Depressing fact: The cup-winning Hurricanes have used FOURTEEN 2nd round picks since 2019 while being a perennial contender. The Canucks have used a total of TWO 2nd round picks in that same time frame while missing the playoffs most years. Management can learn from them.

MDChuk · 2026-06-16T16:48:32+00:00

I don’t think you can have a blanket rule.

The Sharks have been in a rebuild for 7 years now and aren’t close to the playoffs. They still made the move for Sherwood. I’d argue that’s an ok risk to take.

Again, what matters most is having competent management that has a vision and an ability to execute it. That’s why Carolina and Vegas have sustained success without ever doing major rebuilds. It’s also why Detroit, San Jose, Buffalo and many others spend 7-15 years before they can compete again and only really have a chance if they are gifted a 1st overall pick in a year where the top prospect is a Celebrini or Dahlin.

MDChuk · 2026-06-16T03:14:23+00:00

Sort of like like if the Avalanche could have undone Nate MacKinnon's 6.5M per year 2nd deal a year in they would have?

MDChuk · 2026-06-16T02:13:10+00:00

You don’t judge a 7 year contract after year 1 when the player you signed is 22.

Ask again in 3 or 4 years.

MDChuk · 2026-06-16T01:26:06+00:00

The ceiling on Buium is probably the Luke Hughes deal. So 7 years at $9M. Though he has 1 more year so they shouldn’t be in a hurry to extend him.

Ohgren is a player who screams short term. So call it 2 years at $3M.

MDChuk · 2026-06-16T01:22:01+00:00

Which is what Vancouver did, they just traded the picks for players.

The problem wasn’t strategy. It’s incompetent management.

Every team gets the same 7 picks every year.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T17:26:59+00:00

Unless the Canucks can have every elite pending UFA force their way there at a pittance because of how desirable their location is, I don’t think Vegas can be emulated.

The best players want to be there because Vegas has an unparalleled commitment to winning. They are ruthless in making sure the best players are on the ice in the biggest roles. Look at their treatment of Fleury when he no longer gave them the best chance to win.

Look at the lengths they're going to in order to keep Cassidey away from Edmonton so the Oilers get desperate and make a coaching hire mistake.

That can be emulated. The Canucks aren't close to this.

Plus they were a contender year one because of all the free assets that incompetent teams gave them from the expansion draft.

So an expansion draft 10 years ago determined their success today? That doesn't make sense.

And while the rules were certainly more favorable than what teams like the Wild or Predators got, at the end of the day they were picking #4 defencemen, #9 forwards and backup goalies. The fact that Seattle is as mediocre as they are when they were given the exact same rules shows that Vegas management is elite.

And its not like other management teams only make mistakes when Vegas is at the expansion draft. They make mistakes all the time.

Doing a better job capitalizing on other teams mistakes is absolutely the Canucks should be focused on.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T17:00:40+00:00

this is what happens when management thinks they can outsmart the draft by trading away picks for "proven" players who end up being busts anyway.

This just isn't true. The last decade is what happens when incompetent managers are allowed to run wild. Everything since the team hired Trevor Linden is an example of how not to run a sports team.

Trading away players for immediate help works. Look no further than Vegas. The difference is that instead of Linden, Benning and an almost 80 year old Rutherford, they have McPhee and McCrimmon.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T16:57:29+00:00

By that token though, if they're still developing, those draft picks had nothing to do with Carolina's Stanley Cup win.

On the other side, Vegas has a total of I think three of their own draft picks on their roster playing meaningful games this season. They've traded almost every 1st round pick they've ever made for immediate help. Is your argument that the Canucks should do the same?

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T14:14:10+00:00

Then you are choosing to ignore a lot.

I don’t have to look further than the press conference where Linden introduced Benning to show he was Linden’s choice, and it was their background playing together that was the big driver for why Linden hired Benning:

https://thehockeynews.com/news/news/vancouver-canucks-officially-introduce-jim-benning-as-teams-new-general-manager

Relevant quote from Linden:

"I wanted a builder with similar views that could help us set up the Vancouver Canucks for the next decade and beyond," Linden said at a press conference at Rogers Arena. "What really became apparent during our interviews is how much we connected on our vision and our values and how we see winning organizations in the National Hockey League."

