Got a press release from the Canucks this morning...announcing a new partnership with the PGA of BC to present Canucks Junior Golf Week.
Nice enough. But not exactly the franchise-defining news that we've been waiting for.
Yes, the sound of the crickets make it tough to find new lenses to look at this situation—and we still have two months until the draft. So, we'll cobble together the news and speculation as it surfaces.
Ed Willes was able to connect with Trevor Linden on Thursday for an update, which you can read
here. Linden met with Boston's Cam Neely, which adds more fuel to the Jim Benning rumours.
Linden does his best to ask for patience from the fanbase:
I know from the outside people are wondering what’s going on. But this isn’t a two-week project. The ripple effect of each decision is significant. I have to understand things in the full situation. not just a sliver here or a sliver there.
The Bruins squeaked out an overtime win in Detroit on Thursday night to take a 3-1 lead in the series, so it doesn't look like their playoff will be over anytime soon. The wait continues.
If you're interested in learning more about Benning,
click here. We've heard about why Benning's a good fit thanks to his role as Peter Chiarelli's assistant in Boston, but Jonathan Willis digs back a little deeper and uncovers a pretty spotty drafting record from Benning's time as director of amateur scouting with Buffalo starting in the late 90s. The Sabres had decent success further down the draft, but weren't so consistent with their first-rounders.
Cause for alarm? Let's look at the more recent past. Benning joined up with Boston in 2006. Here are their first-rounders since then:
2006 No. 5 Phil Kessel
2007 No. 8 Zach Hamill
2008 No. 16 Joe Colborne
2009 No. 25 Jordan Caron
2010 No. 2 Tyler Seguin
2011 No. 9 Dougie Hamilton
2012 No. 24 Malcolm Subban
The 2006 draft also yielded Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand in later rounds, but pickings have been pretty slim since then.
Click here for a look at Boston's draft record over the years.
Smartest Spenders:
Thanks to Classic321 for including
this link yesterday, identifying the "smartest spenders in sports."
I think with the NHL's salary structure, the ranking of the teams basically matches up with intuition. Since most of the top teams spend to the cap, the only major variables are wins and playoff success, so we see the most successful teams of the last five years all near the top of the rankings, including the Canucks.
It is interesting to see Nashville and Phoenix ranked at No. 40 and 41. There are two teams that haven't had a lot of playoff success, but also don't spend to the cap. Everyone was close this year because of the rollback, but the Preds had $16 million in cap space available in 2012-13 and $12 million in 2011-12,
according to CapGeek.com. For Phoenix, it was $20 in 2012-13 and $9 million in 2011-12. While it's certainly possible to spend to the cap and *not* win—see Toronto at No. 105—it is also possible to spend less and get decent bang for your buck.
If you run your cursor over the icons, you can see the numbers in play. It's also interesting to see that the No. 1 Blackhawks have an average annual payroll of just $58 million, which is $4 million a year less than Vancouver. It looks like they're helped by the five-year window of the study, which goes back to 2009-10—that's the year they won the Cup, before all those performance bonuses kicked in.
Mostly, though, Chicago succeeds because their playoff win rate is more than triple the league average.
Also interesting to see how that the hockey teams rank well in comparison to the other major sports. Again, I think this is because there's not a wild fluctuation between the top-spending teams and the bottom-dwellers. The few teams, like Florida, that live closer to the floor don't do too much to affect the league average.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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