Really? You don’t think that they can pass Edmonton?
- shack67

doable....if...they...go....on...a...win...streak...to....be....in...the....race.

doable....if...they...go....on...a...win...streak...to....be....in...the....race.
- NuckUp

Please, stop doing... between every word.
Thank you

doable....if...they...go....on...a...win...streak...to....be....in...the....race.
- NuckUp

I have posted here like 3-4 times, but I've followed along here for years off and on.

So I gotta ask, what's your deal man? Like is this supposed to be funny, you can't engage without....being....an....antagonist.....that....wants....to....piss....people....off, come on grow the (frank) up.

No where near.
- Makita

The games I've watched, Schmidt is poop, Hughes is, to put politely an adventure, , Chatfield is a great AHL defense type guy, Elder should retire, and Myers is a penalty magnet, but still better than 3 of the other 4 guys. Actually Benn is playing better than everyone, pretty pathetic overall.

The games I've watched, Schmidt is poop, Hughes is, to put politely an adventure, , Chatfield is a great AHL defense type guy, Elder should retire, and Myers is a penalty magnet, but still better than 3 of the other 4 guys. Actually Benn is playing better than everyone, pretty pathetic overall.
- Sea21dog

Agreed.

One must remember, the Canucks missed 4 of the last 5 years, they backed in last year due to the expanded format.
What did you expect, bubble 20, playing with house money.
They are just not a good Hockey Team.

I don't know if you read earlier the fans are calling for Luongo If the can get Ferarro also we will be set.
- VANTEL

Pierre McGuire, all day, every day. Look how he turned the Whale around

Please, stop doing... between every word.
Thank you
- Pres.cup

can't...busted...spacebar....posted...it....with....RC

The games I've watched, Schmidt is poop, Hughes is, to put politely an adventure, , Chatfield is a great AHL defense type guy, Elder should retire, and Myers is a penalty magnet, but still better than 3 of the other 4 guys. Actually Benn is playing better than everyone, pretty pathetic overall.
- Sea21dog

I think you deserved to win the game last night, you outplayed the Leafs by a wide margin, at least in the first 2 periods.
A little more luck and you would have won.

Not much else they can do. I can’t imagine how difficult replacing your coaching staff in season would be this year. What do you do, fire your coaching staff and just go without for 14 days as the new staff quarantines?
- CubanBuffet

Change the GM. It’s time (or past time).

His asset & cap management have hamstrung the team and resulted in a team that doesn’t have the players to play the way the coach he hired needs them to play.

Not letting Green or the players off the hook, but start at the top.

For sure.
If they are going to change the GM, it should be done sooner rather than later, as it allows the new GM to assess what he has and what he needs, plus it allows him to get the scoutingevaluations in and it doesn't allow the current GM the opportunity to boggle the team up anymore than it already is.
- Reubenkincade

Change the GM. It’s time (or past time).

His asset & cap management have hamstrung the team and resulted in a team that doesn’t have the players to play the way the coach he hired needs them to play.

Not letting Green or the players off the hook, but start at the top.
- SlightlyOffside

+1

I don't normally post entire articles from the Athletic, but felt this was a good, relevant, and depressing read.

This is not a story about how a 6-9-0 Canucks team can turn around and save their season.

This is not a video breakdown of the club’s defensive issues, an analytics deep dive on their lacking 5-on-5 game or commentary on how Vancouver’s top-end is sputtering.

It’s not even a story about the team’s precarious cap situation or how far they have to go to become a Cup contender.

This story is about zooming out and examining the big picture of the franchise. It’s recognizing this start to the season isn’t a typical cold stretch but a day of reckoning for the cumulative effects of seven years of rudderless roster building.

This story is about a franchise that’s at an inflection point not because of a bad move or two in the offseason but due to the lack of a clear blueprint since 2014. It’s about one of the most exciting young cores in the NHL potentially being held back.

