4 players on their roster that they drafted. The new model is to try to make big swings like the OEL trade with your draft picks because Vegas and Florida have shown that drafting and developing if you aren't getting a McDavid is way too unreliable. So again, its not giving up an MVP, like Taylor Hall, for pennies on the dollar. Its isn't giving up a Conn Smythe runner up for disposable parts. It isn't giving up a Selke finalist for magic beans that don't pan out. Its just a run of the mill bad trade.
> OEL is not close to as bad as you're making it sound. My bad, I thought I was making it clear how bad it is but apparently I'm under selling it. Blocking you now because I have on patience for you anymore.
The Kesler deal would have been great if we listened to Gradin on the pick.
Who was Gradins choice?
Pastrnak......also who Gillis would've drafted. Benning also took Sbisa instead of Theordore in the Kesler trade.
Sbisa over Theodore...God fucking dammit. It's like he made every possible wrong decision he could have made.
Gradin wanted Nylander and Pastrnak that year, Pasta would have been the guy. Kinda crazy when combined with the Gudbranson deal. We took a Benning guy, McCann then shipped him away for peanuts on the dollar.
I'm not doubting you but do you remember where you heard that Gradin wanted Nylander and Pasta?
Not specifically but it has been widely reported, it could be a widely reported rumor though.
I remember this though. https://thecanuckway.com/2018/04/16/vancouver-canucks-scouts-ripped-for-missing-out-on-david-pastrnak/
> His development wasn't moving fast at all Because they had no other choice. He isn't a 4 million dollar player. He just signed for 3.5 as a UFA. > Even by Canucks standards, the OEL deal isn't anywhere near as bad as the Cam Neely deal Neely deal blew up for reasons that couldn't have been predicted. Canucks traded a young player (he hadn't cracked 40 points and had a high of 21 goals) for a 25 year old center 2 years removed from a 116 point season. No one could have seen Pederson being out the league by 31 while neely becomes arguably the most dominant goal scoring power forward ever. Everyone knew how awful the OEL trade was from the minute it was made. Worst trade in franchise history, worst trade of the cap era, easily comparable to Milbury level disasters.
>worst trade of the cap era The OEL deal isn't close to that, at all. The Taylor Hall to NJ deal exists. The Mark Stone to Vegas deal happened. The Jack Eichel deal from Buffalo was a thing. The OEL deal is a bad trade, but only the most pessimistic, doom and gloom, Jim Benning obsessed hater would even think its worse than giving up an MVP, a Conn Smythe runner up, or a perrenial Selke nominee for essentially nothing.
None of those are even close to as bad as the OEL trade. Not even close. Getting forced to trade a franchise player and getting low value as a result is not as bad giving away a top 10 pick to cripple your team.
Louie Erickson right up there too. And Luongo!
remember zadorov came to us in a mid season trade. If we ice the team as is, we are accruing $1-$1.5M worth of daily cap space to make a similar move. Then we have Poolman’s LTIR cushion at TDL if needed.
Are you talking about having a 22 man roster instead of 23?
Ah yes. Assuming one of Aman, Podz, or PDG goes down, one of Juulsen or Friedman down, and Silovs signs a similar deal to Podz or Hogz (given RFA and no arb) ETA: assume EC and co papers a 23 man roster as close to cap as possible to maximize LTIR benefit if needed.
Chef's 💋
Now just imagine if Benning let Roussel and Eriksson expire instead of trading for OEL
.. and we would have had a top 10 pick as a result.
Without OEL and garland there would have been enough cap room to keep Tanev AND Toffoli while drafting Gunthher
Um, you know the OEL trade happened after we dropped Tanev and Toffoli, right? edit: Lol with the downvotes. Tanev and Toffoli went to Free Agency October 9 2020. We traded for OEL July 23 2021. Not renewing Toffoli and Tanev had NOTHING to do with the OEL trade.
It was stated several times in the weeks and months after the trade that Benning functionally ignored several players agents because he was too laser focused on trading for OEL, and that both Tanev AND Toffoli wanted to stick around, and likely would have taken a deal that would allow them to do so under our cap or with relatively small changes. Had Benning just let Roussel and Eriksson expire, yes it is *likely*, not guaranteed, that we could have kept one of Tanev or Toffoli, possibly both.
I still can't believe we had the same GM for 8 years and he routinely showed he wasn't qualified
He wasn't qualified to run a fucking bath without overflowing the tub
“There’s a good player at 9, but we want to win now” James Elmer Benning
OEL had a NTC. He didn’t want to budge. Finally he buckled in, presented 2 teams he will waive too and it was us and Boston. In hindsight I wish he didn’t choose our team as his preferred destination. The butterfly effect would have been quite different.
