The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 384: Where it All Went Wrong

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Harman Dayal and Satiar Shah join the show to discuss where things have went wrong for the Vancouver Canucks this season, how to divvy up the blame for it, and what they need to do to fix it moving forward. Topics include: The bad optics of their offseason Deeper rooted issues dating back years Paying for past mistakes Intentionally rebuilding vs. being bad by accident Having plan and executing it properly GM vs. Owner vs. Coach Front office power struggles Ownership meddling in moves Making big changes now vs. offseason Losing the room Goaltending vs. defensive issues Hughes and Pettersson's struggles this year The impact on their next contracts Trying to salvage the rest of the season Big decisions coming up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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My name is Demetri Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy Harmon Dial. man what's going on man. Nothing much. How are you, man? Thanks for having me on. Well, I'm good because obviously I'm happy to have you on, but we also have a third person on today's show. And it's my good buddy, Satya Asha. Sat, what's going on, man? What is going on, boys? Happy to be on your show, Dimitri. This is exciting because I've done a lot of talking and recording hockey conversations with

Sat over the years, but usually he's the one teeing me up in the 650 studios where he's he's plugging me to the audience and telling them why they should care about me. And this time I get to finally give him a nice little intro and have him on my show. So this is nice that I'm able to return the favor and kind of flip the tables on you. I'm excited and super grateful, man. I love your pod. I'm super excited to be on. And, you know, considering the content on this pod, the people you have had on, it's a pleasure, man.

Well, this is going to be good. We're doing an emergency podcast on the Canucks because we have to talk about what the hell is going on with this team to tee it up. They've got a 6 and 10 record with a minus 14 goal differential, but that's artificially inflated by three games. They got the beat up on the Sends actually in the 13 games against other North Division teams, the 3 and 10, two regulation or overtime wins, been outscored 60 to 36. They're down to 7% playoff odds, according to Dom. They've lost five straight here in February, getting outscore 26 to 10 out east.

It's tough. And I think when things go this poorly, I think the natural first reaction is sort of the blame game, harm you cover. the team on the athletic from kind of the writing perspective, sad you're talking about this team all the time on the air in the audio genre. And, you know, fans kind of want blood because they feel like someone needs to pay for what's going on. Media wants to know who to talk about and kind of where to place that blame.

I think the team itself wants to not only kind of publicly safe face by acknowledging addressing it, but also when it's this bad, like actually doing something behind the scenes to try to fix it and reverse course in the season. And so when things are this bad, it's hardly ever just one thing. So I kind of want to work through it and figure out what's to blame, where things have gone wrong, kind of how it can be salvaged. And so I'm going to open the floor up to either of you here to jump in and kind of where should we start with this conversation in terms of how it's gotten to this point, who we blame and how it needs to be fixed. Man, I'd say, I mean, harm is going to do a great job breaking down the X's and O stuff. And we'll get into that.

and harms plugged in as well and heard a lot of similar things we've heard, I think you really have to start at the very top of the organization. You have to start ownership slash management. And you really can't separate the two, right? Because look at the moves that have been made, like start from the very beginning. How did the Mike Yiddlest thing go down? Who came in? Who did they hire? And what was it, what was the goal when they made the hiring? Well, they hired Lyndon, who was, you know, like Tony Gallagher, loved to say, skiing in the Swiss Alps at the time. And he comes in to be the president after not being tied closely to hockey operations. They come in with Jim Benning.

And early on, they miscalculated. And honestly, part of it is what ownership wanted. Ownership wanted the team to turn it around quickly. They wanted to be competitive right away. It was very clear that Gillis's vision at the end was, we need to tear this down to some degree and rebuild and retool this thing properly. We can't keep going on with this. And even towards himself said, hey, the core is stale. We remember what he said towards the end of the decision.

season. But it was very clear what Francesco wanted. Lyndon and Benning were willing to give the ownership group what they wanted initially. And after some years of very uncomfortable trying to be competitive and a lot of mistakes were made it. And like I said last night, I don't want to romanticize Trevor Lyndon at all because a lot of mistakes were made and he very much learned on the job. But towards the end, they did build a management structure that at least made sense and was at least passable for the National Hockey League in the sense of the president focused It's not president stuff mostly, even though he was tied in with hockey decisions. But he was the buffer between owner and management.

They allowed guys like Judd Brackett to run the scouting department that became very robust. And they had departments that actually worked hand in hand. You had analytics department. You had the scouting department. You had the president. You had the GM and the pro scouting department. And they sat at the table and delegated. And they sat at and they would discuss and debate and come to a consensus.

And sometimes it was uneasy, but it was a working situation that seemed to be, at, least going in the right direction. And then the split happened between Lyndon and ownership. And it's very clear it was because Lyndon and Benning had different visions of how to go about things. Lyndon wanted to be more patient. Benning thought he could, hey, we can just do a few things. We can be right back at being competitive right away, especially with Pedersen coming. And we feel like we have other high draft picks that are coming. We feel like we could turn us around really quickly. Lyndon did not feel that way. And acrimonious split, despite whatever ownership wanted to say about being amicable between ownership and

Jim and Trevor, that all fell apart. And that leadership failure and that falling apart set off a series of events. We saw what happened with the scouting staff. Judd Brackett finds himself on the outside looking in. The things that were working within the organization quickly started falling apart. You start losing scouts. More staff started leaving. Jeff Steipk, who was part of the financial side of things, he left. All of a sudden, the infrastructure that was built over the years started falling apart. And a lot of that goes back to a lack of leadership. Look at it from ownership, look at what happened with Benning being in charge. And Benning being the sole guy simply could not keep his house in order. And it's very clear he couldn't. Look at John Wisebrod's influence, which has been more

uneasy and more harmful than good. At least that's what it looks like when you talk to people who have been in the organization and are no longer there. That's a take they give. Now, the organization will always dispute that and say that's not the case. These things are overstated, and it's fair to give their side on things. But you start looking at a situation. where the leadership started falling apart, and all those cracks got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you look at where we're at now. The team went from being so ambitious a year ago

to trade for J.E.T. Miller, sign Tyler Myers, signed Michael Furlin, trade for Tofoldy at the deadline, to all of a sudden this season, they take a massive step back in terms of their ambition, and a lot of that is ownership saying, we're cutting off the taps, we don't trust management, and also there's a different financial landscape. And all of a sudden, the players,

that last year came together and felt like, we spent 60 weeks in a bubble, we came together as a team. We feel like the future is bright. This organization believes in us. You're investing in us. This is just the beginning of something great. Then the off season happened.

And it's very clear right now. And I know harm can break all this down too and add to it. But this is a team that does not believe in the plan right now. They have given up on the plan from the organization as a whole. And I thought Elliott nailed it yesterday when it came to Travis Green as well. We can criticize coaching. That's on the table. When it's this bad, everything is on the table in terms of criticism.

But when you have seen all these guys leave, in the last year of their contracts. You don't bring any of them back. You have a very uneasy off-season. The contracting negotiations have been tough. The players look at Travis Green as a lame duck coach and say, he's probably not going to be back. We just saw what happened this off-season.

And all of a sudden, the coach's word doesn't sink in as much as it did in the past. The players have to take responsibility because they're playing like little babies at times and it's not excusable in the National Hockey, despite whatever you feel from the organization. But you start looking at that failure of leadership that's slowly disintegrated to this point. Sat, first off, you're coming in really hot. I'm excited about this. I teed you up and you're delivering.

