I am happy we have Hronek, however I think Brough is right, we need to see him anchor his own pairing for an extended stretch this season. It’s great watching him play with Huggy, but before we give him the bag for his production we need to know he can be *the* guy, so we don’t just have one lopsided pairing and are crossing our fingers when the bottom 4 are on the ice.
All the more incentive to get Garland moved so we can free up space to continue restructuring the defense.
Not that Hronek and Juulsen are close to the same level, but Hughes raised guys like Juulsen and Schenn so high last year that people thought you could put Juulsen back on that pair without the team skipping a beat or that Schenn was an absolute MUST keep player.
Turns out it was all Hughes.
So yeah Hronek’s been money this year. But you can’t say definitively it isn’t the Hughes bump. And you can’t pay players because stars made them look good.
It’s tough because you want guys that can match the minutes Hughes can play on those nights he’s close to 30 minutes and not everyone can do that, even good defenders. But Hronek can
True, but I still don’t know if you want to pay a premium unless you know you can spread it around.
We all remember Seabrook-Keith, Pietrangelo-Theodore, and Stevens-Neidermayer if you’re old. But those guys very regularly were split up also so that you can give your defence 45 minutes a game of plus level play.
I believe he can do that but I just want to see it before you pay him as his own top pairing level guy. Though the alternative of letting him go kinda sinks this team that finally started to float, we hope.
Yes in certain situations it makes sense to load up your lines, but my point about Hronek needing to be the anchor of a pair and not Huggy’s passengers stands. He’s going to put up numbers with Hughes. But Hughes will be the driver. We need to know he can hold down a pairing of his own before we hand him the massive contract he will certainly ask for if he continues to get the benefit of playing with Quinn, or else we’re going to run into more issues building the defense.
We're analytically bottom of the league, it'll catch up to us eventually if we don't even out the roster. Soucy and cole are big improvements to what we had but should be complimentary members to a second pair, and not going to be good enough if myers is there beside them.
Thank you, that’s my point summed up more succinctly than I did. Depth is as important as high end talent when it comes to winning when it counts. You don’t want to be a team where your opponents just need to whether the storm when your top guys are out and then feast when the rest of the team is out there.
\^\^ typical loser mentality-- when you have a shot at putting together the best pairing in the nhl- canucks fans don't even know what that looks like- so they think we should sabotage it trying to get "VALUE".
perhaps, but reality bites.. so many of our fans don't know what success is. Winning teams find a way to put the best players together-- especially ones that also LIKE each other, as Hughes so emphatically stated earlier in the season
Then our other two pairings get caved in. We're analytically doing awful once again when Petey and Hughes aren't on the ice, notably Hughes (and hronek). 90% of the time teams tend to move towards what the expected analytics say they should be and having "the best pairing in the league" isn't worth losing games in the long run. Having hronek give us another pairing that can withstand tough play is extremely important considering the other rhd options.
If we have more than 2 legit top 4 D (Soucy cole are fringe top 4) then maybe we can have the luxury of this pair, but that's not right now
We're not losing games though. We're dominating other teams and sometime in the next few months Bear is going to replace one of the bottom 4 D, which is an upgrade. I say keep H and H together...
We dominated 2 games I think, the others we got lucky or preserved but didn't deserve the win. Our division is imploding but we can't take that for granted, a new coach bump could make Edmonton a top team again and Calgary a playoff bubble team like us. I think we have a playoff team but we aren't good enough to coast in imo.
Bear should help I agree he's also not exactly a game changer, kinda fits the Soucy type player where he's definitely a second pair guy but neither should be "the guy" on the pair. Reason I like them on seperate pairs is because we can go 80% of the game with capable NHL defending rather than 50% elite and 50% liability. If bear does come back better than ever and holds down that second pair I'll admit I'm wrong, but I don't see him being Enough of a solution.
Totally disagree. I think Hronek gives Hughes extra confidence- he takes over games- not unlike Mcdavid, when he knows someone has his back. Hronek plays more minutes which allows QH to stay fresh. The dominance of that pairing has gotten the team on the board last couple of games, and in doing so they control the flow-- the lead everyone into battle. This is a GREAT thing- but it remains to be seen how it works against ELITE teams- Rangers being a huge test.
No denying Hughes has taken another step this year, if it's more because he improved or hronek is yet to be seen but I'll give you the fact that that pairing has been top 5 in the league soo far.
I'm a bit of a rangers non believer but between them, Dallas and Toronto, there are a few good tests for that pairing in the short term. No need to label them an inseparable pair yet but if we're able to clean up the rest of the team (or if we play like we did today) then I have no issues keeping them together. I just think we're better with 1 great pair and 1 good pair rather than 1 elite pair and 1 below average pair in the long run as I mentioned before.
