The Canucks are reeling and unhappy.
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You can’t think about past success, Conor Garland and Tyler Motte both told me.
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Garland: “Just upset we lost. I don’t think about the past.”
Motte: “E very year is a new year.”
“You get caught looking backwards your mindset is in the wrong place.”
Hockey players — pro athletes really — are obsessed with living in the moment, not getting too high, or too low.
That is fair enough.
But to dismiss trying to rediscover a past positive mentality, one that might help you out of your current discontent, doesn’t make sense to me.
Motte’s not wrong, you need to approach your moment with a fresh mindset.
But there are lessons in why you were having success. Learn from those.
Reality distortion machine
I mean, when the time to make a change comes, you should be ready. You shouldn’t move without knowing what you’re going to do next.
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This is ironic, of course, because the Vancouver Canucks are in this pickle because the owner has refused for the last eight years or so to listen to advice and has just gone his own way.
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It’s OK to admit you don’t know. It’s OK to let others get credit.
Because you know what? If you let go and make some smart choices again, you’ll be rolling in the dough again and your franchise value will increase and so will your family wealth and those tax losses won’t feel so bad, will they, right?
Smart stuff
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The Canucks are a tidy little analytics department.
But so many mistakes this team has made appear to disavow lessons you can draw from the data.
Player selection has been a huge issue here. The struggles to identify defencemen might be tied to the pro scouting staff — if they were listened to at all.
And that’s been a regular problem here: Jim Benning and John Weisbrod are said to too often just go with their own book and whatever’s in it, eschewing their staff.
How do you end up with Tucker Poolman on a four-year deal? The same way you end up trading for Erik Gudbranson for perceived qualities he never really had.
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I just think it’s neat that the Canucks looked at the Jets blue line, widely considered very bad post-Byfuglien and Trouba, and signed up for four and five seasons of its worst parts.
This of course comes on the heels of decisions like adding Luca Sbisa and drafting Mackenze Stewart.
What is the farm team for
Why is a defenceman who has spent time in the ECHL playing as a fourth line winger in Abbotsford?
Isn’t that a better spot for a young forward like Tristen Nielsen?
Too often, this has been Trent Cull’s tendency: a fear of the risk that young players bring. He has a long held preference for safe players.
He’s had some success as an AHL coach, but in the end the list of players who have progressed to the NHL under his watch isn’t all that long.
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Some of that might be the players themselves, but in the end the results stand for themselves, and this is brutal. (Yes this also includes Travis Green’s tenure.)
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In the end, the overall development picture in Utica has been bad. And in Abbotsford it’s not much better.
For a management team that’s prided itself on draft and develop, there’s not much there. There’s clearly no cohesive direction in the organization. There are lots of people doing good things but the overall plan? It’s a shrug. And that’s crazy for a team spending millions of dollars.
Spending on only the shop window is ridiculous, you need to have a competent support structure.
Of the seven draft picks currently on the NHL roster, five are first rounders, players who should make the NHL.
And two post-first round picks in Thatcher Demko (a Utica-developed player) and Nils Höglander (a SHL-developed player).
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Best comeback
It would be nice to see Elias Pettersson get out of this funk and become what he once was.
Best question
Did Benning try to hire Claude Julien at some point this week? Did he try earlier this year?
If he did try, well we can see it didn’t happen and there’s really only one reason why.
You don’t know what you’re doing
That’s a chant in soccer, usually directed at the referee.
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Best solution
Sometimes the Sherpa who led you to the mountaintop last time is the one you need for your next journey – especially if you’ve been lost at the bottom for nearly a decade
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Have a good Saturday folks, stay safe in this storm.
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The Skate: Discontent or more - The Province
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