I think when you say that for them to not believe in the plan, there needs to be a plan in the first place for them to not believe in. I'm not sure that is the case. But Harm, I'm going to get you on this here because I know you wrote about this recently, and I completely agree with your perspective. I think it's really easy right now to, especially in the wake of Jim Benning's comments where he was ridiculed for his. what he said about how they ran out of time to sign Tyler Topholi,

and it only fanned the flames after Tofoli scores, eight goals and three assists in five games against them. And I think it's really easy to point to all the talent that left this off season as the explanation for where things went wrong. But I really think that's kind of missing the forest for the trees a little bit here, because for me it seems like it's kind of this current situation is the product of an accumulation of pretty much seven years of questionable financial decisions, a lack of real foresight or planning, whether that was purely management's fault or whether it was

because ownership was pressuring them to fast track this and try to make some money while they could. But whatever the case is, it feels like kind of just keying in on purely the ins and outs of this off season. That was kind of the result. But if you look under the hood, this was kind of brewing for a long time coming. Yeah, the step back that you kind of had to take in the off season is really the symptom of six years of work previous to that. And Sat mentioned the lack of leadership. I think that goes hand in hand with the fact that they never really had a plan from day one that they were, that they were able to stick to. And when you sort of look at this from a big picture perspective, and you talk about from the players' perspective, the shock of, okay, we're going all in, uh, in the

2019-20 season where you sign Meyer, sign for Erland, acquired J.T. Miller, uh, acquired to foley as a rental and then take an abrupt change in direction. Well, that was all foreseeable. It was foreseeable to anyone who opened up their cat-friendly page because you go back since, again, day one and the sorts of financial decisions they made were short-sighted and it's not hindsight to point those out as mistakes, right? Because if the team did not cut corners on the rebuild, they would not have signed Louis Ericson, right? The short-term infaturation with let's be competitive, let's continue to try

making the playoffs is why they signed Louis Erickson, is why they traded for an extended Brandon and Sutter so many years ago, is why they signed J.B. Eagle and Antoine Roussel in 2018. So you step back and a lot of people point to, okay, oh, there was a pandemic and there's a flat cap and that threw a wrench in the team's plans. Well, the situation that the Knox run right now where they're capped out and that's prevented them from being able to take the next step. That's primarily because they have nearly $20 million in these inefficient contracts, not because of the flat cap or the pandemic. And so really, I think that's the elephant in the room. And I think what bugs fans and frustrates people so much is the fact that all these contracts were

Everyone knew was going to age poorly. Like, who signs a fourth, fourth line players in Jay Beagle, and maybe you could argue Antoine Roussell was a third line player, to $3 million cap hits for four seasons? Like, who does that? And really, it just comes down to, again, being short-sighted, and the fact that they didn't stick to a consistent plan, they played it by the year.

And it almost, it's like they wing it with their decisions in terms of when to be aggressive and to try and take a step forward and when to take a step back. Because you look at 2014, they come in. come in and they say, okay, we like the core group of players. Let's push our chips in. You sign Verbata, you sign Ryan Miller at the time, and you make the playoffs. Okay.

And then you continue pushing the chips in. You acquire good Branson, you car Sutter. And then at that point in 20s, 15, 2016, then you start missing the playoffs. And then you say, okay, we're going to take a step back. Clearly this roster isn't good enough. And then within a matter of a year or two, you're back pushing your chips back in for Miller, for Myers and it's just that inconsistency because look when you're trying to win a Stanley Cup winning at all demands being best in class and sometimes it's still not enough like Canucks fans

will know that some that having a dominant juggernaut you look at the 2011 Canucks sometimes that's still not enough you still fall short and so building a cup contender requires meticulous planning it requires being purposeful decisive and those are all quality and is that this organization has lacked, whether you want to put it on the management, the ownership, on both. That's just the fact of the matter. And really,

the situation is a cumulative effect of seven years of rudderless roster building. The perfect encapsulation of the past seven years of Canucks Hockey is that one tweet where it's like Jim Benning does something. People criticize it based on the information we have. Fans of the team say, or I guess the optimists say,

well, let's wait and see how this turns out. And then it turns out poorly. and they go, well, I mean, obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, it's like, no, we, like, this is stuff that is pretty transparent from the get-go. And I think the issues for me and the most kind of maddening things is just kind of following is there's a certain number, a certain like amount of gas lighting, but I, by I think, um, big name national insiders who are kind of carrying water for the organization because it's a Canadian franchise that tells them stuff and they are incentivized to do so. I think there's certain segments of the fans that kind of police

what a real fan looks like and how you can express that fanhood as if you're not allowed to have your own critical thoughts and question the team. I think it's a super knowledgeable fan base. You guys both know this. It's very passionate. I think all they really want for the most part is the team to have a plan, to communicate said plan, and to execute the plan. And I think you can't argue that this current regime has struggled at least one of those facets throughout this tenure. And so I think what I struggle with is, did this sense? team ever really rebuild over these past seven years or were they just bad for a couple years? Because we know that from 2015 to 19, only the Buffalo Sabres had a lower point percentage.

But throughout that entire stretch of time, they were trading picks for future players. They were chasing big name free agents. They were spending to the cap. They weren't collecting futures. They basically weren't doing any of the stuff that we know that rebuilding teams do. And there's certainly not just one blueprint for how you can rebuild a team for the long term. But there is kind of this cognitive dissonance for me of Jim Benning being. propped up as a draft guru and whose specialist is the draft and his lasting legacy,

regardless of how this winds up playing out, will be he's the person that brought Elias Patterson and Quinn Hughes and we can even throw Brock Besser into that list to the Canucks. And that's all well and good. But in these past seven years, this is a team that has made 48 draft picks, which is less than the amount that are allotted by the NHL. And so for me, that imbalance of how can you say that this is a team that went through this long rebuild and did it the right way, but ultimately didn't do any of the things that we know the rebuilding teams actually do. The only thing they did, it was essentially a one-year spell, is when they traded at the deadline, they traded Burroughs and they traded Yanukhansen. And that offseason, the Canucks actually

didn't go out and spend a lot of money, right? That was a son. This is what I went back to, and I mentioned after a few years of learning on the job from Lyndon, a very imperfect tenure, and I don't want to romanticize the early years because I do think he made a lot of mistakes. And I think there was, I don't want to call him arrogant, but I do think there was a level of arrogance from management and ownership thinking, oh, we can turn us around in a hurry and make the playoffs the first year and we saw the quotes about, see, this is what we said we're going to do. When we feel so good about our plan and it became very, very evident, that was the wrong plan. And I do think Linden realized that.

And as things started coming together, they traded guys away at the deadline that year. That offseason, they weren't super ambitious about things, right? They went and drafted Pedersen. They wanted to take a bit of a step back and be slow and patient about how they move forward. And then the split happened, right? Not too long after. And then you saw the off season, they go out and sign Roussel, they go out and sign Beagle. It was very clear that the switch had happened already.

So they essentially had one deadline and one season where they were trying to say take the long-term approach here a little bit. And even the year afterwards, they had Vanek, they traded them at the deadline. They wanted to do the right things at the deadline. But there wasn't this comprehensive rebuild. That never happened. And if they tried to, it got shut down after one year of doing so when the vision really changed. Then, you know, what I could think back to, and especially listening to what Harmon was saying about being capped up, spending all your capital.

Yes, you know, the pandemic totally hurt. The caper captured from the Longo totally hurt. And those are things out of your control. It wasn't their fault for management. But do you guys watch the movie Deepwater Horizon? No. No, okay. I like, it's a Mark Wahlberg movie about the Deepwater Horizon, you know,

the BP oil rig that blew up in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. That caused a huge oil spill or whatever. And it happened because there was a lot of, of incompetence, greed, and they were cutting a lot of corners, and mistake after mistake compound, and next thing you knew, the whole thing blows up in this biggest oil disaster. And there's a quote from the movie, where Mark Wahlberg goes, it seems like you guys are trying to land the plane as you're running out of gasoline. Hope isn't a tactic. And that's essentially what these last couple years have been. They had such a small margin of error to pull off this

quick rebuild or like, let's load up right away and be really good. So their bets from last year all had to pay off. And then especially coming into this season, because they're not, they had no cap space left, they had no real capital to trade because it moved all their picks and stuff anyways. Every move they made had to pay off in a big, big way. Because if things went sideways this year, you had no recourse. There's nothing you can do this season except for wait for the season to end outside of moving some marginal guys off the roster that doesn't move the needle at all. And who cares if you move Godhead for nothing or who cares if you trade? Jake, it doesn't really matter if you're even able to pull those trades off. So you're stuck in a situation now where you spent

all your capital and hope was your tactic. And it's not paying. off anymore. So to me, you can sit here and say, yeah, you know, they had some bad luck happened to them, but they were in a position where they could not afford a bad luck situation. They could not afford a Michael Furlin situation happening. They had zero margin for error, and the error started compounding, especially over the past 12 months. Harm, I guess the tricky thing for me here is just kind of spinning it ahead and thinking of like, okay, so, you know, we hear how these next 10 games are, or I guess even the next couple games against the flames at home will ultimately determine the

direction they go. And putting aside the fact that letting a couple of random regular season games dictate the direction of your franchise and the issues with that, I think it's a lot of fans, for example, just be like, oh, you know, a good start here would be completely replacing management and bringing in someone new to run this team. But with the ownership, there is still in place. And I'm not sure how much you guys want to get into this, but like it seems pretty clear. that they were working under the assumption that they might be able to buy out Brandon Sutter or spend certain amounts of money and ownership stepped in and was ultimately like, no, we're not comfortable doing that at this time.