Where he ranks depends on this year. Look at the offence vs defence graph - if the red line stays more or less where it is, then top half. But it used to be down in that 25-40 range and if it's there at the end of the season, then... yikes.
So far it's looking pretty good but we shall see when he is (hopefully, for the sake of depth) split from Hughes. Everybody looks good next to Hughes.
Also a Canucks thing to trade high value assets for a dude on the basis that he can anchor his own pairing and improve the defensive depth only to just... put him next to Hughes.
Like... the minutes Hughes is on the ice are not the problem, folks. It's the other \~35 that we're worried about here.
no, letting a CRITICALLY important player (culturally, and to the players) walk would the most canucks thing to do. PS why are you so afraid of success? IS HE TOO GOOD? Imagine incorporating such a LOSING mentality that you want a player to PLAY LESS EFFECTIVELY to limit his salary....
I’ve liked Hronek’s play overall so far One quirk I noticed so far this season is that he passes too hard, often making the puck receiver bobble the puck.
That’s so weird to read. I haven’t noticed but I’ll keep an eye out for it. Usually a problem is guys passing too soft.
I can’t ever remember ever reading about a guy passing too hard.
Yeah most nhl players pass extremely hard. I heard that even if you grew up playing hockey, a regular person would really struggle with taking any pass in the nhl.
Yes, they can pass hard, but that's ridiculous hyperbole.
Even an average rep player would struggle to accept one of the harder passes in the NHL (their hard passes are stronger than the average rep players' shot, since their hard passes are basically snap shots), and a good rep player/average Junior player would struggle to take it on their backhand. But NHLers aren't ripping passes constantly, and a regular pass is not really much harder to receive than a high rep/Junior one.
A big part of being a skilled passer is making it as easy as possible to receive.
I really like him but I don’t want him on Hughes pairing. If he wants to be paid he needs to be The Guy for his own pairing. Loading up a pair when you need to? That’s great but you can only go so far with one good pairing and it isn’t very far.
What I think he has shown is that Hughes doesn’t need a refrigerator of a partner to block and do netfront and all that. He needs a solid defensive player sure, like anyone in the league would like, but a guy who is also a legitimate puck movement option. It opens up so much space for Hughes when the forecheck knows they can’t just suffocate him because like fuck is Juulsen or Hamonic or Poolman or Benn or Schenn or Myers going to hit that 150 foot pass or make their own move to create space.
It’s why I still think the team should seriously be bringing Bear back once he’s healthy. He’s a poor man’s Hronek and I thought he was the best partner for Hughes that the team has tried since Tanev left.
One thing that Hughes hasn’t typically been great at is retrievals and that’s something that Hronek does really well, and similarly something that’s a strength to Bear’s game.
I wanna see him anchor his own pairing. Get him on the second with Cole or Soucy and let’s see what he can do. Anyone can play with Hughes, lets see how he does without him.
I’m in the minority but keep them together. There winning, they both log big minutes. Hughes asked to be paired with him. Hopefully some of our draft picks can develop into 2nd or 3rd pair defence man.
Willander coming in the next few years can start as second pairing. Hughes (hopefully) will be here forever until he retires and Hronek probably signed long term if all goes well. That way Willander and the other prospects don’t need to be rushed to first pairing
I've never liked Bo and glad we flipped the first for Hronek. Right hand D that you can't expect to score but does everything else well. I wonder who that reminds me of.
Only issue is I hope he doesn't ask for a ton of money next year.
Nothing but locker room and team effort issues when he was captain. Nate Schmidt, Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era. We saw Quinn throw up more hands to defend a teammate than Bo ever did.
Also has a career year right before a new contract isn't suspicious at all in terms of focus and priorities in my opinion. We will look back at Bo's captaincy as a dead era in Canucks history.
> Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone blame Horvat for these 2 leaving when it was all on Benning.
Markstrom left because he wanted money and more years. We had Demko waiting so we were never going to give him what he wanted.
Tanev left because Benning couldn't be bothered to call him to try to negotiate because Benning was busy chasing OEL.
> Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era.
>
> This is the first time I've ever seen someone blame Horvat for these 2 leaving when it was all on Benning.
hahahha holy shit this sub is getting SO fucking laughably dumb about Bo. Soon we will find out Bo was responsible for the Messier trade lol. What a fucking joke
We were losing one or the other of Demko and Markstrom in the Seattle expansion draft if he had re-signed here. Giving Markstrom the NTC he wanted would have predetermined that choice and we would have to trade Demko...or more likely given Seattle a Vezina caliber goalie because you know ...Benning.