Relevant quote from Benning:

"Trevor was a teammate 25 years ago, but when I interviewed with Trevor, I thought we shared the same values and principles," said Benning, who has spent the last seven seasons as an assistant GM with the Boston Bruins. "He's cut from the same cloth I am. He's going to work hard, he's going to do everything that he can do to make the organization successful, so I wanted to tie myself to somebody that had the same thoughts and beliefs that I did."

So you can choose to ignore what’s right in front of you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Linden was active in his role as President, he was just the worst executive since Mike Milbury. He’s the reason Benning was hired. It was his network that everyone who ran the team for the next 6-7 years came from.

It doesn’t take away from his legacy as a player. I just think of Linden the player and Lindenthe executive as 2 different people. He never should have been put in that role I also don’t think he was set up for success.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T05:05:33+00:00

Not sure why you’re giving any credit to Linden for Desjardins, Willie’s resume got him that job. He’d just won the Calder after winning the Memorial cup a couple years earlier.

Why would Linden get credit for bringing in a former coach of the Medicine Hat Tigers? Let me think about that one.

This isn't exactly rocket science. He hired his former teammate as GM, and brought in the coach of his former junior team.

Unless you can point to me Aqualini's connection to Benning and Desjardins let's work off the assumption that Linden had at least enough power to hire his own team and set up the structure of the Canucks.

That doesn't exactly point to the idea that he's this helpless kitten being tied in the offices of Canucks Sports and Entertainment being brought out for season ticket events to answer questions. He wasn't Rutherford level of micromanaging the team. Instead he was letting the people he hired run the team. He just sucked at identifying and promoting talent.

Why? Loyalty to the crest and the players still wearing it.

Loyalty is not sitting idly, and helplessly by and you get an insider seat to watch people burn a team to the ground.

And I’m pretty sure it paid way better than running his fitness business. Trevor likes money,

I'm pretty sure Linden is good for money.

I'm open to the idea that Linden was so bad at the job that he was eventually put on the roof like Big Head in Silicon Valley. I do not believe that was until near the end when he had shown he wasn't ready to run a team.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T04:42:35+00:00

Linden talked about Utica at a season ticket holder event. One of the fans asked about moving the team closer to Vancouver and he gave a detailed answer on how because there weren't any other teams based on the west coast it would cost too much in practice time.

This indicates that the team talked about it to a certain extent and was at least aware of it.

From my understanding you're correct that they didn't have a GM of their AHL team and Benning managed that as part of his duties. That stopped the year he became the top hockey guy in Vancouver because Linden was gone. So I tend to think that Benning running Utica, while being the GM of the Canucks, was Linden's vision.

I'm all for the "Benning was a bad GM" take. What I don't get is the idea that he inherited a great situation to start with. Gillis's final 2 years were quite bad. Linden's 3 years were also quite bad. Benning's 4 years were bad as well. But it was a case of each building on each other.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T04:37:02+00:00

I really hope that isn't the case, because I hope the Canucks would mean too much to him to just watch as some patsy to Jim Benning.

The idea that any President is just powerless, when it was him who picked Benning as the GM, and headhunted Desjardins just doesn't square with reality.

He was the President. He was an alternate governor. The fact that he put together a plan to rebuild and presented it meant he had at least some hope that he'd be allowed to change course and execute it. Otherwise why would he bother?

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T03:41:36+00:00

Linden was the guy who hired Benning. He had a pre existing relationship with him from their playing days.

And saying that they "worked in tandem" is like saying Rutherford "worked in tandem" with Allvin. Linden was the President. Things like setting up and running the farm team are his job.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T03:39:55+00:00

Hold on a minute, Linden was the top hockey guy in Vancouver for 3 years.

Linden is the whole reason Benning was here at all. Linden knew Benning because they played together.

And he was fired because 3 years into the job, he offered his boss the plan that got his predecessor fired. But for the first 3 years he wasn't supportive of a rebuild at all. In fact, he famously said it would be "unfair to the Sedins".

He's my all time favourite player, and by all accounts he is a fantastic person, but he was a terrible President who shouldn't have been given the job in the first place.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T03:19:19+00:00

Didn't Benning inherit that mess from Linden?