The fans in this market aren’t losing their minds over a slow start, they’re frustrated by the past several seasons. You could flip the Canucks’ record to 9-6-0 and the same questions over the team’s cloudy long-term path to Cup contention would still exist.

The disastrous start to 2021 is simply a catalyst for this conversation.

There’s a reason many consider the Stanley Cup the hardest trophy to win in North American professional sports. Winning it all in the NHL demands being best in class and sometimes that’s still not enough. Sometimes, you can trot out a dominant juggernaut within inches of perfection like the 2011 Canucks and still fall short.

Assembling a Cup calibre squad requires purposeful, decisive and meticulous planning. It takes a relentless commitment.

Make no mistake, Jim Benning’s group has laid the groundwork for a bright future by mining a young core with Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, Bo Horvat, Brock Boeser and J.T. Miller. Benning and his colleagues deserve credit for that — these players are dynamic and exciting.

There’s reason for long-term optimism.

But while a formidable core can be enough on its own for a “decent team” you need much more than a handful of excellent players to construct an “elite contender.” And while the former is within reach, the latter seems far away.

Vancouver’s facing that cold, hard truth today. The story of the 2021 Canucks isn’t “Oh, they had a rough offseason and lost key players in Jacob Markstrom, Chris Tanev and Tyler Toffoli,” it’s bigger than that. It’s about everything that came before the fall of 2020.

The Canucks aren’t as dismal and hopeless as they’ve shown in the early going. That said, the roster isn’t deep enough for a project that’s seven years in the making.

When colleague Dom Luszczyszyn analyzed every NHL team in advance of this season, the Canucks ranked sixth out of seven Canadian teams on paper. They were firmly in “playoff bubble” territory with a 45 percent chance of making the postseason.

Line combinations and defence pairings have changed since (most notably with the emergence of Nils Hoglander) but the underlying logic of the roster remains the same.

You have a strong top-six, one of the worst bottom-six groups in the NHL, a blue line that isn’t deep enough after Hughes and Nate Schmidt and average goaltending.

There’s no question Vancouver’s top players are underperforming through 15 games but even if they were playing to their full potential, this team would still have significant blemishes. It’d be a team that could sneak into the playoffs sure, but one that would still be far away from serious contention.

This is an average roster. It’s unacceptable for a team to have two franchise cornerstones in Pettersson and Hughes with a combined cap hit in the $2 million range and to be capped out with a roster of this quality. Cap management has singlehandedly delayed Vancouver’s window to contend.

Of course, the Canucks didn’t handcuff themselves overnight.

With an ageing core and bare prospect cupboard, the Canucks needed to rebuild from Day 1 in 2014 when Mike Gillis was relieved. It’s not hindsight to claim this, many fans and media were calling this out from the start. Instead, the club refused to say the word “rebuild” for the longest time and turned to the nearly impossible “retool on the fly” strategy where they tried fielding a playoff team while also trying to integrate youth through the draft.

“It’s so satisfying to set a goal for this team to get us back to the playoffs,” former team president Trevor Linden said in a TSN 1040 interview after the club made the playoffs in 2014-15.

“The easy way out is to just strip it down and blow it up and start over and draft in the top five every year. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to continue to build this team and be a playoff contender every year.”

That sounds great in theory, but it’s nearly impossible to balance both goals without sacrificing the integrity of the bigger picture.

This lack of commitment to a long-term rebuild is why the Canucks signed Loui Eriksson, whose contract hamstrings the team now they’re on the upswing. It’s why they traded for and signed Brandon Sutter to a lucrative extension which also hampers the team today.

Vancouver’s short-term fixation was the rationale behind trading draft picks for young players further ahead in the development process, the “age gap” experiment if you will. Between 2014 and 2017, the Canucks surrendered Jared McCann, three second-round picks, a third-round pick, a fourth-round pick and a fifth-round pick in trades. Coming back they got Linden Vey, Sven Baertschi, Erik Gudbranson (who turned into Tanner Pearson), Andrey Pedan, Derrick Pouliot and Philip Larsen.