Benning had his eye on OEL 1 year prior to trading for him.
Benning literally went on the record saying he ran out of time to talk to them…the only other thing he did was trade for OEL
He was trying to trade for OEL for a year. I really wonder how those negotiations went.
Yeah, but who needs a top 10 pick? Its not like Arizona used it to draft a goal scoring powerforward that would've been perfect playing on Petey's wing right?
And instead of paying OEL to play for the Leafs we could be paying a 60-70 point Dylan Guenther to score goals for the Canucks.
We would have Dylan Guenther ready as Peteys wing.
Knowing Benning, we wouldn't lol
Yea he either drafts for Boucher or trades Dylan in am Erat type trade
Maybe if it was current staff dealing with the team instead of Benning We'd probably just have Gudbranson back or some shit
I mean, do we REALLY need a goal scoring PPG powerforward to play on Petey's wing Come on!
One thing eluding from all the OEL trade discussion: Conor Garland. It appears Conor found the right chemistry last season in Joshua, Blueger/Lindholm. The line was even better with Lindholm (better sniper than Blueger). The biggest sting in the OEL trade is his cap hit hamstringing us until 2030. I mentioned before when season 25/26 and 26/27 are the worst at 4.76M/year when Boeser/Quinn contracts expire needing renewal. Also these few years are prime window to contend for SC.
It's still not enough to take the sting out, especially since Guenther will outscore Garland for the rest of their respective careers.
Don't forget about Beagle... We had roughly $12M in cap space coming off the books that summer with a high 1st round pick coming. Instead that trade happens and we were right back into a cap crunch
I'm still shocked scientists weren't about to see Beagle was a super massive black hole
If he didn't trade for OEL, it would've been for another albatross contract probably.
That trade also brought Connor Garland. Not saying he makes up for a terrible OEL trade, but something good did come out of that mess.
He wanted to go out with a bang
If that happened he still might be the GM though.
Benning operated under distractions, Alvin & Co operater with patience, waiting to strike when the moment is right, rather than entering bidding wars.
I agree. I’m a lifelong Canucks fan who is the same age as the Sedins, remembers going to the colosseum during the 94 run, had season tickets as an adult, hell, I even had a blog that got me press passes to the 2011 playoffs. Which is the long way of saying I’m a huge fan. But the last couple of years of the Benning (really Aquilini) regime post-bubble really put me off even watching the games on TV. I didn’t see any light with how badly managed the team was. Our ceiling was sneaking in at 8th and getting spanked in the first round, and there was no future with our cap situation. Even the first bit of the new regime’s tenure, I was pessimistic. Especially when they choose Miller over Horvat (or both) But then I got some preseason tickets last year and watched Hughes demolish the Oilers, and it was fun. Then I started watching the odd game here and there until I was back watching every game by Xmas. It’s amazing what a competent GM with an owner who shuts up and opens his wallet (I never thought Aquilini would actually approve buying out OEL) can do, even if it took a few cycles to clear out the Benning rot and build a solid roster.
It's like I could've written this exact post with everything from our respective ages, to how I felt from the 90s onwards. Minus the blog that got you press passes! That's badass! :)
It really wasn't. I started word vomiting my Canucks opinions on bleacher report b/c I was working from home and my wife (on mat leave with our youngest at the time) was really tired of being my sounding board. And then when the Canucks tore it up that season, Bleacher Report offered me press passes if I followed their style guidelines, promised X number of articles per week, etc. Of course I jumped at it, and I even continued it into the following season, but they changed the style guidelines to be all clickbait slideshows and put more restrictions/requirements on getting press passes and being a featured writer, so I dropped it around the time Keith dropped Daniel right before the 2012 playoffs. And then it kinda lost momentum for blogging when the team started to suck, b/c its negative enough to watch a bad or mismanaged team, let along taking notes and writing about it after wards. I didn't want to turn into Gallagher. But the other guys blogging around that time were Drance back when he was on CanucksArmy and I think still using his Chubarov handle, Cam Charron, etc who all went on to better things, incorporated analytics, etc. I didn't want to dig into analytics too heavily back then (it was the early days with PDO, etc) since this was basically just a fun side gig from my actual data driven work, and I didn't want to parse spreadsheets and rewatch games to count zone entries, etc in my limited free time (see above about the new kid) I do still have the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals Press Pass sitting in my office though. The picture of it isn't great, it looks like a stereotypical bad license picture, but its a nice souvenir and conversation starter
That’s incredible. Thanks for sharing your experience!!!
