Asking to be a legitimate contender in 3 years or less is going to take some luck along with bold moves. It's certainly possible. Colorado has been competitive for several years now but they made some bold moves in trading Duchene (and being patient to trade him), trading Barrie after putting up a career season, hitting on a college free agent like Kerfoot that they were able to turn into a valuable asset, identifying undervalued players and getting them for relatively cheap (Toews, Burakovsky). On top of that they also got lucky in getting Makar in the draft who has potential to be among the all time great defenseman to ever play, Ottawa plummeting and Colorado ending up with 4th overall from that trade, an undersized dman like Girard becoming a true top 4dman.

Again nobody has suggested tanking or full rebuild. Competing for the playoffs is absolutely an option next year with internal growth even if we take a step back on paper.

You're right, it will involve both some luck and some bold moves to make the team a contender in that little time, but it's what they HAVE to do, because the core players on the team are on a clock now, particularly Hughes and Demko. We should all be able to agree on that

Exactly, this is why I get so annoyed when fans say the team needs to rebuild. It's such a short-sighted assessment. Competing for the playoffs is a MUST for the Canucks if they can't be bad enough to tank

Yep I can get on board with that!

I believe to do that we need to be aggressive and ruthless and that's where I bring in the Horvat trade because I believe when you take emotions out of it he is replaceable. I also think he carries a lot of value around the league due to "intangibles" and perceived two way game.

For sure, I was never calling Horvat an untouchable, just that I would try very hard to keep him before making the difficult, but more importantly, non-emotional decision to trade him away and monetize the asset

Fair enough. I think we will end up keeping but I don't think it's a smart move and I actually think it's something that could negatively effect our ability to be an elite team in the near future where I think keeping Miller could improve our chances of being an elite team in the near future.

I never said anything about the team tanking, I said "They don't need a full rebuild, but they need to take a few steps back to take big steps forward". This team is not going to do a full rebuild, as Mediumyeet pointed out they aren't going to trade EP, QH or TD. If you aren't going full rebuild then you are absolutely going to say your trying to make the playoffs, I can't recall the last time a team went into the season saying, "We have no intention of making the playoffs this year".

Then even with taking a step back, the team still HAS to compete for the playoffs next season if tanking is not an option. Taking a step back shouldn't equate to missing the playoffs, because a "step back" is a relative expression

Maybe, it's just that Horvat is two years younger than Miller, even though Miller is the better player. Horvat will also be much more willing to take a hometown discount than Miller will, so I would lean heavily on that working in the favor of the Canucks should they keep Horvat

Of course they are going to TRY and compete for a playoff spot, I haven't argued against that... What started this back and forth was me stating, "That this team is at least 3-4 years away from becoming a contender", and you stating that they were a "solid team".

And I countered that my definition of a solid team is a playoff caliber team, and I don't think that's unreasonable

Lol... this is going no where...don't want to keep spamming Mediumyeet's notifications. Im out.

Whoever said anything about spamming before you?

Coming from a Pens fan, if by new regime you mean old man Ruth, I don't know how much say he has there but I'd honestly temper my hopes for magic a bit. He made some good moves for us, but also thought overpaying for Reaves, Kapanen and Zucker and signing the corpse of Jack Johnson were great moves. He tends to get tunnel vision when it comes to certain players he wants, even if they just don't fit the team.

He's made some mistakes in the past for sure, I would just like to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that he's learned from those mistakes. I'm not expecting management to turn the Canucks into a contender next season, that's just not realistic, but I expect them to relay a sound message of their plan to the fanbase, and then walk their talk as best they can

Just saying you're going to love JR one day and want him fired into the sun the next lol. Don't know the exact front office set up you have there, but I honestly hope for Van. fans sake that JR is more just to oversee things and a bit less hands on. You have some really nice pieces to build around now and with a couple decent moves should be a yearly playoff team really soon.