And it really forced their hand to, or I guess limited what they could do. And that was certainly self-inflicted. But I think that that kind of that involvement and the constant meddling and also not to mention the fact that, you know, Sat, you were talking about how there's been certain voices that have been pushed out the door over the years. If you're the Canucks right now and you're looking at it and go, okay, we're going to fire Jim Benning and John Weisbrood. Okay, that's great. So what's the next step? Because, you know, who are you going to bring in to replace them? Also, is there an appetite to pay a second

person now to run this team? Because Jim Benning's contract runs through the end of 2023, I believe. And I don't think people are going to be lining up to hire him as their GM. So the Canucks and acquainees are probably going to be on the hook for the majority, if not all of that bill. And it seems like they've already kind of taken the car keys away from them in terms of of they need to explicitly sign off of any moves that he's going to make, at least of any consequence. And so he's not necessarily kind of this lame duck GM where you're worried that he's going to be making these kind of risky moves to as a last it's effort to try to save his job. So it's obviously like from a PR perspective, it's a nightmare.

From a logistics perspective, it's really bad to have this GM that can't really do anything. And I think Kodokx fans are wondering, okay, that might actually be a good thing because we don't really feel comfortable with him being the one that is in charge of doing any of those things. Well, App, 100% right, harm? Go on. Yeah, no, exactly. And the thing, too, about ownership is I think this is the stage where this franchise right now is clearly at an inflection point where when you look at this core group of players and fans will point out the fact that, okay, Hughes and Pedersen are 21, 22 years old,

like, you've got so much time to build this thing. but two players don't make up a core. And when you look at Vancouver's other pieces, Brock Besser is turning 24 years old in a couple months. Bo Horvatt is turning 26 in a couple months. J.T. Miller is turning 28 in a couple months. Like these aren't just young players anymore. A lot of these guys are in their prime peak seasons.

And when you look at how long it can take to win the Stanley Cup sometimes, look at the Tampa Bay Lightning and Washington Capitals. It took them nearly a decade with those cores to finally win it all. So you need a long runway of contention if you seriously want to challenge and win a cup. And so if you acknowledge that you need that long runway, then you don't really have as much time to write this ship as you think you do. And so this is where you have that crossroads where this can either be a franchise where they have an excellent core group, but they're forever kind of held back or at least this iteration, this whole. Horvette Besser Miller sort of era of this core is held back by by poor cat management and

the supporting cast that can't lift its weight or you're able to clean up the mess and turn this thing into a turn this thing within a couple of years back into a powerhouse and this is where ownership needs to take charge and they need to be the ones to lead because ultimately like when we talk about this lack of vision talk about this lack of plan and in the inconsistency there and in the leadership, I think as owners, they have to be accountable for that. You can't just put this all on the feet of Jim Benning, even though he's the one executing. It's the owner that kind of sets a table and sets precedent, sets the standard in the culture for an organization. And I think to this point, they haven't been committed enough to the long-term picture, for one. They have been way

too involved in terms of, if we've heard this going back to the Mike Gilliserra of them vetoing trades and obviously now they've kind of cut off the taps financially. And especially you look at how influential ownership can be during this flat cap pandemic world. Like look at the Montreal Canadians. They're the one team that yes, they had the cap space too, but they were aggressively spending actual salary too. And they brought in a bunch of guys,

and they took an average roster and turned it into a borderline top 10 team in the NHL. And you look at this Canucks roster, this franchise, they're in a big Canadian market. They should not be worried about, like when you look at Travis Green, for instance, and there are talks about, oh, are we, like, what's going to go on with the extension? Like, this isn't Florida or Carolina or Columbus. Like, you shouldn't have to worry about, do we have enough money to pay an extension for coach who's deserved it?

Or we shouldn't have to worry about, oh, are our ownership going to actually approve a buyout out here if it's in the best interests of the franchise? And so during this time, if you have, in my opinion, and I know it's easy to say for us on the outside because it's not our money. But still, if you're the owner of a top 10 market in the NHL, big Canadian city, you have to be willing to look at the obstacle of this sort of pandemic. And you can't, like, you have to commit to this team. You can't cut off the faucet. You can't be unwilling to spend capital. Like you look at a lot of the Canucks contracts too.

like they're spending right to the cap and I know this is a point that a lot of people like Thomas Drance have made they're only spending $65 million in actual salary like you look at how much payroll this team cut in terms of actual budget it was slashed significantly and so right now I don't think this is an ownership group that is fully committed to winning either I think they need to be accountable and so you know whether it's you can make the management change and and ensure that'll maybe boost fan confidence but you have to, if you're going to make that change, you have to have the next guy and who knows how to take the next step because this is, like, this is one, this, these next

couple of years right now are one of the most important in franchise history if you want to take advantage of this core. Well, Sat, I know you probably deal with this a lot from your, uh, from your inbox and, and, and the callers, but, um, something you see a lot is the pushback of, well, they're not in a bad spot because all the bad contracts are basically going to be off the books in the next two years. And I think for me, the lateral kind of pushback to that or logical response would be this might be a very good time, as Harmon alluded to an affliction point, to reflect on how and why they got into the spot in the first place and how they can stop this cycle from reoccurring over these

next one to four years. It's going to be very critical for this franchise. And for the owners, the crazy part for me is, like, They were spending a ton of money for a while. Then clearly they dialed it back. And there was always kind of a disconnect to me of, okay, they want to micro-manage and they want to be involved. But at the same time, and they want to cut corners and make a couple quick bucks.

But then you're looking at the roster and how do you justify having nearly $20 million of cat commitments to players who either aren't playing or aren't contributing while you see all these reports that somehow this franchise is depreciating in value over the years, which seems almost impossible for a Canadian organization in the NHL. You know, that's the big thing here, right? Because you look at everything that happened with ownership. And I do think there's a lot of blame that has to be laid on their feet as well. And it does seem odd about how all of a sudden this year the TAS were closed off.

But one theory I had when this happened, because I couldn't shake the feeling, guys, that when the offseason happened and I was talking to people in management and I was talking to people in the organization and the sense was, hey, we have a very, we have an aggressive plan. We want to keep Marks from Tannib and Tofoli. We want to do a few things creatively here. And if we can, you know, if we can spend some money here, like, this is an opportunity for us to really make our team better. They go to ownership with the plan and they were like, yeah, no. And I kind of get the yeah, no at the time because they're like, okay, so you guys want to use a buyout. That means that money is going to pay out of our pocket, which is a big thing. But also that adds money on the cap for next

season. And then you want to sign to Foley to a contract and you want to sign these other guys to long-term contracts. Well, that's going to complicate our cap next year and beyond. Move money off the books that goes beyond this year, and then we'll give you the green light to sign to Foley. So that means you've got to try to move out a guy like Roussel. You've got to try to move out a guy like Beagle, somebody that has more than one year left on his contract because you want to make sure that you have flexibility. And they couldn't do that and they couldn't use the buyout. So I kind of get what ownership was doing. And now that I go back and think about it even more, My theory at the time was how much of this is also based on they want to push to see what happens this year before even committing to Jim and committing to Travis because of everything we just talked about.

Jim has been on the hot seat for a long time. I know last year things changed. They made the deep playoff run and it seemed like, hey, the plan's working on the outside looking in. They were invested in it. But I do think there has been some uneasiness that Jim has been on the hot seat for a while and that they were not fully sold on him. And I think that had they been able to get other options or somebody else coming in a few years ago at cheaper prices, they may have already made a change. But the thing is, who wants to work for this ownership group unless they get paid a lot of money? Because you know what could happen. It's like, if you want it, it's like, hey, I'll do it, but you got to pay me a price for it because I'm not dealing with that, you know, that absolute circus unless I get mine. And they're not willing to spend a ton of money on management. At least they weren't at the time.

So I do think there's a lot of hedging that happened this season. And because it's a weird season, you don't have revenue from the gate. And we know that this ownership group is very driven by making money. Last year, they wanted to make the playoffs. The defaultly deal. Well, they pushed forward too because they wanted to make the playoffs. The dynamic was different pandemic because you don't have any fans in the building. So because there's no real money to be made this year, I do think that played a part into their desire to be ambitious.

But it's also about not being sold on management and not being sold on them making the decision on the coach long term and making significant decisions on a lot of players long term. Schmidt, the ownership group said, that guy makes sense long term. We need a defenseman. We sign off on that. But a lot of this, too, was because they don't have faith in what Jim is doing. And I don't think Jim's contract guys is fully guaranteed. Now, I've had one source tell me it is, but based on everything I've heard, my opinion is, it's not guaranteed. And there is an out at the end of the season, maybe a payout, but it's certainly not all the money owed the next two years, maybe half at best.

