To what extent is Jim Benning responsible for the Canucks’ current success?

[Miss Korea]

26 minutes ago, IBatch said:

Please explain how, we are to pick top 1-5, with a winning record, and why you think (and this time @King Heffy language is correct) a trash AHL defense is supposed to help a team or coach, have a winning record?   The one year he was given two better players, Myers and Miller, Green had his best season.   That club under Horvat was mentally weak,  Green was constantly pulling them back out of the muck.   Pretty sure, despite going on a nosedive after the Toffoli trade, with Brock out,  that season they had a winning record, things were looking up, and then this silly OEL business started.   

 

Bruce couldn't make it work either, and didn't have to play with the same "Green"  (rookie) players.    Those teams were also going to be bad.   You understand that right?   The Canucks, SJ and Detroit won more games than any other team from 200-2014.   The piper was coming.  It did for Detroit too (how they doing anyways)  started their rebuild with Larkin actually,  ours was 2017, when JB finally had 3 guys willing to waive, well past much value.    Holland left DET, Yzerman traded away most of the first five years of rebuilding guys and started over around Larkin.    SJ, well their re-tool around EK helped to extend their endless re-tooling, but eventually even they had to pull the plug.   Wilson finally ran out of road, no Thornton, Marleau, Pavelski, Vlasic age caught up to him etc...

 

Instead, were we supposed to win?   Couldn't with Torts and a much better roster.   Couldn't with Bruce.    Green wasn't that bad, we had a bad roster. 

Ah, yes... San Jose and Detroit... two teams unwilling to pay the piper until they were staring down the barrel of failure... the Canucks are no strangers to that!

 

Here's another one of my favourite YouTube channels.  Nobody summarizes all the mistakes made better than this guy.

San Jose getting Karlsson for Norris and... Stützle.  Detroit getting Kyle Quincey for... Andrei Vasilevskiy.  Holy shit.  Future franchise players given up with nothing to show for it.

 

 

 

[IBatch]

2 hours ago, PureQuickness said:

 

It doesn't change the fact that he WAS nearly a top ten consensus pick. Stop changing history to fit the narrative. The facts are clear as day.

Never said he wasn't that.  If you read my posts regarding OJ, it's a good example of a good WJ's boosting values.    A great example really.     He's not the only guy to have that happen (go from a not for sure a blue chip guy, mid round) to jump up lists.  McKenzie was bullish on him to start the season.   Ranked him 13, and he moved him up to 7.   Six spots.   Ahead of Sergachev and Chychrun, who a year before was considered a possible first overall, whose value slipped.    The fact was he was nearly a consensus top ten pick.   And he was considered to have the highest floor, THN said best case, Vlasic.  

 

THN does this thing called future watch.   Back then 4 mags a year on prospects, their overall ranking system is very good.   Used the aggregate of ten NHL scouts lists, and posted that.   Also posted the ISS ranking.   Given that's all they did, and it's done by actual scouts too, a reliable source.   OJ whipped up their ranks too (pretty sure number 9). 

 

Get it was an organizational pick.   All pre-draft, JB said he was looking at a center, a big body with some grit/nasty in his game (basically described PLD to a tee)... Believe he was who we were targeting first.   Ranked around 5 consensus.   Below MT on virtually all lists.   MT was 2-4.   Part of a different tier of guys, and sure proved that during the memorial cup, from start to finish, he was ranked high. 

 

There was also a lot of "smoke" leading up to the draft around McAvoy.   He wasn't an unknown.    Get that would have been way off board.    Do not understand at all though, why if we went for a D,  and if blue chip floor safety was a big thing, he wouldn't have picked Chychrun, and if high ceiling was important, Sergachev.    OJ was supposed to be a safe pick, but he wasn't.  For sure he could have traded down to around 10, and drafted one of the 3 no problem.   Or down to the middle of the draft and picked McAvoy.   There was nothing aside from a smooth WJs, that indicated OJ was at a different level than the rest of the top of the D class. 