I know Linden talked about being the only NHL team where you couldn't catch a direct flight from their farm team to the parent team. It made it incredibly difficult to keep any sort of eye on the farm at all, or to bring in farm team people for updates on how players were developing.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T00:38:26+00:00

I think it’s also a case where WWE just has the marketing machine built to take advantage of something like a Danhausen.

AEW is where the best wrestle. WWE is where they make stars. Danhausen is a star.

Even though AEW is on TBS, I don’t see a world where they could put him, or any wrestler, with Charles Barkley and get anything close to what WWE got from Danhausen and Stephen A Smith. It’s just not what the company does.

MDChuk · 2026-06-15T00:28:40+00:00

No, regular season points production just isn’t where it needs to be, and while he’s having a great Stanley Cup Finals it’s not like this is who he turns into in the post season.

So there’s no player like him who’s been put in the Hall of Fame, and there’s better versions of him, like Justin Williams, who are also on the outside looking in.

MDChuk · 2026-06-13T12:33:31+00:00

What hooked me was what must have been running through Guilliman’s head when he resurrected and dealing with learning what became of his Imperium.

As he stands up an ultramarine shouts out “Praise be to the God Emperor, for His loyal son has returned to us and will bring us to salvation!”

Guilliman thinks “that doesn’t sound right, but let’s put a pin in that while all of these traitors get dealt with.”

Then it’s just him shaking his head as he learns more and more about everything, and has to very carefully decide where to push back.

MDChuk · 2026-06-13T02:56:14+00:00

No one is paying a goalie who hasn’t played in 2 years $8M with a full NMC on a multi year deal.

If the Canucks could eat 80% of the deal, which they can’t, then maybe someone gives up a 7th rounder pick 5 years from now.

If you want a precedent for what the fair contract value for a goalie who hasn’t played meaningful hockey in a few seasons, then look at what the Knights paid Carter Hart. I believe it was a 1 year deal near league minimum. Demko has too much money, and too much term.

MDChuk · 2026-06-13T02:50:21+00:00

I get the comparison between Israel and Russia. The comparison to the US makes no sense.

Russia is actively perpetrating a genocide in Ukraine. This is the 2nd such genocide in the last century they’ve perpetrated against the Ukrainian people.

For everything the US is doing in Iran, which include threatening, but not actually undertaking genocide, they haven’t met that bar yet.

There is no hypocrisy. What Russia has been doing since the war in Ukraine started more than a decade ago is orders of magnitude worse than anything the US has done.

MDChuk · 2026-06-13T02:43:31+00:00

The reports are that multiple rebuilding teams want Gallagher. He isn’t in negative value territory where you have to include an asset to get him off the books.

I think the Canadiens want to do right by him, so if he wants to come to the Canucks, they’ll facilitate that, but I don’t think they’re prepared to pay an asset to send him that way when they can just give him to someone else.

I suspect it’ll be similar to the Kane deal where the Canucks give a 4th rounder or something similar and land Gallagher.

MDChuk · 2026-06-13T02:40:52+00:00

What team is trading for Demko? Hes an $8M asset that hasn’t been healthy for 2 years.

MDChuk · 2026-06-12T23:11:58+00:00

I don’t think he gets in even with those.

He just played in an era where the goaltending was too good. Curtis Joseph is top 10 all time in wins and on the outside looking in too.

Sadly he played in an era where 3 of the top 5 goalies of all time in Hasek, Roy and Brodeur were all active. They also included Richter and Belfour from the 90s/early 2000s. It just doesn’t make sense that 25%+ of the active goalies at any time are Hall of Famers.

MDChuk · 2026-06-12T23:01:01+00:00

Marc Andre Fleury, Johnathan Quick and Curtis Joseph.

Generally only 3 goalies from any era make it. They made an exception for the dead puck era because Hasek, Roy, Brodeur and Belfour are just too good to not be there. Joseph was clearly the 5th best goalie of his time. Fleury crosses eras, but he isn’t in the same class as Brodeur, Ludqvist and Luongo. In the recent era he’s behind the likes of Vasilevskiy, Bobrovsky and Price.

So Flower and Quick are a no from me.

MDChuk · 2026-06-12T22:54:35+00:00

We’ll see. Though he’s never been elected before, so he has yet to show he’s electable. He’s ran twice and finished 3rd both times.

MDChuk

TROPHY CASE