In other words, Pearson is all that Vancouver has left to show right now for a middle-six forward in McCann and six draft picks. One wonders what that draft capital could have netted for an organization that prides itself on its drafting.

The Canucks’ desire for short-term results is why they didn’t prioritize acquiring future assets or weaponizing their cap space as most rebuilding teams do. It’s why they signed Jay Beagle and Antoine Roussel to irresponsible multi-year contracts each with a $3 million cap hit — deals hampering the club now.

When Pettersson and Hughes arrived as talents via the draft, the Canucks continued to push the accelerator. They signed Tyler Myers, traded for J.T. Miller and made a midseason move for Toffoli.

Vancouver went all-in to make the playoffs last year. That mission was accomplished with the team’s bubble playoff showing.

Then this offseason, the Canucks made an abrupt change in priorities.

After a series of win-now moves, the Canucks were content taking a step back on paper. They let Markstrom, Tanev, Toffoli and a crucial depth piece in Troy Stecher all walk for deals elsewhere. Vancouver’s restrained offseason approach to prioritize long-term cap flexibility is justifiable in a vacuum — the Markstrom and Tanev contracts were risky — the problem is this change in tune completely contradicts the other decisions they’ve made in the last two years.

If the idea this offseason was to preserve long-term flexibility with an eye towards the future, why was every prior decision the kind of win-now move legitimate contenders make?

Why did the club overpay Myers on an expensive five-year deal?

Why did they give a similarly frivolous four-year term to Micheal Ferland?

Why did they give up premium assets to acquire a rental they couldn’t keep in Toffoli?

For the last seven years, the Canucks have had one toe dipped into mortgaging future assets for short-term fixes while simultaneously dipping the other toe into constructing for the future. The organization’s played it by ear rather than sticking to a consistent plan and the contradictory direction the last two years is the most recent example of that.

A counterargument to this is that the pandemic and its flat cap has thrown a wrench into this situation. That’s unquestionably had a tangible impact — it’d be disingenuous to insinuate otherwise.

The flat cap definitely hurt the Canucks but it cannot be used as an excuse to absolve all blame for this situation.

The truth is the salary cap wasn’t going to rise precipitously enough in 2021 to bail the Canucks out anyway. The NHL projected a 2020-21 salary cap between $84 and $88 million, but as James Mirtle wrote in a story prior to the pandemic headlined “Why the NHL’s salary cap is actually unlikely to rise much next season,” he explored why the league’s “projected increase isn’t only unlikely, it’s downright impossible.”

One veteran player agent told The Athletic that he expected the 2020-21 salary cap to be roughly $84 million if the virus hadn’t struck. In comparison to the flat cap, that’s an extra $2.5 million in wiggle room.

This cap bind is primarily because of the nearly $20-million committed to Eriksson, Sutter, Beagle, Roussel and Baertschi, not because of the cap space lost to the pandemic.

That’s the crux of the issue: this situation — where the team hasn’t been able to upgrade the roster because of cap constraints — was foreseeable. The evidence of this comes from a piece written in August 2019, where we analyzed the club’s potential cap issues ahead of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes’ next contracts:

Barring something unforeseen, Vancouver certainly won’t have any problems signing Pettersson and Hughes. Rather, the problem is that they’ll have very little left in the way of cap space to surround them with help when one considers the $18 million total committed to Eriksson, Roussel, Beagle and a 31-year-old Tyler Myers who by 2020-21 would be projected to provide bottom-pair value.

This leaves us with two possibilities. One is that the organization didn’t see this cap crunch coming — that would reflect poor foresight but seems unlikely given how predictable this outcome was for many on the outside.

The alternative is that they saw this coming and decided to be aggressive anyway to try making the playoffs. That means they willingly pushed on the accelerator, mortgaging long-term cap flexibility, draft picks and prospects knowing that they would have to take a step back in their endeavour to construct a contender at some point.