 

   First thing out of his mouth, or one of his first interviews, he goes off on his aversion to the gym, and says anyone can do that, but you can't teach hockey smarts.   Ironic.    Good luck finding many (or anyone?) pre-draft on this site, wishing for and hoping we'd draft OJ. In JB's defense, he was considered the likely first D off the board, but not at five.    

 

A year later, a kid named Bouchard came in and outplayed him in London.    You know, the one who "can't play in his own zone".     

 

MT was a slam dunk.   We had our shot at a  top pick (think Linden, that's what I was thinking as far as impact goes to our team right away) , almost as good as Mathews level (and NHL body), one of the few guys who challenged his number one ranking during the draft year.    Wasn't supposed to be available.   At five it was a dream come true, was so stoked,  for a couple minutes waiting for our turn.    Had all the same BS game his Dad did, with maybe even better hands.     OJ for sure wasn't the BPA.    

 

It also showed his hand a little, that we were heading into a full on rebuild while we waited out MG Sedin contract to run out.   Saying we were going to "be competitive" and "it's not fair to the Sedin" blah blah blah.    Well the suckage was going to continue.   At least he listened to his scouting staff the following year. 

 

Edit: And to be clear, I accepted OJ and at times even defended the player, but never defended the pick itself.   Turns out a few of his detractors, we're right, a late first round or early second round is right where he should have gone.   Pre WJ's rankings.   Instead of a mid first round pick where the bullish guys had him, pre WJs.  

Edited February 10 by IBatch

[IBatch]

14 minutes ago, Miss Korea said:

Ah, yes... San Jose and Detroit... two teams unwilling to pay the piper until they were staring down the barrel of failure... the Canucks are no strangers to that!

 

Here's another one of my favourite YouTube channels.  Nobody summarizes all the mistakes made better than this guy.

San Jose getting Karlsson for Norris and... Stützle.  Detroit getting Kyle Quincey for... Andrei Vasilevskiy.  Holy shit.  Future franchise players given up with nothing to show for it.

 

 

 

It's all available for folks to learn about if they didn't live it, sometimes I do think that both blinders and a bubble (not paying attention to other clubs - who we directly competed against for supremacy during the Burke-MG era especially).   Will watch them ..  The nature of the cap era is, a top team almost always ends up paying the piper.   TB is a bit of a unicorn, but also paid their dues drafting Hedman and Stamkos.    

[Miss Korea]

@IBatch I would  not spend so much energy trying to reason with that individual.  I tried talking about the many problems with Canada's approach to junior hockey development.  His rebuttal was to point out the success at the world juniors.  When I pointed out that some of these Canadians were going to play junior in the US... he again pointed to the gold medals.  He really doesn't get it.

 

And now I'm seeing he is ripping Gillis for leaving the cupboard bare.  Perhaps he should ask Carolina/Pittsburgh fans what they think of Jim Rutherford.  His drafting pedigree in Pittsburgh was hot garbage.  There are only a handful of current NHLers from his seven drafts: Kasper Kapanen, Daniel Sprong, and Sam Lafferty.  He drafted Filip Gustavsson but lrematurely traded him and a first round pick for.... Derick Brassard.  That first round pick later became K'Andre Miller.  Rutherford also gave up a first round pick and Oskar Sundqvist for Ryan Reaves.

 

Kyle Dubas has a complete mess on his hands, and it's all thanks to the previous two GMs.

Edited February 10 by Miss Korea

[Miss Korea]

10 minutes ago, IBatch said:

It's all available for folks to learn about if they didn't live it, sometimes I do think that both blinders and a bubble (not paying attention to other clubs - who we directly competed against for supremacy during the Burke-MG era especially).   Will watch them ..  The nature of the cap era is, a top team almost always ends up paying the piper.   TB is a bit of a unicorn, but also paid their dues drafting Hedman and Stamkos.    

 

The real unicorn is Boston.  Every year they choke in the playoffs and lose key assets, and every year they seem to bounce right back with new faces.  They have never really fallen off and are still going strong.  I hate them so much.

[IBatch]

23 minutes ago, Miss Korea said:

 

The real unicorn is Boston.  Every year they choke in the playoffs and lose key assets, and every year they seem to bounce right back with new faces.  They have never really fallen off and are still going strong.  I hate them so much.