So I do think moving off gym is a far less of an economic issue than it looks like on paper compared to what their desire has been about saving money. So I do think getting rid of Jim in season isn't going to cost them as much money as it seems. And I think that plays a part into it. And why would they let Jim or anybody extend Travis if you're not sure that guy's going to be your GM in a year? So I think a lot of this stuff we're seeing now was ownership not being sold on this team too and not being sold on this management group. which again begs the question, if you're not sold, why did that change in a year when you allow them do all those stuff in the off season? And it goes back to ownership has to stick to a plan.

And if they bring somebody else in, they got to step off. And that doesn't mean they don't have any input, of course. Every deep playoff run starts with building an amazing team. Doing the same for your business doesn't take a room full of scouts. You just need Indeed. Don't spend hours on multiple job sites looking for candidates with the right skills when you can do it all with Indeed. hate waiting. Indeed's US data shows over 80% of Indeed employers find quality candidates

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That's indeed.com slash bluewire. Terms and conditions apply, cost per application pricing, not available for everyone. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Owners, and it's foolish to think that no owner has input in any organization. Every owner has some level of import. but he shouldn't be involved in mundane day-to-day decisions. He shouldn't be hovering over people being like, hey, do this, do that. It's about, yeah, I'll sign off on big things, but you run the operation.

And if somebody else comes in, that has to be made very clear that he's going to be hands-off. Because I can't see a respectable, high-end executive coming in here if a change happens, guys, that's going to accept the current dynamic that exists. And if somebody comes in and accepts it, it's probably somebody that's willing to go along, to play along because they want the job. And I think until that issue gets solved with ownership long term, it doesn't matter who runs the organization. You're going to have the no plan plan. Well, okay, so we've talked about the ownership.

We've talked about the GMing. I think looping in the coach here, we kind of like tangentially skirted around the issue. But I think, you know, I get that someone has to fall on the sword. Their performance has been uninspiring. We can talk more about the actual X's and O's and On Ice from the team perspective and a bit here. But, you know, Travis Green doesn't have a contract for next year. And I think I've seen this idea floated around that this is a product of him losing the room, quote unquote. And I just think, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but I just find that to be so lazy and unfair and kind of taking advantage of a sitting duck situation.

Because like what exactly is Travis Green supposed to do differently in this case? I think, you know, he's a quote unquote hockey guy, but I think he's no dummy. He's pretty sharp. He pays attention to what's going on. He's looking around. maybe quibbling about Hoglander not being in the top six permanently, although I will point out he's seventh and five-on-five ice time for Canucks forwards and he's played like 85% of his minutes with either Horvette or Pedersen. What are you supposed to do differently with this current

group that he's been given from a usage and a deployment perspective that would actually fundamentally change things? I think if you gave him some truth serum, he ideally probably wouldn't want to be playing Tyler Myers 17 and a half minutes of five-and-five a night. He wouldn't be using, clearly, we know Jake Vortan if he had any other choice, any other alternatives. So like, at the end of the day, it is a very talent-driven league from the perspective of there's only so much a coach can do. And if you look at the personnel he's been given, I don't really see that argument of, oh, you bring in a different coach here and he's going to get so much more out of this group. I just don't really buy that. I agree. And I think the thing to keep in

mind is you can't just focus on this season. Like I think a lot of people are, when it comes to Travis Green, they have a pretty, they have a recency bias because you look at, in my opinion, the job of coach is pretty simple. It's to get the most out of the roster that he's handed, obviously within reason. And I think when you look at, okay, this season, coaching staff is not above criticism. The way the team's playing, they're in complete disarray. It's not just that they're losing. It's the underlying process that looks so off. For sure, you can have criticism in the coaching staff through four weeks is like many people in the organization, pretty much everyone not good enough, has not been good enough. But you look back to three years previous to that. And

in my opinion, when you look at how much the coaching staff was able to squeeze out of each of those rosters, I think Travis Green's done a pretty good job, especially you look back at the 2017, 18, and 18, 19 seasons, both times. I think I remember seeing like USA Today projecting the kind of cadet last in the NHL, for instance. And you saw the incremental improvements, even though the roster wasn't there. The team was actually competitive. They weren't getting blown out every night. And then you look at what happened last season.

I think the coaching staff made a pretty ambitious systems change to where in 1819, they were near the bottom five in goal scoring. And then they made a change to open up that system. And yeah, that meant they allowed more defensively. But they were able to extract. back so much overall value out of that roster. Like, no one can deny looking back at last year's team that this Canucks roster didn't play to its absolute peak.

Every guy in that lineup, it seemed played to the absolute maximum of their potential. And to me that you can't just look at four bad weeks here or five bad weeks here where the team's underperformed and then throw out the previous three years with the coaching staff has shown itself to be competent and capable of develop. being young players. And you look at even simple things like the switch when Elise Pedersen came over, he didn't play center in Sweden in the SHL. He was primarily playing the wing.

And the conversation coming into the 2018-19 training camp was, okay, which center is he going to line up with? And from day one, Travis Dixemitt Center, that's a franchise altering decision. When Quinn Hughes comes in, and I know it's easy to say, oh, you're able to insert him into the lineup. but coaches a lot of a lot of the quote unquote hockey men, I guarantee you looking at 20 year old undersized rookie like Quinn Hughes,

they would not have used him in matchup minutes and used to lean on him as heavily as Travis Green did. And so the point I'm trying to make is especially when you look at this roster and again, through four or five weeks, absolutely the team's underperformed. And yeah, the coaching staff has not been good enough. Yes, the defensive play has been abhorrent. But I don't think you can just change the coach and suddenly everything becomes better because when you look at the underlying logic, underlying logic of this roster,

you have a strong top six, you have one of the worst bottom six groups in the NHL, a back end where you really like, I think, Queen Hughes and Nate Schmidt, but other than that, you only really have too high-end top-for defensemen. I think it's clear at the stage that Edler isn't really a bona fide top-four guy anymore. He's more of a four-five. And same thing with Tyler Myers, and they don't really have enough depth on the blue line. And then you combine that with average goal tending. And realistically, this is a team that was always going to be playoff bubble caliber. So I think Travis Green has been dealt a really tough hand, especially when Sat mentioned off the top, your lame dunk coach and players can kind of see the writing on the wall. So it's tough to get

that same level of buy-in and commitment to the system that they maybe had last year. And I think this is really tough to pin the majority of the responsibility on Travis Green in his group. Well, Sat, so I think part of the issue here for Green and the Canucks is that last year's results, I think, threw people off the scent a little bit and kind of built up maybe these undeserved expectations where if you look back at it now, and I don't think this is purely a hindsight, I think, I don't think anyone really expected that things would look this bad, but they were clearly a regression candidate for a number of reasons. And I think, you know, if you just look at sort of the recipe for success last year, their top players obviously dominated. And I think we can talk more about

Hughes and Pedersen, that has been one of the surprises that that has not carried over. But their power play crushed, I believe they were a fourth in the league in goals per 60 there. And we know that, you know, it is a talent-driven thing, but it is pretty variable from year to year, and you can expect bounces here or there.

Their goal-tending was fantastic and covered for them defensively. And I think beyond the most disillusioned people who saw three games of Thatred Demko and thought he'd be able to replicate what Mark Stern did last year. I think we all expected that to take a massive step back. And they enjoyed great entry luck, aside from Edler and Besser missing about 10 games and Markstrom's injury towards the end of the regular season, they stayed healthy for the most part. Pretty much all of their top

eight to 10 players played the full season. And we know that that is a variable thing as well. And they've already kind of struggled here and there with bumps and bruises. And so I think it's really easy to kind of look at these results and go, oh my God, the goalies have been terrible. They've given up an 8, they have an 887 save percentage this season. And while that is bad, it's missing the forest for the trees because you look at it. They're giving up 34.5. shots, 13 high danger attempts, and 3.35 expected goals per 60, which are all dead last in the league. And I don't care who you have at there, even if they did have Markstrom. I think it would still be a concern. And so I look at Markstrom and he's looking fantastic so far in Calgary and we'll

see what he does against the Canucks coming up here. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if he twist the knife a little bit deeper there. But I don't think it's as simple as looking at that and going, oh, well, you just put Jacob Marksum on this team and it's entirely different. Like there's clearly something deeper rooted and more rotten with his team. And they had zero margin for error. We talked about how management had no margin for error with their offseason moves last year and this year. Same thing with the roster, which puts the coach in a really tough spot.

