Monday Mailbag: Should the Canucks Tank Next Season?

Part of me feels like the current regime just can’t get away with that again without it having a massive effect on their ability to sign future free agents. If changes are coming to the front office I could possibly see it happening but I wouldn’t count on it. I think he’ll be tradeable come July 1st when most of his money will have been paid anyway.

Goldobin just needs to score more. It’s really that simple. He’s not going to be a defensive stalwart, but if he had doubled his goal output by this stage Green wouldn’t be able to justify taking him out of the lineup. He could use to work on his shot, but honestly a lot of this comes down to luck. He’s shot at 6.7% this year and was having some of his worst luck putting the puck in the net and setting up his teammates early in the season when he was playing his best hockey. I think the tough love from Green is mostly a red herring. He needs to be more consistent at putting up offense and with some patience and a fresh start next season he can get there.

To be honest it looks more like he just uses black ink.

Pineapple on pizza is great. It’s literally my favourite pizza topping. I don’t get where the hate comes from or why people think it’s so strange. It’s common to pair fruit with meat and even to pair pork and pineapple. I get that not everyone is going to like every flavour, but its like the people who scoff at Hawaiian pizza have never eaten anything other than boiled chicken for their entire life. (Side note: that sounds like Travis Yost’s dream.)

The Canucks have burned through most of their call-ups, so unfortunately I think what you see is basically what you get until Hughes is ready to go. At this point I can’t see how they could put him with anyone other than Troy Stecher, so I imagine the pairings will look like this:

Edler-Biega

Hughes-Stecher

Sautner-Schenn

The only team that has a real shot at Yzerman is the Detroit Red Wings. The story is that he stepped down to spend more time with his family, who have resided in Detroit for the entirety of his stint with the Tampa Bay Lightning. I generally look at the “be with my family” angle with some skepticism, but when you’ve been in a team’s front office for nearly a decade and that family still lives a three-hour flight away, there might be something to it. With Ken Holland getting older and the Red Wings in the midst of their first honest-to-god rebuild in over a quarter-century, I think the rumour that he could be the next GM has legs; but I highly doubt many other teams have a realistic shot, and the Canucks definitely aren’t among those that may.

Q definitely seems like a Vegas guy to me. I could see Arizona or Colorado taking up that mantle if one of them can secure that final wildcard spot, but it’s not clear whether or not that’s going to happen. His fandom could actually mean a lot to a small-market team that’s struggling to pack the stands, because Where We Go One, We Go All.

I’m taking the 2011 Canucks if only because the average skill level of an NHL player has increased exponentially since the ’90s. I’ll give the ’94 squad a fighting chance if they’re facing the same beat-up 2011 roster that laced up against the bruins, but if both rosters are healthy I’d take the 2011 team with no hesitation.

I have to take Tampa. They have the strongest roster and the easiest path to the final. I like Winnipeg, Nashville, San Jose, Calgary, and Vegas in the West, but all those teams have questions in net and are likely to face a powerhouse team in at least two out of the first three rounds. Tampa’s been a lock to win the President’s Trophy for weeks, they have a whopping nine players with over 35 points and three players that are above a point-per-game, one of whom has a legitimate shot at putting up the best individual season in nearly 20 years. They also have the solid goaltending that their biggest rivals lack. It seems like every year is their year, but as good as they’ve looked in the past, this the best roster they’ve ever had.

My answer would depend on whether or not you mean the shortlist of likely candidates, or my personal shortlist of ideal candidates. Among the candidates that don’t currently serve as the GM of an NHL team, I think the most likely to end up in Vancouver include Dean Lombardi, Ron Hextall, Norm MacIver, Kelly McCrimmon, Mark Hunter, Mike Futa, and Chris Pronger. I’d add Ken Holland to that list should the Red Wings decide against re-upping on his contract. Among those candidates, I have some time for MacIver and Hextall, and would add Laurence Gilman, Ron Francis, and Steve Yzerman (but that’s not happening) to my list.

It’s still pretty early to speculate, though. There’s sure to be a number of front office changes this summer, and it’s that will increase the number of available potential GMs.; but it’s not even clear yet what the Canucks’ plans are. Some fans seem to think Benning getting axed at the end of the season is foregone conclusion, but I wouldn’t be so sure.

If we’re taking a macro view of things, you could say that the additions of Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, and the strong performance of Quinn Hughes at the college level have been enough to save his job. There’s a case to be made that Francesco Aquilini should have cut bait a year or two ago, but I’ll spare our readers re-hashing the arguments for the time being. The fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, Jim Benning went into this season as the team’s GM, and so any discussion of whether the Canucks ought to have gone in a different direction at some point in the past has little bearing on why he’s still the GM. So, to answer this question, it makes sense to only look at the past 6 months or so.

The short answer is that the Canucks were in the playoff battle for most of the season and Elias Pettersson has been the team’s best rookie in over 25 years, so it would have been bad optics to change lanes in the middle of the season. Things have gone downhill in the past month, but honestly, what does firing him now accomplish? They have ten games left, and can re-evaluate in the offseason. If you want to make the case that it should have happened last year or the year before I’m not going to argue with you, but there hasn’t really been any time this season where firing Jim Benning wouldn’t have been bad optics. At this point, waiting until the offseason is completely defensible.

It’s probably the best bet at this stage. They still lack talent beyond the power trio of Boeser, Horvat, and Pettersson, and even with Quinn Hughes on the way things aren’t exactly looking like they’re going to turn around any time soon. The problem is that the team is entering Horvat’s best years and would generally be advised to try to compete while he’s still on a relatively cheap contract and Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes are still on their ELCs.

Ideally, they would have intentionally bottomed out, and done so with purpose two or three years ago instead of trying to stay competitive and doing it by accident. Then maybe they’d have a supporting cast capable of providing some depth to complement their young forward core and more than one high-end defensive prospect. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened, and now they risk wasting the peak years of their best players if they continue to languish at the bottom of the standings. The team’s front office has basically let all their veteran assets depreciate to the point where they have little trade value, so they don’t exactly have a ton of bullets in the chamber when it comes to stocking the cupboard through trades, either. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, but they only have themselves to blame.