There's only 6 teams below the Canucks in the standings with Vancouver being the hottest... errrr... coldest team headed downwards.
They have zero chance of making the playoffs. They have very little chance of even scoring more than two goals in a remaining game. They're not even close in the games they're playing.
The Canucks brutal drafting over the last five years is right there on excruciating 60 minute display for everyone to see. They got a couple of guys they drafted on the roster after 5 years. It's not nearly good enough. None of the second rounders they've got are showing any signs of making an NHL roster. And anyone thinking Quinton Hughes (2018 1st Rd pick 7th overall) is going to come in and be Bobby Orr better give their heads a shake. IF he signs with Vancouver and that's a big IF - he may opt to return to Michigan for one more year and become a UFA - he may need two years in Utica of the AHL before making the Canucks squad. He's not nearly the complete player fans have made him out to be and he's not an offensive dynamo and at 5'6" it's going to be a gamble with this guy on the blueline.
No matter how much house radio Sportsnet 650 (Canucks radio broadcaster) spins it (and badly thus their brutal ratings), it doesn't make "lots of good signs" true.
There are no good signs. They've been shutout in 13.3% of their games - a NHL high 8 times Canucks fans have attended or tuned in only to see their team get nothing on the scoreboard. That's brutal. It was the same last year and the year before. They can't score goals. Period.
If there was another person in the Calder Trophy hunt with any talent whatsoever Canucks rookie Elias Pettersson would not win the Calder. As it stands Philadelphia rookie netminder Carter Hart might still win the Calder even though he's missed the first half of the season and he's now injured for 10 days.
All you can say about the Calder race this year is that it was a horrific lack of talent in it.
All Benning and head scout Judd Brackett have drafted is two players in five years.
They have 20 goal scorer Brock Boeser and 20 goal scorer Elias Pettersson.
Well whoopeedee shit!!
They're a team that's too small with zero talent and nothing coming. And I know this because they've been shutout 8 times already this year.
Period. End of story.
They play like a bunch of ice capades girls swooping around the ice in skirts. You can argue until you're blue in the face that they have a bunch of young talented players to which I will simply say one thing
SCOREBOARD
They don't have a bunch of young talent. Are you kidding me? Pettersson played great for 40 games and is out of gas as predicted. Boeser looks lost out there. And there's nothing else. Horvat is as Horvat does - 20 goals, 20 assists, zero fights, zero hits, yay! Look at me mom! Shutout 8 times this year.
They have zero grit. They have zero A to B hockey players. The shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line - do the straight line. They've assembled a bunch of guys who play perimeter hockey only. They're like a bad mirage of the Golden State Warriors dropping threes from 85 feet and missing the net by 20 feet hitting cameramen and first row fans in the head with the ball. I fully expected the PA announcer to play the laugh sound after every Vancouver foray into the opposition's end. They've been shutout 8 times in 60 games. It's not soccer. It's hockey.
Against San Jose where Sportsnet 650 announcers declared "they played great!!" the Canucks were outchanced 12-2.
The Canucks had 2 high-chance scoring shots. That's it. Two freaking chances.
They had ZERO interest in getting to the high danger areas and getting hit.
None. Zip.
Furthermore they had no desire to pass the puck into the area and no ability to pass the puck into the slot.
Against the New York Islanders on Saturday (Feb. 23rd) they had 4 high chance scoring attempts according to my eyes. Four measly chances. They lost the game 4-bagel.
Yes they are missing Jake Virtanen but even when Virtanen was playing he wasn't featured as the main star by novice coach Travis Green who for some bizarre reason is the coach of the team. Virtanen is the only player capable of even playing direct A to B hockey on the team. The rest of them? My God they're allergic to getting their noses bloodied. It's hockey. It's not figure skating.
I'll give you an example of bad coaching. Hell call it just curiosity from a normal person. Would you not, just for curiosity sakes, take your 6th overall pick, who was a 50 goal scorer, who routinely is your best player over the last 20 games of every season, Virtanen, and just once feature him on the top PP unit and play him 23 minutes per night for like a week? Just out of curiosity? I mean you're losing all kinds of games, your PP is the horrific - don't you think it might cross your mind to say, hey, I've got this 6th overall draft pick here, strongest meanest guy on the team, maybe I'll try to play him a lot? I mean forget that you don't like his "defensive" attention to detail for a couple of weeks and just hitch your wagon to him and say, "Okay kid, what you got?" You're not curious? You're teaching him a lesson? What is the lesson? "This is what happens to bad men!" Scene from Ben Stiller's Starsky and Hutch where Stiller shoots the horse in front of the kids? The team is drowning and you take one player who you haven't featured on your team ever and you say, "Watch me shoot the horse!" A rational person would look at his point totals year after year after year and say, you know, this isn't working. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Barry Trotz - 1st place.
Travis Green - 25th place.
One is a spectacular coach that has his team playing professional hockey.
I have zero idea what Green is.
And yet they had similar rosters at the beginning of the year.
Vancouver appears at times not to be coached in any discernible way especially on the power play which is so slow it's like watching Alberta Premier Rachel Notley in a press conference.
Folks, there's only one way you get this bad and that's bad management.
They can't draft. They can't assemble a hockey team. They can't hire a correct coach.
They're a rudderless boat circling the toilet drain.
There's no 2nd round picks on the team drafted by these guys and none coming.
Anything beyond the 2nd I don't care - it's a crap shoot - a lot of luck involved.
But there should be something from the 2nd round picks.
I keep saying this to no effect - THIS IS HOW YOU BECOME THE EDMONTON OILERS 2.0 - only able to draft marginally in the 1st round.
You can't piss away 2nd round draft picks year after year after year after year and hope you'll assemble a hockey team.
They've got nothing in the pipeline. Nothing.
The only hope the franchise has is owernship making a bold move and firing the entire lot of management and bringing Steve Yzerman and handing him the keys and a blank cheque and an assurance that ownership will never, ever, talk to him.
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