Because if he's not maximizing each one of his key players to their best, they have no chance. And that happened last year. All these guys had career years. And to your point, a lot of guys were healthy. Chris Tanov had his healthiest year. Now, one sidebar on Tanov, had the shutdown not happened, he still was still would not have played 70 games because he got injured and would have been done for the rest of the

regular season anyway. So even last year, things could have really fallen apart late in the season had the pandemic not hit. And we would have been having the same conversation we're having now a lot earlier. So that's still a possibility that never happened because of the reality of the world at the time. But Travis has no margin for error with this roster. And as soon as some things go awry, everything is an absolute mess. And you're right about how bad the environment is. as porous as they were defensively last year, and you don't need me to tell you what the high danger number was, but they were essentially even when it came to high danger chances for

and against last year, they're just slightly underwater. When you consider you have good goaltending, you can get away with that. This year, they're in the bottom of the league in that differential. It's terrible how many chances they're giving up. The environment is horrible in front of the goalie. And it does get compounded by the lack of buy-in, because I do think, you know, the system they have put in place is not the issue, but they have to have buy-in for it to happen.

Travis is great as strength as a coach. I don't think his X as an O's, I think is getting guys to be ready to buy in, to believe that they can play and produce and be given the green light to be the best versions of themselves. I think that's what Travis is really good at. But when all of a sudden something's amiss in the locker room and things are just completely falling apart,

that message isn't getting through. And when you know your coach is a lame duck and you don't feel comfortable about him being back or not, it kind of feels like you don't know what you're doing. Now, the players have to be better professionals. I still go back to this. You're still getting paid millions. You've got to play for the name of the back of your jersey at this point.

Even if you're mad at the logo and you're pissed at management and you're not buying into the coach, you've got to show some pride, right? You've got to show some pride when you're playing the National Hockey League. But it's hard to pin this on Travis because even if he make a coaching change, maybe for five, 10 games, you get the coaching bump, which always happens when a change occurs. But systemically, they have issues. And no matter who comes in, especially a guy who's going to be. a stop gap, they're going to have the same questions as soon as they hit a losing streak again.

It's a fragile team that is waiting for something to happen, for something to give. And it's only a matter of time before it happens. Now, as much as I like Travis, and I think he's a good coach in the NHL, the longer this drags out. And if he's unable, unable to get the guys looking more like a cohesive team, it's not going to look good on him. And whether he deserves it or not, the new guy coming in, if they make a GM change, it's probably going to look for his new head coach. So it's just a really unfortunate situation because the entire circumstance just makes everybody look bad. And we can look at massive sweeping changes this off season.

I think we assumed Travis would have been here no matter what long term. They would have figured out a contract. But considering what's happened now, I don't see him getting fired in season. But the longer this drags out, it's going to be harder to bring him back after this season. Well, Haram, I think I'm not sure where you stand on this, but I totally saw the case for it. I saw all the red flags. I think I was a bit higher on this team heading into the season than most analytical models just because I was factoring in the, or leaving the door open for the idea,

and I had dreads on a podcast during the off season. We were talking about this of last year, Pedersen and Hughes were so good and so dominant, but they were doing it in such a, you know, Hughes certainly got exposed much more, but they were like they were so carefully managing their minutes. in terms of not overusing them, but also kind of strategically using them in terms of deployments and stuff. And I thought that, listen, one of them's 21, the other one's 22. It's very conceivable, given the eye test and given their skills and given their underlying performance, that if they are kind of unleashed even more and play more and maybe take on tougher minutes and thrive doing so,

which is within the range of outcomes, that's the one way where we can kind of keep the room, the door open for room for improvement for this team. And I think that's the thing that I'm kind of struggling with the most in terms of trying to rationalize or wrap my head around is how much the two of them have struggled this season. Because for all the concerns we had about this team, I can honestly say that this never even entered my mind as a possibility, acknowledging that it's only 15, 16 games or whatever, and they're both still young and obviously incredibly talented. And this is by no means writing them off or suggesting that they're not as good as we thought they were. But I think we just treat it as a foregone conclusion that it dated at very least be as good as they were. last year, if not better. And I can't really recall a scenario where two young already pretty established players with fantastic underlying numbers the way they had completely cratered like this

without some sort of injury or some sort of very obvious explanation. Like usually when a young player struggles, you look at it and go, okay, well, you know, they're shooting percentages down and that's going to bounce back. But in this case, they've both been just so bad in terms of when they're on the ice how badly the Canucks are playing, that it's a deeper rooted kind of process issue that's not as simple as, oh, you just got to wait it out because the percentages are going to bounce back in their favor. Exactly. And listen, if you told me that through 16 games at the season, that the Canucks in terms of five-on-five goal differential would be positive, would be above water with the J.B. Eagle line on the ice and that the bottom six as a whole wasn't

getting caved in and they were actually holding their own at five on five, I would assume that this team would be something like 11 and 5. Like honestly, the thought coming into the season was, okay, if the bottom end of the roster can just hold up their end of the bargain, then the top guys are going to be able to, on the power play takeover games at 5 on 5, they're going to be able to impose a territorial control to where they're just going to be able to throw up. opponent, especially in this Canadian division where all these teams are so weak defensively and they're not very good at 5-1-5.

Like aside from Montreal being the number one, I think, best even-strength team and I think Toronto being a pretty strong, even-strength team too, aside from those two teams, every other sort of squad in Canada has issues at 5-on-5. And yet, as you mentioned, it's not just that Pedersen and Hughes are struggling in terms of I mean, you can't even say they're struggling in terms of production because Hughes does have a lot of points, but they're underlying process. Their two-way results, especially defensively, are so lacking. And I think with Pedersen, through the first six games or so, he looked completely off. Like, he just wasn't, it's not just like, when a star player struggles and goes through a cold stretch,

they're at least able to impact the game in other ways. They're able to maybe help out transatlose. They're able to play a sound two-way game. They're at least ensuring that they're not getting scored on it. They're at least playing average hockey through the first six games. Pedersen wasn't just slipping to average. He was downright bad. Like, he was one of their worst forwards.

And I think he's gained some confidence here over the last seven, eight games. I think for his two-way and his five-and-five results as a whole to improve, I think there's some co-linearity there with J.T. Miller. because Miller, I mean, a lot of people look at this, looked at that top line last year and just assumed, and they looked at Miller with 72 points in 69 games, and they said, oh, okay, well, look at J.T. Miller, he's broke out next to Lee's Pedersen.

Clearly there's a relationship there where Pedersen's popped up Miller, but Miller meant, I think, just as much for Pedersen as Pedersen meant to Miller. And I think for Miller as well, like the point production is there, but the Connucks are getting outscored 14 to 9 when he's on, the ice at 5-5, his expected goal differential is below 40%. So I think there is some co-linearity there where Miller isn't going. And so Pedersen is hurt as a result of that. I think Hughes is the one that really baffles me.

Because through his rookie season and coming in as a 20-year-old playing matchup minutes, last season, it wasn't just that he put up points and that he was dynamic offensively. that he had a gravity about him at five on five to where he spent so little time in his own end. He made so few turnovers. He made such few mistakes defensively that you were just awestruck that here's this 20-year-old defenseman. And it's not that he's this sheltered second pair guy who is scoring on the powerplay and he's his power play specialist.

No, he's your matchup number one defenseman. And for Hughes to now be 16 games in the season, he's been on the ice for 23 goals against. Like, that is by far leading the league. The next highest skater on Vancouver and Brock Bessor has only been on the ice for 15 goals. And again, you talk about the two-way control. It's not just that the bounces aren't going his way. It's that the underlying numbers, the Canucks are getting caved into Quinn Hughes on the ice. And I think a lot of people naturally point to Quinn Hughes.

point to Chris Tanev's departure and say, oh, well, he was the defensive safety net. No doubt, I think losing Tanev has hurt Hughes more than I would have anticipated. But I think it goes far deeper than that. I think you look at the way Hughes is playing right now, and I'm not sure if he's banged up. I mean, he had a maintenance day in practice a couple weeks ago. I don't know if he's going to fatigue right now. Number one, I don't think he has the same separation gear when he's going back on retrieving pucks on breakouts. Like, that's, I think that's the number one standout trade about him is that he's this one-man

breakout machine. And right now, he usually has this ability to where he can round around the net and he can just blow by a guy. Just because he has an extra pep in his first two steps to beat that forechecker and make him look silly, he doesn't have that right now. When he picks up the puck on defensive zone retrievals, he's under heavy duress all the time. And I don't think there's a lot of puck support there from the wingers. And so he's having issues in terms of giving. And we didn't see that before. Defensively, I've been surprised by how many times he's struggled in terms of making the

reads and picking up the right guy. So I'm not sure again, if there's fatigue there, if he's banged up. And to me, this is, I think with Hughes, it is something to watch for in the long term because for this franchise to, and again, you look at 16 games compared to the nearly 100 games that we've seen from him before or I shouldn't say 100 probably around 90 games through the regular season and the playoffs you don't want to look at 16 games and and and let that way too heavily relative to the 90 game sample where he was such a two-way ace so you don't want to you know you don't want to throw the baby out with a bathwater and become all concerned about

