Quote (Secksii @ Oct 11 2020 08:51am)
There was 2 ways Benning could have done,
first is your way, sell the future and go for "win now" window with 6 anchor contracts. Even if Benning managed to bring Tanev, Markstrom and Toffoli back, the team is still not good enough to be in the same tier as cup contending teams like boston, tampa, and vegas.
Benning could've aquired OEL and gave Arizona Demko (rumor is they wanted demko, but benning didn't budge). So Benning would've gave them picks + demko + cap dump to re-sign all those ufa's back.
The Canucks would be much more competitive right away, but be severely held back with the shitty bottom 6 with anchor contracts to improve the team any further. When 2022 comes along and most of their shit contracts are gone, they have new ones from OEL, tanev and markstrom to long term.
Then pray Markstrom has another 3 years to be competitive/MVP be injure free, tanev and edler are most likely 3rd pair or hanging in there. Gotta remember the Canucks only made the playoffs because of win %, it looked like they were going to miss the playoffs if the season continued on.
second way is what i think benning is doing, let the key players leave because of longer term they wanted and not be tied down to them when the current anchor contracts are gone. Take a step back this coming season, see what the kids got, they currently have all their picks for next season as they didnt give it away to arizona for OEL (possibly higher pick from regressing), basically use this covid season to see what prospects can make the jump or dump, and see what they got before making further decisions for the 2022 window. With Petey and Hughes locked up next year, only the canucks core would be locked up (horvat and miller still on cap friendly deals) then use the huge amount of cap space they have to compliment the core for a geunine run for the cup. 2022 and onwards this canuck team would be so much better than the 1st option, 2022 and onwards team as crucial key players like markstrom,tanev,OEL etc. are paid, locked up and verge of declining. biggest issue the canucks were being held back were the backend core and the bottom 6, all of those problems will be revamped and the canucks would still have their core intact.
Losing Toffoli sucks too, as Benning paid for him to play only like 20 games. However, he made the trade early on before the price got absurdly high around to league considering worse players went for much more later on. The Canucks dumped Schaller in that trade as well, so i look at it like we traded Madden for Toffoli, 2nd pick for Schaller's cap dump. Had Benning not made the trade, i think canucks would have been stuck with schaller's cap too. There was no way the canucks would have made it to the playoffs even with the win % if there was no toffoli to replace boeser and injured markstrom. That means no valuable playoff experience for the young team, owning the wild, blues and almost the knights, and no witnessing demko becoming inhuman for 3 games etc. but i guess they woulda been happy to draft the goalie ian clark wanted so bad with their 2nd pick, and give a high 1st pick to tampa/jersey in the process lolol
The Luongo penalty will be gone by then too. I still think it's a joke the league has punished the Canucks for this. It is their fault for not properly setting up a protocol when the cap was introduced. We are not the only team who abused a system that was so poorly implemented.
I am really pissed at Benning for having such terrible asset management but I can understand why he let guys walk. Stecher I would have kept at the 1.7 million though, however he may have decided to leave as soon as he was not qualified.
The Eriksson contract was not signed by him but he needs to take responsibility for signing bottom six veterans to long term deals with a high cap hit. I can understand we needed some leaders to teach the young guys, but it was a huge mistake to give them term and conditions.
As much as I hate it I think option two is better as well. Too many shitty contracts bogging the team down right now. Getting rid of them would cost them future draft picks for years.
It's just a real shame because if it was not for all these bad contracts the Canucks could have had two windows to win. Right now with the Petey/Hughes Elc's and in the future with the emergence of other prospects and freed up cap space.
This post was edited by Killingyouall on Oct 11 2020 10:58am