They are the current version of SJ, DET and the Canucks,  except only DET won a cup.   As a post lockout team, to continue on with a lot of success without much of any hiccups.    For sure they are a unicorn, McAvoy and Pasta...timely to say the least.    And their goaltending continues to be world class, which it's been since Tim Thomas came in and did his Hasek like deal for half a decade or so.    For sure they are a unicorn too. 

 

  TB would have been our opponent in 2011, if it weren't for Tim freaking Thomas, they actually, had a better time scoring on him, and also were a very good team back then.    Like us going from the WCE to Sedin era,  TB did that  too, St. Louis core with a young Stamkos and Hedman in tow.

 

    They were only really bad I think one year, and Stamkos breaking his leg plus other injuries, in a way help put the next core together quickly, as did snubbing St. Louis in 2014 (bad Yzerman) but especially drafting.   Brayden Point, Kucherov ... just wow.   Vasilevsky too.   Like Sakic, Yzerman wasn't afraid to shake the tree.     TB sucked bad though, in the late 2000's, post Lecavalier and Richard's.    After that, cumulatively, they've managed to do more than we did both WCE and Sedin cores the past 14 years.     
 

Edit: Quick check, their "down years" 84 points in 82 games, and 40 points in 48 (must have been their 5th overall Drouin pick, which they later swapped for Sergachev...go Yzerman lol).  And yes that was end of the St. Louis era.   The rest since 2011.. pretty darn amazing really.    

 

Boston, before they signed Pasta, there was some talk of a rebuild.   That is unlikely, appears they will still go for a cup while they still have the Rat.    Wouldn't shock me to see Bergeron make a comeback.     Boston wasn't supposed to be this good this year.   A Unicorn for sure. 

Edited February 10 by IBatch

[iinatcc]

11 hours ago, kilgore said:

 

Its a little obscure to discuss GMs from beyond a decade, as their stamp on the present team is so limited.  But I'll bite.

 

You kind of made my point in that GMs responsibility is not the actual work involved in the drafting process.  It is mainly in developing what he has and surrounding the core with the pieces needed, all under the cap, to be successful.  Which is what Gillis did.  Under his watch Burrows, Hansen, Kesler, Schnieder, came into their own. PIcked up by a different GM of course.

 

Then added pieces like Erhoff, Higgins, Samuelsson, Hamhuis, Torres, Lapierre.  To take us as far as we did.

 

Gillis just did what most GMs do. Especially one without a background in amateur scouting, they leave it up to their, supposedly, competent amateur drafting department.  Even so, the ultimate responsibility for draft choices lies at the feet of the GM. And Gillis has since said that was one of his biggest regrets, that he didn't overhaul that department. 

 

What is different with Benning is he came in with drafting as his main talent. And still left the farm team dry for JR.

 

More good draft picks, would have been good for Gillis's legacy, even if he was picking way lower on average than Benning. Which you have to acknowledge. He did get Bo and then found Tanev. But again, a GM should, as you said, not be judged too harshly on draft picks.  Because ultimately, the GMs job is to get the team to the SCFs, which Gillis did. And besides, by the time Gillis was leaving, the team  should have been torn down for more picks anyways.  Going for it all was the priority in Gillis's part of the cycle. And he excelled at that.  Just coming shy of the ultimate prize

 

 

Exactly people here seem to think the only a GM does is drafting. Not realizing that a GM's job goes beyond what we see in the media (trades, signings, drafting). It's organizational management and thinking of new innovative ways to run that organization. And on the those points the Canucks were the envy of the league. He also was smart in structuring contracts and even outsmarted the league with the Luongo contract (so much so it hurt the league's ego and retroactively decided to penalize the team). 

 

Gillis' weakness was in drafting or creating an effective scouting department. There's no doubt about that and he admitted to it that much that he didn't considering revamping the scouting department he inherited from Nonis.