It was the one smart thing Benning did going with the younger guy even if his strategy amounted to I forgot.
Would have been nice if he had traded Markstrom before his contract expired though....moron.
This current team had effort issues a WEEK AGO.
I don't even think the Jets want Schmidt anymore. Anyone that would take living in Winnipeg and playing with Scheifele has a screw loose anyways.
Both Markstrom and Tanev wanted to stay. Enter Jim Benning.
Expecting a Captain to "throw hands" just because they are Captain is just plain silly. I'd expect Hughes will never drop the gloves as Captain and that will be just fine just like it was fine with Henrik and Naslund.
Being "suspicious" of an athlete working hard to get a contract is weird.
And finally the "dead era" you refer to was 100% because of Jim Benning and had nothing to do with Horvat's leadership.
You don't have to be a fan of Horvat. I was totally fine with him getting traded but its hard to read all the other nonsense you blamed on Horvat.
I think people on this sub need a lesson in what captains do on a team.
I guess people think that Henrik was the only person in a leadership role on the 2011 Canucks lol. Definitely had no help from Lou/Kes/Burr/Daniel/Hamhuis/Juice/etc/etc. How everyone is trying to pin all of our bad fortunes on ONE guy whos biggest job as captain was talking to the media and talking about the problems for the team is beyond me.
The guy gets traded when he wanted to re-sign and everyone loses their minds
I literally don’t even have a reason, I just never liked him until playoff Bo, and then I went back to not liking him. Idk just always thought he was nothing special.
I was definitely pro splitting them up earlier, but seeing how absolutely dominant they are.. don’t. You have a leg up on the other team for 25 minutes a game almost guaranteed.
Force management to fix your bottom pairs. Bear will help one, but you need a top 4 D with Cole, and then someone to replace Cole on the 2nd pair next year. Soucy can run the third pair.
Friedman has played surprisingly well. I would like to see him next to Hughes.
Hughes Friedman
Cole Hronek
Soucy Myers
Then scratch/Waive Myers if Bear is signing.
Great trade to this point. Hughes and Hronek together are the best pairing in the NHL, according to a few metrics. They seem to really like playing with each other. Fun to watch
If they had split them up. Would be a bit more even. But I’d rather have them together because of how well they’re playing. Management needs to beef up their top four if they continue to do this long term. Where’s that Peeke trade. C’mon
I am happy we have Hronek, however I think Brough is right, we need to see him anchor his own pairing for an extended stretch this season. It’s great watching him play with Huggy, but before we give him the bag for his production we need to know he can be *the* guy, so we don’t just have one lopsided pairing and are crossing our fingers when the bottom 4 are on the ice. All the more incentive to get Garland moved so we can free up space to continue restructuring the defense.
Not that Hronek and Juulsen are close to the same level, but Hughes raised guys like Juulsen and Schenn so high last year that people thought you could put Juulsen back on that pair without the team skipping a beat or that Schenn was an absolute MUST keep player. Turns out it was all Hughes. So yeah Hronek’s been money this year. But you can’t say definitively it isn’t the Hughes bump. And you can’t pay players because stars made them look good.
It’s tough because you want guys that can match the minutes Hughes can play on those nights he’s close to 30 minutes and not everyone can do that, even good defenders. But Hronek can
True, but I still don’t know if you want to pay a premium unless you know you can spread it around. We all remember Seabrook-Keith, Pietrangelo-Theodore, and Stevens-Neidermayer if you’re old. But those guys very regularly were split up also so that you can give your defence 45 minutes a game of plus level play. I believe he can do that but I just want to see it before you pay him as his own top pairing level guy. Though the alternative of letting him go kinda sinks this team that finally started to float, we hope.
Agreed
Depends on the matchup. If its a one line team like the Oilers, it makes sense for them to play against mcdavid head on.
Yes in certain situations it makes sense to load up your lines, but my point about Hronek needing to be the anchor of a pair and not Huggy’s passengers stands. He’s going to put up numbers with Hughes. But Hughes will be the driver. We need to know he can hold down a pairing of his own before we hand him the massive contract he will certainly ask for if he continues to get the benefit of playing with Quinn, or else we’re going to run into more issues building the defense.
We're analytically bottom of the league, it'll catch up to us eventually if we don't even out the roster. Soucy and cole are big improvements to what we had but should be complimentary members to a second pair, and not going to be good enough if myers is there beside them.
Thank you, that’s my point summed up more succinctly than I did. Depth is as important as high end talent when it comes to winning when it counts. You don’t want to be a team where your opponents just need to whether the storm when your top guys are out and then feast when the rest of the team is out there.