ill is Quinn Hughes still and unbrun defenseman but it is something to watch for in the long term because this franchise you look at its back end they require Quinn Hughes to be more than just a power play and offensive defensemen. And that's what he was last year. And right now, he's been, to put it quite honestly,

he's been a defensive liability. He, I watch way too much hockey for my own good, just around the league. I honestly don't think I've seen any single one defenseman get turned around

more than Hughes has this season. And that just wasn't the case last year. Like, like, and the thing that bugs me is that it's so easy and so lazy for people who don't watch him closely

to go, oh, well, you know, undersized, offensive defenseman, what do you expect? It just wasn't the player that we saw last year, either from the eye test or from the numbers. I mean, you mentioned the goals against totals. So 470 players across the league have played 105 on five minutes this year. He's 467th in

goals against per 60 and expected goals against. So it's not like, listen, the Canucks are not getting any saves with him on the ice, but I don't think he's without blame for that because it's kind of self-inflicted in terms of the chances that they're giving up when he's out there. And I think his 17 points in 16 games throw people off the scent a little bit, but, you know, 10 of those are secondary assists. And similarly with Pedersen, it's really bizarre where you look and he goes, okay, so he's drawn 10 penalties this season, which is bread and butter. Armier talking in terms of contributions for star players when the puck's not going in. He's doing that. It's a big net positive for the Canucks when he's doing that, and he's on his game.

Only Brady Cichuk and Connor McDavid have similarly drawn 10 penalties or more. He's hit seven posts. no one has hit more than four of them. And so you expect, okay, like, underlying process is good. He's just getting unlucky. But he's shooting 13%. The Canucks are shooting 14 and a half percent

with him on the ice at 5-on-5. So neither of those kind of scream as, oh, crazy outliers that are going to bounce back. Last year, with him on the ice at 5-15, the Canucks had a 57% share of high danger chances and 54% expected goals. That's down to 39 and 40% this year, respectively. Like, it's just, that's the thing

that just blows my mind here. I honestly, I don't know if either of you can remember a scenario where both players, I guess in this case, but especially Pedersen, because he'd established himself so well as this two-way five-on-five ace that was getting comparisons to, you know, like a mini d'attuck and all this stuff. Like, it's just, I've never seen a complete 180 in terms of the underlying numbers for a player as they have so far through, albeit 16 games. And that's what makes it so jarring, Dimitri, right? Because you're so right about this team. You made the point earlier that I wasn't as down on them.

I had them being a playoff team in the Canadian division. I thought they'd make the playoffs. I didn't think by any means, but you looked at the high-end talent, elite talent, looked at how good that top line was. And you add Nate Smith, who's a good puck-moving defenseman that helps you with team speed adds a bit. And it's like, okay, well, you know, there may not be as good as they were last year,

but there's a lot here to work with. And they've been so much worse than anybody could have predicted. it. And it all starts off with your best players not being your best players. Now, in a roundabout way, that still comes back to management. You don't have enough support. You know, that when you go through a 15, 16 game stretch where your best players aren't your best players, it doesn't sink your entire season. And I have time for that argument. But the way these guys are playing is completely jarring compared to what we have seen for them and where we know they are capable of. Even if they weren't going to be necessarily better next season, because we all know

development is not always linear and you will have stagnation, no matter how good a player is from year to year sometimes. But for them to take this type of regression is just, like, it's unconscionable almost to see it. The penishing stuff, it's a bit weird. I don't know what happened with him, you know, trying to figure stuff out. I do think harm is onto something when it comes to Quinn being somewhat injured or something there's something there. But J.T. Miller, and I don't want to get into off-ice things because I can't say for sure,

and I'm not trying to be salacious about this. This is not my intention. And I don't want to get radioed on this. But there's something amiss when it comes to J.T. Miller. There's something amiss when it comes to J.T. Miller. And I don't think it's just being frustrated with, say, direction and stuff like that. I don't think it's directed at his teammates. I don't think it's directed at his head coach.

And I don't think it's just the organizational stuff about the offseason. I think there's something. And now, here's the thing. We live in a different world now. People are stressed out. People are living under duress in the pandemic, no matter how much money you're making. There are certain life factors that have come in, and it's not always easy to navigate. So maybe those factors play in.

But there's something wrong with J.T. Miller. and you see him carry that. He says all the right things in the post game interview, but he does all the wrong things on the ice outside of scoring some goals and getting some points here and there. When you're alpha dog, and J.T. Miller very much is the alpha in the room.

Had this kind of bad body language and has this real bad feeling when he's around the ice, that's very palpable and the other guy sense it. I for sure think that plays a big part into that auto line having some struggles. The huge one is harder to figure out.

But all this kind of comes back to there is something wrong here that's rotten, that goes beyond, say, X's and O's. That goes beyond roster construction necessarily, because they shouldn't be as bad as they are. And it looks like a team that's given up on the plan. And you're right, Dimitri, they haven't given up on the coach. And I think it's lazy for people to say that.

But I can't fault them. Because when you see a team perform this way and you're on the outside, and you don't know the inner dynamics and all the workings and all the issues that led to this point, it's easy to look at that and say, well, clearly, these are guys that have given up on the coach. I mean, no team has given up five or more, hasn't lost by five or more goals.

nine times in their first 16 games since the sense did it. So in like 93, 94. So you're seeing a historically bad start from the Canucks. They're not as bad as that start indicates, which tells us there's something rotten at the core. I don't think it's the coach, but there's something here that goes beyond just the players on the roster, that just goes beyond X's and O's.

There is something that's completely amiss, and it's not surprising that we are in this point. We look at how things have disintegrated, when it comes to the leadership of this entire organization, as we mentioned off the top, that over seven years you get to this point, that there's a lack of trust that has built up, that there's this feeling of helplessness, it seems like, within the organization right now, especially with the players. And that compounds thing, because we can't really point out, like, when you look at the numbers

in the last few years and you look at what these players are and what they're capable of, there's no hockey analysis that's going to, pure hockey analysis, going to give us the answer to what's happening right now. There's clearly something else that has become psychological with this group right now. I guess the thing that's kind of looming over this, and I don't buy the argument that it's a contract year and there's extra pressure because these two players are going to get paid basically whatever they want regardless, but it is kind of hanging over this season as a bit of a shadow from the perspective of what direction both the team and the players are going to choose to go with the next negotiations with the complicating factors

that, you know, it's a flat cap. The Canucks could probably use the wiggle room of a bridge contract to try and add around them and help figure things out over the next couple years. And their down seasons respectively, obviously, you know, Quinn Hughes's points aside, not necessarily affecting their leverage, but maybe causing you to kind of recalculate, okay, how much should we actually be willing to throw at these two players? like how much of that is in play here in terms of the decision making either from the player or from the organizational level. Well, I think that's what's going to be really interesting because I'm going to be curious to see how much leverage does that carry in negotiations if these two continue on this way.

Because I think a lot of times when you are building out these contract comparables, a lot of it is like agents want to use, they're going to point out the point totals. And a guy like Hughes, it's as if the underlying process with his, you know, in terms of ways that you can't quantify outside of the analytics, it's like that impact is more significant than what you're seeing in the counting stats, which is ironic because it's the point totals that so often drive player value in these negotiations. So I'm going to be really interested to see how much sway that has. a guy like Hughes, if he continues with this form defensively and he finishes this season, let's say, with 50 points in 56 games, but he was horrendous defensively the whole time, how much does him being poor defensively this season help the Canucks's leverage? I'd be curious to know. And similar sort of thing for Pedersen, because again, we looked at him last season,

and a lot of times you had this conversation of Leas Pedersen, is one of the best centers in the game. He's a top 10 center. And a lot of that narrative made sense, especially towards the tail end of the playoffs, looking at what he was capable of. That discussion wasn't driven by his point totals per se. He was still below point per game, if only barely.

It was, you looked at him and said, that's one of the best five-on-five two-way centers in the league right now. And when that value leaves the table, how much does that affect the point? player agent and team negotiations. I'm going to be really interested to see, especially when a guy like Hughes, I think, it's worth pointing out that he's a 10.2c RFA because he's signed out of college. He's not eligible to be offer sheeted, which puts him in the same boat as a guy like Charlie

McAvoy, who Boston was able to sign him for under $5 million on a bridge deal. And I don't think Hughes is going to sign for that cheap because offensively Hughes has a lot more leverage, but he does have less negotiating power right now, given the fact that he can't sign an offer sheet. And maybe that dynamic changes because Pedersen has changed his agency and they're both represented to undersea AA hockey right now. And so maybe their package deal there. But yeah, I mean, it's such a baffling sort of situation to unpack.