 

Having said that he still knew how to run the organization like a well oiled machine. That is until after 2011. Which saw Gillis' less of an innovator than a reactor. Reacting to trends the league was facing in teams have to be bigger he abandoned his own beliefs and went on a direction that was out of his element. You could tell a lot of his moves made no sense and was a response of wanting to get bigger ( Hodgson for Kassian in the TDL ? ). And of course his handling of the goalie situation was probably his biggest blunder.  

 

[Miss Korea]

6 hours ago, IBatch said:

They are the current version of SJ, DET and the Canucks,  except only DET won a cup.   As a post lockout team, to continue on with a lot of success without much of any hiccups.    For sure they are a unicorn, McAvoy and Pasta...timely to say the least.    And their goaltending continues to be world class, which it's been since Tim Thomas came in and did his Hasek like deal for half a decade or so.    For sure they are a unicorn too. 

 

  TB would have been our opponent in 2011, if it weren't for Tim freaking Thomas, they actually, had a better time scoring on him, and also were a very good team back then.    Like us going from the WCE to Sedin era,  TB did that  too, St. Louis core with a young Stamkos and Hedman in tow.

 

    They were only really bad I think one year, and Stamkos breaking his leg plus other injuries, in a way help put the next core together quickly, as did snubbing St. Louis in 2014 (bad Yzerman) but especially drafting.   Brayden Point, Kucherov ... just wow.   Vasilevsky too.   Like Sakic, Yzerman wasn't afraid to shake the tree.     TB sucked bad though, in the late 2000's, post Lecavalier and Richard's.    After that, cumulatively, they've managed to do more than we did both WCE and Sedin cores the past 14 years.     
 

Edit: Quick check, their "down years" 84 points in 82 games, and 40 points in 48 (must have been their 5th overall Drouin pick, which they later swapped for Sergachev...go Yzerman lol).  And yes that was end of the St. Louis era.   The rest since 2011.. pretty darn amazing really.    

 

Boston, before they signed Pasta, there was some talk of a rebuild.   That is unlikely, appears they will still go for a cup while they still have the Rat.    Wouldn't shock me to see Bergeron make a comeback.     Boston wasn't supposed to be this good this year.   A Unicorn for sure. 

 

I do not see Boston as a Detroit/San Jose/Vancouver.  Those teams had their dominance and tried to keep that success for way too long.  You can see exactly when/where they jumped the shark and went crazy.

 

Boston, since 2011, has become a juggernaut again without any major downswing.  The years they missed the playoffs they actually got 96 points but that wasn't good enough.  They didn't even get much mileage off their highest draft picks.  Seguin (thank you Burkie) and Hamilton (thank you Burkie) were probably dumped too early.  Other than that, their depth picks and roster acquisitions have been fantastic.  The Lindholm trade was worth it.  They got Ullmark... for free.  They got Geekie for free.  Their consistency has always attracted veteran talent for cheap. 

 

They are not bringing back Bergy.  I'm 90% sure he wants to spend as much time with his father before he passes.

[kilgore]

9 hours ago, PureQuickness said:

 

Part of the GM is to oversee the health of the franchise. After 2011, we saw a complete lack of prospects into the pool. One may make the excuse that he was using the picks to make pushes, but this doesn't explain why his picks were WELL below average, even for our Canuck standards. I've said this before, but in five years, these were the most successful picks: Hodgson and Horvat (high first round picks). He missed on Gaunce and Jensen (both late first round pick picks). So from that angle, he should've hit more first round picks, or AT MINIMUM, have them in the system as serviceable players. This never happened though.

 

My point is that regardless of the amount of picks, Gillis was batting WELL below 20 percent, if that. I'm really not convinced that more draft picks would've helped him. He just sucked at drafting, period.

 

In the 2nd round, if he wasn't trading them away, he whiffed on all of them. Whereas we could've gotten a Demko or a Hoglander, we got nothing. Whereas we could've had a D. Pettersson or Hunter BRZ (Allvin's picks) in the third round, we got nothing.

 

And if we're looking at strictly GMing, Gillis didn't have any much success constructing his core after the Sedins. This is partly his fault for not setting up the futures that would allow him to continue his tenure. It seemed that he was "only" (not downplaying his significance) good at supplementing the core, but not starting his own.

