Safe is death: the Vancouver Canucks need to take more risks

Jim Benning is far too passive when it comes to making trades. If he wants a better result next year, being proactive will be the key.

We have all heard it before from the great John Tortorella. While still the coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Torts became known for this phrase. It essentially boiled down to stop chipping the puck off the glass and letting the play come to you. He wanted his players active and to attack with purpose.

This season, Torts has tweaked that phrase by saying he wants his team to play smarter. Honestly, that should have been the takeaway from the very beginning. The point is to not do something foolish. Players on the ice need to take calculated risks to score goals. However, sitting idly by will do yourself no favours. Smart players know when to pick their spots.

How does this tie in with the Vancouver Canucks? Well, restricting yourself with safe moves is how the Canucks have reached their current state. I don’t want to go down the similar road regarding drafting. In fact, I will give you this concession: Canucks amateur scouting has done a great job.

Could they have done better? Sure, but the emphasis today should be on the trades; rather the nature in which they take place. You are going to see why Jim Benning’s thought process ends up shuffling the deck chairs without creating enough change.

Draft picks and tweeners

I don’t know why this so difficult for other people to understand. The Canucks have great amateur scouting, yet their management group continues to limit what they can do. The purpose of the draft is to find as many impact players as possible.

Several advantages come with draft picks. At age 18, there is still approximately six years before they begin their expected prime. They stay under team control through entry-level deals and as restricted free agents for seven to nine years. Best of all, they have years of potential in front of them instead of their expected prime years beginning in the following season.

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The tweeners I refer to are the 22-23 year-old reclamation projects Jim Benning is so fond of. He prefers these players because they are a shortcut to make the team competitive again. His pet projects are on the fringe of making the NHL and some consider these cast-offs as NHL-ready prospects. They are safer than draft picks since they will become NHL players, even if they won’t be impact players in the lineup.

Therein lies the problem. This shortcut leaves little room for development. And if they aren’t truly ready for the NHL, more often than not they will require waivers for assignment. This means the players is gifted an undeserved spot over a prospect or the team loses the player on waivers. If they do sneak through, were they worth getting in the first place?

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Hockey trades don’t matter at this stage

I like Sven Baertschi, but in 193 games with Vancouver, he has 94 points (0.49 points/game). That’s 40 points on an 82-game season. He would not be an impact player in Tampa Bay, Las Vegas or Nashville. He’s a safe bet to be an NHL player, but if he isn’t moving the needle towards winning games, what’s the point? Brendan Leipsic will likely have a similar fate.

In a vacuum, those trades are good, but for a team that desperately needs to build to the draft, they are becoming their own worst enemy. I’m not surprised Benning didn’t get any draft picks at the deadline. He wanted to make hockey trades, so of course nobody offered picks. Benning waits until the last minute to make trades. How about taking the initiative? The passive strategy doesn’t work. Where is Trader Jim? If he’s dead, can he be resurrected?

The more picks you have, the greater the chances of finding an impact player. Did you know Benning was a big fan of Alex Debrincat in 2016? He would have picked him too if he had a selection in the second round. I would take Debrincat over any tweener brought in to this point.

Draft picks can fail (most do), but these scraps off of other teams are not going to win Stanley Cups. They are complimentary pieces at best. And you load up on them once your strong forward group is established. They don’t become the foundation of your core.

Challenging the status quo

The biggest reason why the team is in such a dire state is due to fear. Fear of change. A team that is too afraid to take a calculated risk. So much so that they will retain almost every player on a roster that will likely be the first in NHL history to finish 31st overall.

I don’t know how many times this has to be repeated. The other General Managers are not going to come to Jim Benning with a trade. He is too easy of a mark to exploit and can’t afford to sit there, impotently waiting. Benning needs to go on the offensive and shop his players. This means looking to move Chris Tanev, Sven Baertschi, Michael Del Zotto and Brandon Sutter. If there is a market out there for Loui Eriksson, retain as much salary as you can to extract a draft pick.

It’s no secret that Benning is surrounded by “Yes” men. No one to challenge his decisions and no one to provide a different perspective. Groupthink is not a successful business model. Trevor Linden won’t bring in another voice because he thinks everything is fine as is. But it’s not. You can’t keep running the same strategy into the ground.

Honestly, the are so many parallels in the management styles between the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers. And sadly, the Canucks are the worst team by points percentage in the last three years. We don’t have a generational player, but like the Oilers, we don’t have much of a foundation.

Next: Don't give up on the Canucks yet

This team is destined to be good, not great. There are a lot of good teams in the NHL, 16 of them make the playoffs every year. Of those 16, only a handful are great. And among the great is only one team, above and beyond the rest. Canucks management needs a new strategy. The status quo is mediocrity. Don’t like it? Then hope they change something. Anything.