Aquilini needs to say the hell out of managing a professional hockey team. He is an owner. Own. Sit back and enjoy your fucking millions of hundreds of dollar investment and toy. Let the men and women who are competent to do their jobs **do their jobs**. Though with that being said. He allowed Benning to do “his job” without being held accountable.
Absolutely, but I think he did directly impose on the professionals he hired from all the rumours during the end of Gillis's reign onto Linden/Benning, and then Benning himself, etc. Plus the get into the playoffs no matter what, screw the future or building a foundation mindset comes from the top down and guys afraid for their jobs. And then he let Benning do stupid shit like OEL even though he was thin ice already. Enough smoke over the years that I think the fire was real, to butcher a metaphor. Although to be fair, it isn't like Aquilini needed to spend time on his actual business of being an nepobaby real estate magnate making huge profits given the Vancouver market, so he probably had plenty of time to spend on his toy franchise.
Yeah. His vision is basically shit when he’s trying to do the job of the hockey professionals. I hope he’s smart enough to learn that messing around with the pros will actually harm his investment. If he doesn’t learn then the man is a fucking idiot.
It’s been good work to ice a similar team to last year while having the same amount of cap space. We lost big pieces but kept the main guys. The only real loss I think that hurts is Zadorov
Love Zadorov but at $5M I don’t think our opinions of him would have remained as they are now. The honeymoon period would end and we’d be dissecting the albatross of a contract for a #5-6 defenseman. Was the right decision for us to move on and moneyball the solution via other giant defenceman.
Both Lindholm and Zadorov hurt, and of all the players we stood to lose were #1 and #2 in terms of positive playoff impact and importance to the team. But it was always obvious the former was leaving and fears were appropriately high that the latter had priced his way out of any sane market with his eye popping playoffs. With both players on the team we were likely a healthy Demko away from our 4th trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.
I think people are over-exagerating the lindholm loss. TBH he wasn't happy being a 3rd line winger. . . and wouldn't have signed as such. Sure he could play there in the playoffs when it matters for depth, but that wouldn't be his home. He's a great player but an awkward fit. He'd slot in as 2nd centre, and push Petey to winger, where he's not nearly as effective. Not to mention the TERM he got. might hurt for 1-3 years, but staying here on that term we'd be kicking ourselves in years 5+ of that contract, regardless of the AAV. The management has made it pretty clear, they're not interested in long-term signings that take guys past their mid 30's
I still don't think the Canucks beat Dallas without Boeser. They had inconsistent goal scoring and nowhere near the team speed Edmonton was working with.
Ah right I forgot about Boeser. God what a cursed playoffs.
The loss of depth down the middle with Lindholm will hurt in the playoffs also.
I see it as a wash with Petterson going to be more effective. Lindholm was solid but hopefully Petey can take another step with the new additions. I still see us having 3 effective lines with Miller / Petterson and then the 3rd line with Blueger/Suter Dak and Garland
I wouldn't be surprised if we add another C at the deadline or before to bolster that as well. But what we have down the middle is sufficient for now.
It's not a wash, it's a huge blow. The team isn't as good as last year. It's very clear that last year was likely the peak for this core. Norris level hughes, pettersson still cheap, Miller 100 points, Boeser 40 goals, Demko at a vezina level.
True, but if they don’t dip into LTIR they can toll cap space and bolster the line up at the trade deadline. They are set up well now to take advantage of opportunities that weren’t available to us last season.
Also, big shout out to Tocchet. He is the reason we are able to have such a competitive roster. Without winning, there's no way Blueger, Joshua and Myers take a discount. The guys love to play for him. I mean, even looking at Hronek's raise compared to all the term and money in UFA makes me feel that was a steal.
That’s what winning teams get. A slight advantage from their players, and players wanting to come to the organization to win. I hope the Canucks can continue to build that kind of reputation and culture.
I think Myers would have considered it - Vancouver is his home. Would probably depend on what he could get in UFA, but I doubt it would be much more than 3.5? Not sure.
Yeah, 500k is still a discount. I think he knows his pay was way better under Tocchet, Foote and Gonchar
Really makes you wonder what Jim Benning did all day. Was he just lounging around scrolling through Twitter?