I think any wiggle room that you're able to extract does give the Canucks an advantage. in terms of other players you can add around them. Because I think a lot of people look at, oh, Edler's coming off the books. Pearson, Sutter, the Connucks have a lot of caps base opening up. And the reality is, first you've got to sign Pedersen and Hughes, then you've got to sign Demko as well. And then you've, if you're going to move on from Pearson and Edler,

you've got to be able to replace those guys too in the lineup. So it's not as if you have a lot of flexibility to work with. The Canucks are going to be capped out again this off season. if Hughes and Pedersen get paid. And it's 2022-23 season where the books really open up and you have enough flexibility with the bottom six contracts coming off the books.

So any, again, any sort of extra wigger room that you're able to capture from Hughes and Pedersen may be clocking in cheaper than you would have anticipated is an advantage that the Canucks have to take advantage of. But I think for me, it's almost more interesting from the player perspective, especially for, I'd say, Elias Pedersen, because we don't really talk about it this way or frame it in this lens in the NHL as much as we probably do in other sports.

But, like, if you're Petterson, and we just spent, what, the first 25, 30 minutes of this show talking about, like, what the next couple years are going to look like for this organization, how much they're willing to spend, the instability in terms of committing to both the coach and the GM. Like, I remember when this happened with Connor McDavid, when he just signed his mega deal coming off of his ELC, and it was just like, oh yeah, like, of course, he's going to just take a bunch of money. He probably took a bit less than he could have because he wanted to help the oilers so that they could use that to add around him as if they were actually going to do that. And he basically signed away the entirety of his prime, all of his 20s, to one team that you couldn't have with any reason felt very confident that they were going to maximize that and put him in a position to actually compete for Stanley Cups for the majority of that. And so I think if you're Elias Pedersen, these are questions you should probably be having beyond just the

your financial element of trying to get as much money as you can because all these players are underpaid based on what they provide. Well, it's a fantastic point, right? And I think that's the big thing here as well. And that's why one of the things I've mentioned, one of the things that I believe frustrated a lot of players that are currently here and obviously the ones that are not here was how poor the communication was this offseason with what the plan is and also we're trying to keep these guys around.

And when you're not, in today's world, especially these young players today, communication is so important. These guys ask questions. It's not the old school days of like, you're a GM, I'm a, you're a player, I'm a GM, I tell you what to do, you shut up and play, and I make the decisions. Nah, man, you got to justify what you're trying to accomplish here, especially with these high-in young players. They have to understand what your plan is, and you've got to get them to buy in. You have to sell them on this being the market where you want to stay long-term, but also the market that you have the best chance of winning long-term. And if you're not communicating that or doing things to make players feel that, you're failing at your overall plan and the overall buying that you need within your

organization. So you're 100% right about if these guys are going to be here long term, you've got to start convincing them. As far as the type of bargains they're going to run, they're under the same agency now. And that agency is going to be trying to get as much money as possible for these players. Now, it could mean they take a bridge deal because those guys also represent Barzal and you saw what happened to squeeze them to taking a bridge contract. Perhaps it goes that way. But The peer, the counting stats are what GMs still use, I mean, what agents use above everything else. The analytics stuff goes in there, but it's the really counting stats that matter. And isn't it interesting guys that no matter how poor Hughes has been in his own end, he's getting his when it comes to the numbers.

Pedersen, you mentioned Demetri, he's hit a lot of posts. He's had some bad luck as well. The process isn't good, but the production, if you look at it, you know, should rectify itself. These guys are getting theirs when it comes to the counting stats. without helping the team win with their overall game. The commitment is to put numbers up more than anything else. And that mentality obviously has to change. But it's going to be interesting that if these guys end the season with having terrible

underlying numbers and a bad plus minus, which I know is a bad stat, but it indicates in this case when you're that much underwater how bad your process is, that it may not hurt them that much in contract negotiations, that the agency is still going to drive a hard bargain. Because if you're not buying into what the plan is or if that convincing you what the plan is, then all you care about is get every single dollar possible. And I'm not sure that their struggles this year will necessarily mean the team's going to get a break on their next deals. No, no, they're going to be able to get what they want.

Yeah. I guess this is like, the reason why I want to do this show now is because they are at a bit of a crossroads here where their next 10 games are against the Jets Oilers and Flames, which are theoretically the teams that they are vying for those final two North Division playoff spots with seven of those are at home. the frequency of these games is going to lighten up a little bit. But, you know, they've already played nearly 30% of the schedule. And so I think we do need to start kind of considering where they

stand. I know that, you know, the optimistic view, the 2019 blues have subjected us to years of, it's too early to say for sure what this team is because of their miraculous run down the stretch en route to winning the Stanley Cup. But at this 30% mark of the season, like this is such a unique year that it's really going to be telling. And so I guess, you know, from a directional perspective. I think on the one hand, obviously things going this way are unacceptable, especially you have your two best players on ELCs and not making the playoffs in this year where your gift wrap this week division where one of the teams is guaranteed a top four spot in terms of being in the final four. I think that's such a tough pill to swallow.

But on the other hand, it's this weird year where there's no fans, you've got only 56 games. The season's going to fly by. It'll be over in a couple months. They have their first. this year, thankfully, which is amazing because very easily could have gone in New Jersey, and I know that the devils internally were begging and praying that they'd be able to get this pick instead of last years from the Canucks. And so just in terms of like that perspective of where things go from here, what the rest of this season is, like how hard you vie to try and salvage this first, maybe taking a step back and reflecting and trying to build something bigger and better with these players. I'm very fascinated to see, I guess, how these next couple weeks go

and sort of what decisions that leads to. Yeah, I mean, my big question about some of these decisions is what we kind of outlined as well is, where do you go from here? Like, where do you go from in terms of management style-wise, right? And I do think from some of the things that I've kind of heard here and I've talked to people about a little bit is that do you have to bring somebody in that's going to be able to, here, sorry, let me rephrase this. Anybody that comes in that's going to be credible by any stretch of the imagination is going to come in and demand certain things from ownership and that they would want a certain set of rules to be the case for them to take this job. So that means no matter what we sit here and say about this management team and whatever, there has to be a shift from ownership in terms of who they bring in.

And I think who they hire will be very interesting in that regard. Because if they hire somebody that has been around as a bit of a hockey man to begin with, just wants. the job, it's willing to do anything to get the job, that won't excite me. That won't get me thinking, okay, you know what, these guys are going to figure it out. But if you bring in somebody that is going to put his foot down and say, this is how we're doing things, and it's going to be my way of doing things, and you've got to give us a runway here to figure this out, if that gets given and somebody comes in with a two to three year plan to content, not two to three years to make the playoffs, but like, you know, we have a three year plan to be a real contender, we'll be good right

away because we have these young guys, we're going to start building towards it, but we have a three-year plan. I think that's really what you have to bring in here. Bring in somebody that says, no, we can be great next year. That's chasing ghosts again. And we start chasing ghosts. You're not getting anywhere. And that's what they've done so many times, right? So it has to be something like that. And the name that Ellie Friedman was pondering about, and he was on with us on Sports on 650 yesterday. And we talked about it was, would the Canucks have any interest in a guy like Roberto Luongo. Now, number one, when Luongo even want the job, I can't tell you. And if you were to have the job, I would assume

and imagine he'd want to come in with an experience executive and also somebody that both of them can tell ownership that it's going to be our way of doing things. And he's been here before. He knows what it's like here. I would imagine he wants a set of rules to be the case for him to take this job, even if he was interested in doing so. But I can totally see ownership looking at it and being intrigued by that idea. That's an opinion I have on this because look at what they did with Lyndon, look at what they brought in the last time. And I do think they want to do something to excite the fan base, or at least have credibility with the fan base or have a fan favorite that's going to be able to be a bit of a buffer to take away heat and criticism a little bit.

But also, if you want someone like that, I don't think it's going to be like a Lyndon situation. Lyndon didn't have a lot of leeway. And he said he wanted to do things his way, but he very much still agreed on the direction they wanted when he jumped in and took the job. I think the person that comes in has to give this ownership team a bit of a harsh reality and say, it's not a one-year turnaround. Yeah, we might make the playoffs next year, but we might make the playoffs next year, but we have to have a two, three year plan here about how to contend.

And I think that's the only way to ensure the next decade of this young court is actually salvageable and is actually going to be a contender in the National Hockey League. Sorry, one thing I wanted to quickly add. And the commitment to that two, two, three year plan is so important because if you spin your tires for the next two years, keep in mind that, I mean, we've spent so much time talking about Pedersen and Hughes, but both Horvett and J.T. Miller are, both unrestricted free agents. They only have two years left after this one, left on their contracts.

