Good Opinion Haver
Rejoint: juin 2018
Messages: 1,825
Mentions "j'aime": 927
Staying the course and being bad is pretty much all you can do, Vancouver doesn't have the cap space to make any meaningful upgrades to get the team into playoff contention after Hughes and Pettersson are signed, unless you do what you did and move Holtby (which, with the number of goalies who had better seasons available for cheaper, I wouldn't count on Seattle taking him) and even then like Granlund is a good player but he's probably not getting you there by himself.
What Vancouver can do to make some changes though is really commit that one year. Moving on from Benning would be great. In lieu of that, the Canucks really need to weaponize that one year of cap space. Instead of spending your remaining cap space signing Hamonic, Edler, and Granlund- all fine-ish players who will only hurt you from being bad- instead open up that space as much as possible with the intention of taking contracts from other teams that need the cap space for their own problems instead. Try to move Holtby at half retained to someone (the Sharks are looking for goaltending) and buyout Eriksson along with Virtanen. I know Eriksson only has one year left, but buying him out gets you an extra two million this year that you can weaponize, even if it's at the cost of an extra one million the following year.
Then Vancouver has an extra fifteen million ish in cap space to fill six-ish roster spots- two defensemen and four forwards (maybe three forwards if you sign Podkolzin). Now you can go to Tampa, Vegas, Washington, St. Louis, NYI, etc with the intention of taking the Kilorns, Smiths, Hickeys, Clutterbucks, etc. Will that team be worse with those guys as opposed to Granlund/Edler/Hamonic? Maybe, depending on who you walk away with. But those teams are going to have to pay you assets to take that money, and that's a smarter use of your cap space when you're staying the course (ie, being bad) regardless.