Cornuck wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:18 am
Doyle Hargraves wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:09 am
So you’d be fine with the Canucks missing the post season this year?
It's easy to get caught up and start threads like "Are the Canucks Cup Contenders" with a streak at hand -
but now that we're out of first place, and only 5 points removed from missing the last wild card... :/
Add in that we're playing so flat right now, and relying on goaltending for point, it's a distinct possibility. Unless we get a ridiculous offer for Tanev, we keep him for the run and (hopefully!) playoffs. I'm sure Benning knows a LOT better than us what Chris's intentions are for next season, but I see him sticking around.
We're at the point in the season when the team should be gelling and looking like they want to do some damage in the post season - the last 2 games look like a team playing out the season and booking tee times.
Well aside from the out of first place bit, we've always been a handful of poor efforts away from the last wild card spot. The Pacific has been tight all season.
As for relying on goaltending, Markstrom has faced the 3rd most shots in the league this year.....the two guys ahead of him play for teams that have no backup goaltender that they can rely on, so Hellebuyck and Price have played 8 and 9 more games respectively. As a team we are 4th in the league for shots against, 0.4 behind the Senators (aren't they supposed to suck this year.....oh right, they do).
Travis is a very puzzling coach. I actually don't think he's a very good one at all. We went into the season with a team that looked like it had 66% of a top-6 forward group that could be relied upon to produce, and a top-4 defense that felt fairly middle of the pack, and, with the exception of Hughes, was not likely to generate much in the way of offense. One would think that the coach's strategy going in would be to play a tight checking, lane clogging, shot blocking, defensively smothering, style of hockey that capitalized on the turnovers and mistakes it generated in their opponents. Instead we came out of the gate and by the 5th game our rookie defenseman (who's a real beaut I might add) was playing 20+ minutes per game and we were a north-south team that surrendered shots by the dozen, struggled to get the puck out, lacked forward support in the defensive zone, and relied on our goaltender to keep us in the hunt.
When you scrutinize our winning streaks you'll see a ton of lucky goals. Bounces off legs and asses, very generous end boards and seams, and a ridiculously streaky PP that when it's streaking is the the most productive in the league but then just disappears and goes on an 0-30 stretch over a couple of weeks.
I see a team that has probably 75% of the pieces required to be a league dominating force, and probably 90% of the key pieces are here, but it's inconsistent, and does not appear to be well coached.
I'd been thinking it for a couple of weeks, and called it in the loss to Calgary, that this team would fall out of first place and miss the playoffs entirely if we don't see a coaching change. That change could be the firing and hiring of the head coach any one, or combination, of him and the assistants.....or it could simply be a change in the way the existing coaches deploy the team and draw up the attack. Since that loss we've won a couple of games, one was a misrepresented close call against Nashville, essentially a 3-2 game with 3 extra goals tacked on by the hockey god's as payment for a night spent with lady luck, probably courtesy of the Aquamen. The other was a 3-0 win that probably should have been a 10-1 loss. Then the eye test was properly represented again on the scoreboard against Anaheim yesterday.
If we don't want to be a tight checking team, then we need to be an offensive team that is a threat to score because of skill and playmaking, not bounces and stupid mistakes.
I'd be willing to take a chance on replacing Green with Bruce Boudreau.....he knows how to get a team to click offensively and not be a bunch of pylons on the PP waiting for the PK to get out of their way.