So you've got to figure this out quickly. And a guy like Corvette who's been through the rebuild, we heard his comments the other day, he does not want to go through another rebuild. He's a guy that he's so competitive, he needs to win. Like he's not going to be able to stand losing for a lot longer. And same sort of thing with J.T. Miller. He is unbearable when the team's losing a lot. So both those guys, if you want to be able to keep them,

in the fold and have them commit to the team and stick and stick with your franchise, you've got to keep that in the back of your mind too, because those guys matter just as much as Pedersen Hughes do in terms of constructing core that can contend for a Stanley Cup. Well, Haram, so here's my question that I'm posed to you. So let's say we hang up on this call, we're done the podcast, Francesco Equalini calls you. And he goes, Haram, I'm a big fan of your work. I read John the Athletic all the time. I need your advice.

what should I do moving forward in terms of how hard should we fight to try and salvage this season and try to make something of this versus realizing okay we're 30% of the way through the schedule odds aren't in our favor we've only got 7% odds to make it how how much should we kind of be pivoting right now to maximizing those next two to four years as opposed to because I think you know they can go those two ideologies can go hand in hand but in this case not that the Canucks necessarily have a bunch of pieces where they can move them and get futures, but just in terms of like getting this process started and redirected on the right track and maybe bringing in the people that you could have confidence that are going to do that,

how do you kind of manage those two things in these final 35 or 40 games or whatever? Yeah, I think the first step would be you've got a circle a year where you say, this is our window to really start taking another step forward, to start accelerating again. I again, I mentioned this earlier. I think the 2022-23 season is when you do that because that's when Erickson's off the books. That's when Roussel's off the books. That's when Beagle's off the books. You look at their cap situation in the summer of 2022.

It's going to be a lot better than it is right now and a lot better than it is going to be next season. So that's where I think you can target that year and say that's when we aspire to be one of the, elite teams in the National Hockey League. And so if you try and work back from that and say, okay, how do we get there? I think the first step has to be, let's assume that this team continues struggling and it's clear that they're not going to make the playoffs. At the deadline, I think you have to look to recoup whatever assets you can with your unrestricted free agents.

So a guy like Brandon Sutter, even if it's a bid around pick, you have to let him go. If that means eating a little bit of salary, you do it. If you're not going to, you have to make a decision before the trade deadline. You can't play it by the year with Tanner Pearson now, where you can't afford to, okay, let's see if we have the caps facing the off season. You have to decide, are we resigning this guy? Or if not, we've got to move him to recoup a pick because you look at the Canucks last year. They didn't pick until round three.

And so they need whatever help they can. Even if that means in the off season, you go out and you immediately trade, you immediately flip those picks that you acquired to get you help now. I think that's going to be important. A guy like Edler, I don't even count him because, yes, he's an pending unrestricted agent, but he's not going to waive to move. Whatever you can, I think anything you can do right now at this point, even if, let's say you get a pick back for Pearson or Sutter,

and then in the offseason, that pick allows you to, in collaboration with maybe retaining a bit of salary, move a bad contract like a J.B. Eagle or an Antoine Roussel. Because with a guy like Roussel, for instance, it's worth considering that the actual salary on a lot of these bad deals are have been front loaded. So I think Roussel makes maybe $1.7 million an actual salary in the final year of his contract. So maybe you're able to move that out. And then in the off season, you can't make the same mistake of,

okay, we're just going to put a blindfold on, close our eyes, and just slam the accelerator again and sign these contracts and do whatever it takes, mortgage future class, flexibility, just for a one year fix. Again, you have to pick that

date on the calendar, 2022-12-23 as that's your year. And the importance of that year is you've got, that's your final year of having Miller and Horvatt

under contract as well. So if you're able to build towards that and you've set yourself well to have success and you've built out a supporting cast there and you've mined

and efficiencies by signing good value contracts, then that's where you're going to, if you have success that year, you're going to get that level of bind that you need to continue moving forward with that core. So I think number one is, again, we've talked about the lack of a plan for seven years. You've got to be honest with yourself and say, if we want to turn this team not just into a playoff caliber one, but into a legitimate cop contender,

then we've got to be realistic with ourselves about how quickly we can turn this around, look at the cap situation, and target a time to, to really go all in and push our trips in accordingly and encalibate all of our decisions in light of that. Yeah, I think in the meantime, I just hope they start, not even playing better because they won games last year, but beyond the more, the kind of elevated success they had compared to the past,

they were just like fun to watch again, and it was just fun watching Canucks games, and people would stay up and talk about them, and they were kind of the talk of the league for large stretches. And it's a classic example of more goals isn't necessarily a good thing, because they've been giving up a ton of them and they've been these offensive environments, but it's just like for,

it's just almost unwatchable at times, just how disorganized and sort of out of sync it's been. And so I think that's the thing that I'm going to be watching for here over the next handful of games. And as you said, that's really, there's a lot of moving parts for the future decisions. Let's get out of here.

I think we've covered everything we need to for the time being sat. I'll let you go first, plug some stuff where can people check you out and all that good stuff. And then harm you go after. Well, I host a radio show, the program, 4 to 7, on SportsNus 650, Monday to Friday, alongside Andrew Walker. Everybody's favorite radio personality in Vancouver. And I also host the Canucks pre-post and intermission show on Sportsnet 650 as well.

And oftentimes, you will see me on TV doing intermissions with Dan Murphy. I do that quite regularly as well. And yeah, check me out on Twitter. At Satyar Shah, always happen to interact with people. But I'll also say, Dimitri, always a pleasure talking to you. you man and I know harm talk about boy genius being a stud but thanks for having me on your pod man this was a lot of fun anytime harm give uh give the people all the info yeah you can find my work alongside um the the i think the best uh written journalist in the city Thomas Drance at the athletic

so hold on pot I know Thomas is listening to this right now probably with his dog I don't want him getting any any any any head doesn't need to get any bigger okay let's just say that. Listen, we're all about gassing up our teammates here. If the Canucks aren't organized and they aren't and they aren't collaborative and they don't have the right leadership structure in place, at least the athletic does, okay? That's true. Where can people check you out on tour? At Harmon, Dial 2, H-A-R-M-A-N-D-A-L-A-L-2. Awesome, guys. Well, this was a blast. I know the Canucks have been a tough watch this season, but hopefully this podcast was a smoother listen for the listeners and we'll check in with both of you sometime down the road. Awesome. Thanks, Dimitri. Thanks, Haram.

Thanks. Before we get out of here, I just wanted to thank everyone for listening to today's episode of the Hocopcadio cast. Hopefully you enjoyed the Canucks Deep dive that sat Harman and myself just did. It was pretty therapeutic to just talk our way through it. And I think we got some good stuff. So yeah, hopefully you enjoyed that. If you did, please consider leaving the show a rating and review. It goes a long way. It's super easy to do and it's greatly appreciated both by myself personally and also for the podcast and it's growth and its sustainability moving forward. So I know a lot of you have done so already and I really appreciate the ones,

especially the ones that have a nice little message there and a touch and kind of just letting people know either what you enjoy about the show or why you recommend they check it out. I think that stuff goes a long way. So thanks for doing that. And as you probably saw, if you follow me on Twitter and I imagine you do if you're listening into the show. I recently signed on with Elite Prospects ringside to join their awesome growing staff to cover the league this year. So that won't affect the podcast. You'll still be able to get it as you have in the past, wherever you get your podcast and wherever you listen to them.

This is purely for my writing stuff. Most of it will be behind the paywall, but that's just the way it is. You've got to pay the bills. So I know there's a ton of outlets that you you're probably already subscribed to and paying to. And I totally get, especially in these times, that it's tough to give that much money for hockey analysis. So I totally get it if it's just not going to work out right now. But I'd honestly recommend it. It's not myself. It's a big cast of characters that are writing there now. And they've really invested in trying to just cover hockey intelligently and I provide a bunch of content and so yeah whether it's myself or Ryan Lambert or Jack Fraser or Cam Robinson a bunch of people you've heard on this podcast. Rachel Dory, Lauren

Kelly, Mitch Brown, so on and so forth. I'm missing a ton of people but it's just a really good list of analysts and voices and they're providing a platform for young people in particular to have a chance to shine and grow and yeah so we've got a lot of fun things planned there in the coming weeks and months as the season goes along. And so hopefully you'll check that out as well if you're interested in more for me. If not, and the podcast is sustaining you. That's cool too. And I appreciate you listening.

And we will be back soon with another episode of the Hockeypedeocast. Beocast with Dim Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud. At soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.