That would indicate an organization that has a muddled vision. The Canucks are staring at the opportunity cost of that today.

It’s not just that Pettersson and Hughes are on their ELCs, but Brock Boeser ($5.75 million), J.T. Miller ($5.25 million) and Bo Horvat ($5.5 million) all have cap hits under $6 million on deals with significant surplus value.

The Canucks have an incredible competitive advantage with how cheap their best players are. If they hadn’t been impatient with the long-term picture and handcuffed themselves with bad contracts, they would have had the flexibility to be more serious Cup contenders already.

The inefficient bottom-six contracts will expire in a couple of years and free the team up, but just as the bad deals slide off, the Canucks will simultaneously have to start paying their top players more. It’s not just Pettersson and Hughes this summer — Boeser’s up for renewal in 2022 while Horvat and Miller only have two more seasons after this one before they become unrestricted free agents.

Vancouver obviously still has a path to building a durable contender — how could they not with the core group of players have they have? But navigating that path to the finish line won’t be a cakewalk and will take longer than it should have.

That matters because if Stanley Cup winners like Tampa Bay and Washington have taught us anything, it’s that it can sometimes take nearly a decade for a core to break through and win it all. It’s rare to go all-in for one, two or three years and win the Cup, you typically have to carve out a long runway for yourself as a sustainable contender.

In less than two months, Miller will turn 28. Horvat will turn 26 and Boeser will turn 24. Some of the Canucks’ core pieces aren’t just “young,” they’re already in their prime years. And so if you acknowledge that it can take a long stretch of contention to win it all, you want to make sure you don’t waste these players’ best years.

Since reconstructing their front office in 2014, the Canucks have consistently cut corners on a traditional rebuild in the pursuit of a quick turnaround. That lack of commitment to a long-term plan is why the team still has a ways to go to build the kind of formidable roster that can realistically contend for a Stanley Cup.

I don't normally post entire articles from the Athletic, but felt this was a good, relevant, and depressing read.
- NewYorkNuck

firstly, thanks for posting that.

secondly, yup.

thirdly, we've written fragments of what's in the article in posts over the last 7 years. where the team is right now (i'm not even referring to the horrible start to the season), was entirely predictable (and predicted.)

firstly, thanks for posting that.

secondly, yup.

thirdly, we've written fragments of what's in the article in posts over the last 7 years. where the team is right now (i'm not even referring to the horrible start to the season), was entirely predictable (and predicted.)
- RealityChecker

I don't normally post entire articles from the Athletic, but felt this was a good, relevant, and depressing read.
- NewYorkNuck

Although it is mostly true and most has been water-cooler, fan sites talking points for about 8 years now, I am not sure why the Schmidt deal is not considered another bad move.
Schmidt is here for several more seasons at a cap hit just under 6 million and is not a very good defenseman.
When putting pen to paper and talking about a subject such as this, the writer needs to layout all the concerns, not just the ones that they haven't agreed with.
For some reason, Schmidt is considered a good defenseman by some and his shinyness with this group, shouldn't absolve him from being excluded in this type of conversation.

If you do change the GM let him bring his own coaches
- VANTEL

GM change would bring about the coaching change anyways. Can't see Benning being removed but Green and a fresh face in the room might be a possibility now.

What the Leafs learned today is that they only have to show up for one period to beat the Canucks
- Nucker101

Matthews said post-game they were outplayed so bad by the Canucks the first two periods they had to make something happen. Holtby's 5-hole lol

Although it is mostly true and most has been water-cooler, fan sites talking points for about 8 years now, I am not sure why the Schmidt deal is not considered another bad move.
Schmidt is here for several more seasons at a cap hit just under 6 million and is not a very good defenseman.
When putting pen to paper and talking about a subject such as this, the writer needs to layout all the concerns, not just the ones that they haven't agreed with.
For some reason, Schmidt is considered a good defenseman by some and his shinyness with this group, shouldn't absolve him from being excluded in this type of conversation.
- Reubenkincade

i'm not disagreeing with you with respect to schmidt's play since he got here.

