Canucks offseason outlook

[yave1964]

2016-17 A LOOK BACK: 

  The Canucks have fallen on hard times over the past half a decade since coming within one win of a Stanley cup against the Bruins. Luongo, Kesler, Schneider are all doing quite fine elsewhere thank you only to be replaced by an assortment of has beens (loui Eriksson, Ryan Miller, Derek Dorsett) never weres (Jacob Markstrom, Sven Baertschi, Markus Granlund, Luca Sbisa, Brandon Sutter) and never gonna be;s (Jack Skille, Jayson Megna, Reid Boucher, Michael Chaput, Brendan Gaunce). It is not the fact that they have one or two of these guys, in the age of parity and salary cap every team has maybe one or two of them but it is the fact that the entire team is composed of these rejects who play every single night. Even Colorado has a better core. Poor trades, worse signings and even worse trades have brought the Canucks to the point where all they had to hope for last season was not to finish dead last in all of Hockey. 

  In that regard last year would have to be considered a success as the Colorado Avalanche were even worse so the Canucks can proudly chant 'We're number 29!" 

 

  Bo Horvat was one of the few highlights last year, for the first time since the first Troudeau was Prime Minister a Sedin did not lead the team in scoring (a slight exageration) as Horvat was pretty good. The Sedins slipped but werent exactly awful, just aging. Sven Baertschi did manage to score 18 goals and I guess there are worse players in the game. Chris Tanev has a rep as one of the finest defensive d-men in the game and although he has absolutely zero offensive value he was plus 3 on this club which led the team, ten different players were double digits in the minus category so you do gotta give Tanev credit for something.

 That is it. The only (sort of) highlights. Oh, did I mention they finished higher than Colorado?

As for what went wrong, they signed big nasty tough Nikita Tryamkin who put up solid numbers as a kid in a new land, they sat him, they gave him crappy minutes, instead of giving him a fair shake they kept wanting to throw Edler or Larson or Sbisa known entities and known underperformers out there and Tryamkin has returned to Russia after one year for less money because Vancouver is such a cluster. It is just one story in a series that illustrates how badly this organization has fallen.

  Normally this is where I list the bad stats or players who had a bad year but they are too numerous and i am writing a quick article and not a book. If you are morbid look them up yourself. They are ugly. But they were better than Colorado.

 

FREE AGENTS:

 

RYAN MILLER is an UFA and I kid you not, in spite of a second consecutive poor season GM Jim Benning has made it clear that he wants him back. 

 

  Nobody else is worthy of mention.

 

OFFSEASON QUESTIONS:

 

1) THE SEDINS ARE UFA NEXT YEAR. NOW WHAT?

 

 The twins are winding down their career and have been a class act all the way, both are free agents at the end of the 2017-18 season and both would like to win a cup yet both have also stated publicly that they have no problem staying put in Vancouver to finish their career. The pair would likely fetch a very nice deadline return if the decision is made to not resign them, Benning and company have to handle this with kid gloves as the two of them ARE Vancouver Canuck hockey.

 

2) ARE THERE ANY KIDS WHO CAN PLAY COMING UP? 

Brock Boeser got into a few games at the end of the season and looks to be a confident cocky scoring winger, probably the most talented forward on the entire team not named Horvat or Sedin already. He was streaky last season at North Dakota but the reports are he was nursing a wrist injury for much of the year. He looks to be a real scorer. Jake Virtanen is still hoping to get a shot but his numbers are tumbling the wrong way.

  They also have Olli Juolevi on the blue line who almost certainly will stick and be the teams top defenseman as soon as next year. Tall and almost painfully thin but fast and great vision. Some compare him to Victor Hedman. He will be 19 next year so growing pains are expected but he has huge upside. Jordan Subban has been okay in the AHL and may stick.

 This is scary, that is about it. An organization that drafts early and often has two real prospects in Boeser and Juolevi and a bunch of guys around 23 years old who are getting long in the tooth and not only arent getting established at the NHL level but are struggling at lower levels as well. Going into next year AHL 'prospects are all getting long in the tooth, Valk is going to be 24, Archibald 27, Rodin 26, Grenier 25 and so on. 

 

3) SHOULD THEY TRADE CHRIS TANEV?

That is the rumor, they are shopping Tanev who is a shut down defenseman and among the best in the league in that role. He would bring a solid return. So the Canucks need to decide if they think of Tanev as a building block or if they want to turn him into a couple of players. Usually I am not a fan of trading away an elite asset, I am not saying he is elite but he is very, very good at his role. If you can fill a couple of slots and quit throwing guys like Dorsett and Larsen out there I think you gotta do it.

 

That is it. This team is going nowhere, they have very little that could be considered interesting in the organization and no reason to expect they will be any better not only next year but any time soon. 

 

[Samifan]

55 minutes ago, yave1964 said:

2016-17 A LOOK BACK: 

FREE AGENTS:

 

RYAN MILLER is an UFA and I kid you not, in spite of a second consecutive poor season Hockey Junkie has made it clear that he wants him back. 

Fixed it for you yave.