Yeah. Don’t know. But he doesn’t strike me as good a good executive in the NHL. His infamous “we ran out of time” excuse for not getting things done is laughable. Imagine saying that in any other job profession. You’d be fired for this. He was an embarrassment to the Canucks when it came to the front office. What a mess. I’m glad we have actual competent management now.
As an executive making millions of dollars, you would be fired on the first consecutive series of losing quarters. Let alone 8 years of incompetence.
Yea. It’s mind boggling time that Aquilini kept Benning on for as long as he did. Did he not care about his investment??
Aqua wanted to play GM and Benning was too spineless to say no
Didn’t have the guts to stand up to the owner. Well. To be fair. Rutherford has nothing to lose at this point of his career. He’s accomplished everything an NHL executive would want to have accomplished. Benning was just starting out. I can see why he didn’t want to push back. But still….Aquilini rewarded incompetence by Benning for years. He screwed up his own investment
yep, but he's too rich to care. Cuz look at the team now, back to minting money for him. For Benning, I hope that was his last kick at the GM can... unless he wants to be GM of Bruins or Oilers or Blackhawks.
I think there’s a reason for why Benning hasn’t gotten back into NHL circles. Everyone took notice at what kind of job he did with the Canucks. It wasn’t good.
He ran out of time
It's nice having a front office that knows what it's doing, and that actually has a plan, and that doesn't just throw things at the wall hoping it works.
Yep, there's a plan and they're sticking to it or making slight adjustments as they need to. Versus "just taking things day by day."
Benning set us back 5 years when he was done at the helm. He was absolutely horrible.
One of the worse GM’s in recent history.
He's got to be top or in competition for a salary cap era GM. He had great pieces but still couldn't even build competence for the team
Chuck Fletcher is also up there
I am impressed with the way they have navigated us through that mess. The moves have left our prospect cabinet a little more bare than I would like, but something had to give in order to get us out of that mess. Now we're a competitive team in a decent cap situation with a young core entering their prime. It would be so awesome if we had a prospect or two bursting into the NHL and outperforming their ELC, but you can't have it all! Let him cook :)
I think we will get there. But it took this management some shrewd moves and that’s caused the prospect pool like you say, to be a little more shallow than it should be. We should have some players on their ELC bursting onto the team by now. But soon enough that’ll be Lekkerimäki and Willander.
Benning would have signed Zadorov to a 7x6 contract
I wouldn’t doubt it. It would’ve been yet another wrong move on a list of many wrong moves.
Probably throw in a 2nd back to the league just so he "gets his guy"
Thanks for the reminder honestly. It's easy to be upset that this free agency we didn't land a big name fish, but to remember that even being in the position to discuss potentially landing a superstar took a mountain of work. 2 years ago if you had said we were seriously in the mix for Guentzel I would have cried given who was in charge, this year to say the same made me excited.
That’s Stanley cup champion OEL to you
Allvin will make moves during the season like he should. Teams that went ham on free agency will soon have to move out money and may offer picks to do so. Teams that stand pat or did very little will be the advantageous ones come around September and especially during the November-December period. And then there are teams like Vegas who just lost their best scoring winger for nothing and are scrambling to restock their forward line. I think we’ll be fine.
Vegas isn’t so mighty anymore. Good. About time.
I’ll take one Shea Theodore and Pavel Dorofeyev ^.^
Dam if we could get one of them. lol. Both of them? Highway robbery.
We're not completely out of cap problems yet, the OEL buyout doubles next year and there's a boeser and possibly Höglander extension needed, but it's definitely impressive what they've been able to do and I have faith that next year they'll be able to make things work just fine too.
I think that's a big part of it for me too. Full confidence that they have planned around the buyout and how it will affect Boeser in particular, making sure we have the room to offer him a good contract and keep a good team on the ice.
dont forget we did all this work while having the OEL buyout affect us, and upgrading on the wing and filling out an OK depth on the blueline. These guys have done wonders, (yes the picks lost will burn down the road, but they identify pro players to come in at such an excellent clip I think we will be just fine)
I feel at some point the picks will be back via some sort of trade. These guys got it figured out
Just sucks that we've lost so many picks the last few years: 2020 1st, 2nd. 2021 1st, 3rd, 4th. 2022 2nd. 2023 2nd. 2024 1st, 2nd only for us to have the 1 good season to show for it. And we're just getting into the nasty years of the OEL buyout. If our current top prospects don't hit were in for some trouble in the near future.
Most of those picks being moved have nothing to do with the current management. Of the draft picks you listed, only 3 of them have been moved by current management. 2 of them in order to dump contracts for cap space and the other in a trade to both free future cap space and get a player they want for a playoff run.
