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I'd like to thank LeftCoaster for his guest blog today. These are his thoughts on the Twins and the Vancouver Canucks. I will have my own blog up later today.

Enjoy



With the real possibility of a lock out this upcoming hockey season, I just thought I’d take a quick look at what life will look like for the Canucks post Sedin era. Should there be a yearlong lock out this year, Daniel and Henrik will both be 33 years old with two years remaining on their contracts heading into the next hockey season. This is about the time when you start to see higher end skilled players decline. Our window of opportunity, sadly, will more than likely be all but closed if we lose the season.

Mike Gillis has publicly stated that the Canucks need to get younger and bigger. He’s accomplished the bigger part in the past two drafts, but is there any real NHL talent in there when you’re drafting late in the first round all the time? Personally I have high hopes for Kassian, Jensen and Gaunce, maybe to a lesser extent Yann Sauve and Joseph Labate. But there really isn’t a whole lot of blue chip in that list! Jordan Schroeder has never been a prolific scorer such as a Martin St. Louis was in college, so I’m not holding out much hope that he’ll turn into much at the NHL level. Time will tell. Small players have gotta put up numbers, plain and simple!

So where does that leave this franchise in three years time? Daniel and Henrik will more than likely retire back to Sweden, Ryan Kesler will be 30 years old, Alex Burrows will be 34 years old and David Booth will be 30 years old. That’s five of our top six forwards! Gillis has never really addressed the sixth position in the top six, Raymond seemed to grab a hold of it for awhile a couple of years ago, but we all know how that’s turned out. If we lose the season, is it time to work some youth into the line-up? Do we trade an Alex Burrows for assets to make room for Kassian or Jensen on the right side, assuming they get one more year to develop outside of the NHL (AHL/Europe) while Burrows sits and waits for the NHL to resume.

Do you think Mike Gillis and Laurence Gilman are doing enough to address the future of this team or do you agree with living in the now and compete while you can? For the record, I think they’re trying to do both. They’ve definitely taken the approach that they’ll search for diamonds in the rough with their recent second to seventh round drafting. You can hardly blame them, picking so late all the time. One of the reasons I think it’s somewhat important for Gillis to get a decent return for Luongo is just this, we NEED a better pool of prospects!

Thanks, LeftCoaster


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