 

We had an aging Kesler, Edler (from Nonis/Burke), the Sedins, Markstrom, and Tanev.

 

Even though he acquired Tanev and Markstrom from free agency/trades, his pro scouting alone did not allow him to flourish in any kind of rebuild. Now to talk about a rebuild and his inability to do one, we saw what we had on our farm. We had NO exciting players to speak of. If Gaunce/Megna are your two most exciting players, someone fucked up the GMing role.

 

Scouting is still a GM responsibility, not anyone else's.

 

No matter how you slice it, this was all on Gillis' watch.

 

 

"Scouting is still a GM responsibility, not anyone else's."

 

No. Wrong.

OVERSEEING the scouting department is a GM responsibility.  He may be able to catch some games of short listed prospects, but in general, that responsibility is left to the scouting department.  Who then report to the GM and keep him informed with different player evaluations. Then its the responsibility of the GM to make the final decisions based on that information.  One man can't do all the jobs.

 

Why the heck are you even going on about Gillis?  What is your point? Because its sounds like another of those Benning Bro favorite defences......"look over there!".    All GMs are not perfect. Gillis's weakness was the draft.  Even if he had to pick low, he still should have had a few more good prospects as you say. His mistake was relying on an amateur draft dept that historically was one of the worst in the league.

 

Benning, because of his ineptness, averaged much higher picks. Even then batted below .500 on his top ten picks.  And left the cupboard bare on the farm. And the kicker was that he came in as a draft guru. lol

 

But you just ignore the other side of a GM's job. The most important. Getting the team to the SCF. A shot at the Cup. Gillis was very very very successful there.. Benning never got close...in eight long years.. Bottom line.

 

 

 

 

 

[filthy animal]

Sounds like Pure Quickness is embarresing himself yet again with his love for Benning lol

 

"All Gillis had was playoff runs" lol well shit, what the hell we doing all this yapping for in the forum? Just watch a bunch of players just skate around for fun?

 

[filthy animal]

2 hours ago, kilgore said:

 

"Scouting is still a GM responsibility, not anyone else's."

 

No. Wrong.

OVERSEEING the scouting department is a GM responsibility.  He may be able to catch some games of short listed prospects, but in general, that responsibility is left to the scouting department.  Who then report to the GM and keep him informed with different player evaluations. Then its the responsibility of the GM to make the final decisions based on that information.  One man can't do all the jobs.

 

Why the heck are you even going on about Gillis?  What is your point? Because its sounds like another of those Benning Bro favorite defences......"look over there!".    All GMs are not perfect. Gillis's weakness was the draft.  Even if he had to pick low, he still should have had a few more good prospects as you say. His mistake was relying on an amateur draft dept that historically was one of the worst in the league.

 

Benning, because of his ineptness, averaged much higher picks. Even then batted below .500 on his top ten picks.  And left the cupboard bare on the farm. And the kicker was that he came in as a draft guru. lol

 

But you just ignore the other side of a GM's job. The most important. Getting the team to the SCF. A shot at the Cup. Gillis was very very very successful there.. Benning never got close...in eight long years.. Bottom line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly yet Pure Benning seem to not get the whole point of why the game is even played

 

Why do we make trades? To get players to win the cup

 

Why do we sign players in the off season? To help us win the cup

 

Why do we draft? To get players that hopefully make the team and again, main mission is to win the cup.

 

Goal is to win the stanley cup and frankly, nobody cares how its done whether its with a bunch of 1st 2nd rounders or a team full of 40 year olds. The parade is going to happen regardless of what the team is comprised of

 

 

[LillStrimma]

10 minutes ago, filthy animal said:

Sounds like Pure Quickness is embarresing himself yet again with his love for Benning lol

 

"All Gillis had was playoff runs" lol well shit, what the hell we doing all this yapping for in the forum? Just watch a bunch of players just skate around for fun?

 

Almost… Some here wants to trade every player that can make a difference so the Canucks stay at Bennings level all the time.