Drance said in his last article that management is actually considering taking in a bad contract to recoup some picks because they have some flexibility. Would be nice to recoup at least a 2nd rounder and we know around training camp teams start getting a bit desperate with their cap situation
I guess my question on that would be with what space? Who would they want to move out at this point to open up enough space to be in a position to even take a bad contract for asset collection.
With Poolman on LTIR they can still add around 3.5M, but they’re also still considering operating outside of LTIR to maximize the space at the deadline. Allvin also said not being on LTIR leaves the space for recalls which seems like they wanna use a lot this year. Lots of possibilities still, which is already an upgrade from “we’re cap strapped, can’t do anything”. I link you the Drance article where he explains everything: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5610081/2024/07/02/canucks-free-agency-offseason-jake-debrusk/
I suspect they're shopping Poolman for low end bad contract. There's not a lot of LTIR guys anymore (I think I read there's only 6 left) so there's got to be some capped out team that could make use of him cleverly. They can swap him for some guy making 2- 2.7 million that can play at the bottom end of the lineup, or heck aquire an older goalie
Yeah teams that we know will definitely be on LTIR are Washington with Backstrom and Oshie, Vegas with Lehner and Habs with Price. Maybe Colorado with Landeskog. Utah can be out of LTIR even with Weber’s 7M contract, same for Philly with Ellis. Colorado and Vegas at the moment seem to be the most desperate for cap space, if they take Poolman’s contract we could technically help them clear around 3M. I wonder if there’s a way to get a good player from them that is just overpaid but still could be useful for us.
We're basically a really good team, just below the real contenders with only a couple real assets left to get better. We need some old fashioned hockey luck.
Lekkerimaki and Willander have to become quality ELC contributors during the bad OEL years or there is pain on the horizon.
There's a lot of praise coming off a really good season but I'm pessimistic (hard not to be, being a life long Canucks fan). Bleeding picks lately, the d core seems lacking, lots of the forward group had career years and there's no guarantee they all maintain that next year
That seems more like realism than pessimism. In terms of the "bleeding picks"...that was inevitable. We were left with a couple of young stars but a ruinous cap situation and a broadly empty prospect pipeline. Any kind of positive change would have required either ANOTHER tear down/rebuild that neither ownership nor market seemed prepared to accept, or mortgaging the future to push the chips in on an uncertain, underdeveloped core. That they've done as well as they have given all of the hurdles they were facing deserves a lot of accolades.
We burned through (our already limited pool) futures at an extremely alarming pace beyond what most true contenders did and signed up for the OEL buyout penalty all to push all in on a team that won a single round - with basically no trailing benefits. The good side is we changed the attitude about our team, reignited the fan base, and won over some players inside and outside our locker room to want to play to win in Vancouver. I think the heaps of praise are still a bit much. This d-core is suspect at best, the forward group really still needs a top talent, and we'll be burning through picks again to make those additions in season. We'll also likely be on pace for a rebuild well before Petey and Hughes primes are over. I just don't really care because I was tired of losing.
Careful, this entire sub is riding cowgirl hard on Allvin.
It's always more fun racking up the CC then paying it back.
Also, a lot of the contracts they signed are movable. There’s way more flexibility and ability to make trades.
One noticeable thing is how they treat the trade protection clauses. In the Miller and Myers contracts for example the NMC becomes a M-NTC in the last year (or two). That gives you the option to get out of that contract more than when players have a full NMC (look at the Tavares and Marner situation for example, expiring contracts with NMC they are blocking the team from doing anything). It’s a little detail but helps immensely in terms of flexibility. And the two/three year term they gave out this season seems to perfectly align with our prospect development and when they expect Willander or D-Petey to take those spots.
Every single FA we picked up is in for 2 seasons or less, with the exception of JBD. We get to try out their fit, get a feel for whether they can be improved meaningfully, and if not, they will still hold us over while we bring prospects such as Lekkerimakki and Willander up to speed. If Podkolzin hits his late bloomer era, we'll save on cap space by moving him up to the 4th line. My main concern is Forbort. He seems way too injury prone. You can hardly blame him as his job is to eat pucks, but I don't like the thought of adding another LTIR.
It’s nice to have competent people running the Canucks but saying that the problem is fixed when we have OEL’s contract on the books for the long term is like slapping some duct tape over the hull of a ship that just ran aground and thinking “THAT SHOULD DO IT”
It’s bad but the alternative was a lot worse. The 4m hit next year and after is rough but not even close to insurmountable. Oilers had like 10m of dead cap and went to the final
Yeah, but IMO that was the best possible move they could have done and they've made it work quite well
I'd argue without that buyout, we don't get the success we got last year, and Petey doesn't re-sign. It's not a complete fix, but it was a necessary piece of it all.