i would also say that it's too early to judge this trade. you make some good points as to why this (seemingly great) trade may not be all that it was advertised to be but it's still early days.

i'll put it this way: i did not like the JTM trade one bit. i thought it was a dumb win-now move which seems to be par for the course for jb.

i was proven wrong by miller's play last year. he was fan-fcuking-tastic. great trade. however... there's still a part of me that thinks it was still a bad trade. not because of how he's played (this season excepted) but where he is and where the team is. by the time i believe the team should be contenders (take the next step), he will be a ufa. if he's played like he's shown last year, he'll be in for a massive payday either here or elsewhere. so basically, you'll have to pony up big just to keep him and if you don't you're letting a big piece of the core go. any player agent will be to exploit that. and if he doesn't deserve the big raise, the trade wasn't worth it anyway.

that's my way of saying that schmidt may look bad right now but it's still too early to evaluate the trade.

full disclosure: i like the schmidt trade. i'd still do it 8 days out of 7. (i acknowledge this opinion may age really, really badly.)

That is fair.

As bad as this year has been I am still happy with the summer and walking away from the long term deals. On a scale of one to ten I would rate Tanev Markstrom and Toffoli as a seven. I don't want to get locked into term contracts on sixes and sevens because you wont win.

I don't know if Ownership told Benning do not sign a free agent longer than two years because of the uncertainty of money , but league wide very few teams did contracts longer than two years. I would be fully prepared letting go of Pearson who I rank as a six .

Despite Chatfields bad outing last gamet the first year guys are doing good and I thought even Bailey tonight had a good game. I said at the beginning of the year even if we lose play the young guys. I still think that way.

I still think the biggest issue is they style they play and that falls on coaching with me.
- VANTEL

At this point it look like that's where things should start.

Markstrom and Tanev were both offered fair contracts and chose to walk for the extra term and 500K...is what it is. Toffolli hasn't scored against anyone other than the Nucks basing keeping him here on 14 games wasn't wise for a long term deal.

You stil want to win games by giving the tough a chance...however the inexperiences really show right now. Is Chatfield better than keeping Stecher? tough one lol

To me it looks like Green and the players have tuned each other out and we all know what needs to happen after that.

I don’t think it’s time to panic yet. The Canucks schedule to start the season is the worst in the history of the game. Some practice time and much needed rest and they should start picking up some wins.
Right now there are 2 teams on a roll but they can get into the top 4 for sure.
- shack67

Schedule isa fair point but you still have to string together some wins in that time...not leave it until the end to play catch up all year.

Van would need to add a 1st/top prospect and a 2nd
- moneyballs

You don't trade a dman that will be nominated for a Norris trophy multiple times at this point of his career

I don't normally post entire articles from the Athletic, but felt this was a good, relevant, and depressing read.
- NewYorkNuck

Great article, too bad team pom-pom won't read it.

Really? You don’t think that they can pass Edmonton?
- shack67

No.

At this point it look like that's where things should start.

Markstrom and Tanev were both offered fair contracts and chose to walk for the extra term and 500K...is what it is. Toffolli hasn't scored against anyone other than the Nucks basing keeping him here on 14 games wasn't wise for a long term deal.

You stil want to win games by giving the tough a chance...however the inexperiences really show right now. Is Chatfield better than keeping Stecher? tough one lol

To me it looks like Green and the players have tuned each other out and we all know what needs to happen after that.
- LordHumungous

if you replace green right now but not jb, what do you do if things don't turn around?

fire jb in the off season and then force a new gm to keep the "new" coach? or allow him to fire the new coach again?

either get rid of both or you're locked into jb for the remainder of his extension.

fire the entire front office in the offseason and bring in someone to re-organize it the way he wants. don't let jb do anything other than move out contracts. if that means firing him and bringing weisbrod as acting gm until the offseason so be it.