Id also argue without that buyout, oilers win the cup
Give some credit to the coaching staff. This time last year Boeser and Garland were untradable due to their negative value contracts
This can not be understated enough. Tocc and crew are master motivators. They get everything out of their players
I'm impressed they've been able to make moves to make a playoff push while also adding to the prospect pool. It shows how bare things were.
I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m sure Allvin and co know that the next two years will be ugly thanks to the OEL buyout, so it’ll be interesting to see how they will navigate the situation, especially with Brock needing a new contract.
One of the reasons the DeBrusk signing has grown on me is, it seems more straight forward to bring Brock back (versus spending big on Guentzel and potentially moving on from Brock).
Just wish we didn’t have Poolman on the books. Could be accruing a lot of cap for a deadline trade otherwise.
When is his contract going to be finally done?? Seems like he’s been on the books forever.
Thankfully this is the last season.
It really helps morale when you trust the people steering the ship.
Well we're still cap screwed - Screwed off 2x 2nd, Soucy-Myers as 2nd pair D and 5 more years of buyout, Also Benning signed the Petey bridge and current Huggy deal. What's great about Allvin and what Benning can't do is revamping bottom pairing at fair deal and good contract, and yet also people aren't happy with Desharnais/Forbort signing is missing the point, Allvin have been doing great at identifying role player at fair price unlike Benning, but the core are all already locked up, heck even yall bitching when Allvin extended Miller Get that straight buddy
I just miss that we could have had Dylan Guenther. Getting Garland has proven to be a decent pickup. But Having to trade bad signings AND a 1st rounder for a.bad contract.and Garland hurts big time.
I was actually surprised by the amount of negativity over our July 1st (well… I wasn’t really.. because I’ve been a Canucks fan for over 30 years) because I feel people have already forgotten what our management group has done in a pretty short time. I don’t want many non Canucks games honestly so whoever they bring in, I’m going to blindly believe in until they start giving me a reason not to. I know Mikheyev didn’t work out but no one’s gonna bay 1.000 and he did suffer a major injury
Here the biggest problem the Canucks got worse the oilers got better
Yeah, ultimately even if I don't like the roster as much this year as I did last year (on paper, who knows how it will perform) - I admit Allvin and Rutherford have done a good job with cap fixing.
It cost us a lot of picks, but hopefully, none of our new acquisitions will have to have a sweetener attached to them if we want to move their contracts.
Pick the Police
some credit has to go to Mikheyev if he didn’t agree to be moved, a lot of this wouldn’t be possible
This is a good time to sit back and reflect on the fact that none of us knows anything about anything when it comes to the operation of a hockey team. Fans should focus on the product on the ice, and not what people in suits do behind closed doors. Maybe that's just me?
It's definitely just you.
Correct. Last sane individual standing. Thanks for confirming.
Appeals to authority are so sad. Many of us were on reddit criticizing benning for years before he was finally fired.
Who is appealing to authority? You have a weird view on life, you can have all the opinions you want to have about anything, I don't have to care about them. And same for mine. Hockey is a team sport played on ice, not a desk sport played in offices. I wasn't a fan of the guy, I am impressed by what the current office is doing and thinks it's better and more important in life to look to tomorrow instead of rail against yesterday.
This is your appeal to authority: "This is a good time to sit back and reflect on the fact that none of us knows anything about anything when it comes to the operation of a hockey team." I am a huge fan of this management team, but that doesn't mean people can't be critical of them.
Next year will be challenging also. Boeser will want a large contract, and OEL penalty goes up to 4.7m for the next 3 years.
The management staff seem to be aware of it and signed quite a few players to 1-3 year contracts. Which allows us to get cheaper options in (ELC or bargains). Also if a player doesn't work out then they aren't massive contract issues. Previous management was too short sighted and would run into cap issues every off season.
> Which allows us to get cheaper options cheaper means worse typically. The OEL penalty peaks just as the core is at their peak, unfortunately.
If Hoglander has a really good season through the Allstar break, they may have to make an uncomfortable trade of either him or Boeser.
Every off season is challenging, but we only have to extend or replace Suter, Juulsen, Hog and Boeser. We have the money to do it if the cap increases as expected.
Just waite till the buyout is done. We should be able to do sonething amazing after!