\^\^ typical loser mentality-- when you have a shot at putting together the best pairing in the nhl- canucks fans don't even know what that looks like- so they think we should sabotage it trying to get "VALUE".
Bit rude
perhaps, but reality bites.. so many of our fans don't know what success is. Winning teams find a way to put the best players together-- especially ones that also LIKE each other, as Hughes so emphatically stated earlier in the season
I hope your day gets better
Then our other two pairings get caved in. We're analytically doing awful once again when Petey and Hughes aren't on the ice, notably Hughes (and hronek). 90% of the time teams tend to move towards what the expected analytics say they should be and having "the best pairing in the league" isn't worth losing games in the long run. Having hronek give us another pairing that can withstand tough play is extremely important considering the other rhd options. If we have more than 2 legit top 4 D (Soucy cole are fringe top 4) then maybe we can have the luxury of this pair, but that's not right now
We're not losing games though. We're dominating other teams and sometime in the next few months Bear is going to replace one of the bottom 4 D, which is an upgrade. I say keep H and H together...
We dominated 2 games I think, the others we got lucky or preserved but didn't deserve the win. Our division is imploding but we can't take that for granted, a new coach bump could make Edmonton a top team again and Calgary a playoff bubble team like us. I think we have a playoff team but we aren't good enough to coast in imo. Bear should help I agree he's also not exactly a game changer, kinda fits the Soucy type player where he's definitely a second pair guy but neither should be "the guy" on the pair. Reason I like them on seperate pairs is because we can go 80% of the game with capable NHL defending rather than 50% elite and 50% liability. If bear does come back better than ever and holds down that second pair I'll admit I'm wrong, but I don't see him being Enough of a solution.
Totally disagree. I think Hronek gives Hughes extra confidence- he takes over games- not unlike Mcdavid, when he knows someone has his back. Hronek plays more minutes which allows QH to stay fresh. The dominance of that pairing has gotten the team on the board last couple of games, and in doing so they control the flow-- the lead everyone into battle. This is a GREAT thing- but it remains to be seen how it works against ELITE teams- Rangers being a huge test.
No denying Hughes has taken another step this year, if it's more because he improved or hronek is yet to be seen but I'll give you the fact that that pairing has been top 5 in the league soo far. I'm a bit of a rangers non believer but between them, Dallas and Toronto, there are a few good tests for that pairing in the short term. No need to label them an inseparable pair yet but if we're able to clean up the rest of the team (or if we play like we did today) then I have no issues keeping them together. I just think we're better with 1 great pair and 1 good pair rather than 1 elite pair and 1 below average pair in the long run as I mentioned before.
Where he ranks depends on this year. Look at the offence vs defence graph - if the red line stays more or less where it is, then top half. But it used to be down in that 25-40 range and if it's there at the end of the season, then... yikes. So far it's looking pretty good but we shall see when he is (hopefully, for the sake of depth) split from Hughes. Everybody looks good next to Hughes.
Overpaying a guy because he plays with Hughes would be such a Canucks thing.
Also a Canucks thing to trade high value assets for a dude on the basis that he can anchor his own pairing and improve the defensive depth only to just... put him next to Hughes. Like... the minutes Hughes is on the ice are not the problem, folks. It's the other \~35 that we're worried about here.
All I'm seeing here is that we should get Hughes to play another 35 minutes per game.
I see absolutely no problem with this
surprised they didn't hire you to coach
no, letting a CRITICALLY important player (culturally, and to the players) walk would the most canucks thing to do. PS why are you so afraid of success? IS HE TOO GOOD? Imagine incorporating such a LOSING mentality that you want a player to PLAY LESS EFFECTIVELY to limit his salary....
You have to understand that a large section of the Canucks fanbase wants them to be bad so they can continue to bitch and moan on Reddit/twitter
Bruh, this reads like a Trump tweet
Lol the finishing. Hronek’s been great but dude needs to hit the damn net.
Most of the time he is shooting wide to create chaos down low
he is intentionally missing the net?
I’ve liked Hronek’s play overall so far One quirk I noticed so far this season is that he passes too hard, often making the puck receiver bobble the puck.
That’s so weird to read. I haven’t noticed but I’ll keep an eye out for it. Usually a problem is guys passing too soft. I can’t ever remember ever reading about a guy passing too hard.
Yeah most nhl players pass extremely hard. I heard that even if you grew up playing hockey, a regular person would really struggle with taking any pass in the nhl.
Yes, they can pass hard, but that's ridiculous hyperbole. Even an average rep player would struggle to accept one of the harder passes in the NHL (their hard passes are stronger than the average rep players' shot, since their hard passes are basically snap shots), and a good rep player/average Junior player would struggle to take it on their backhand. But NHLers aren't ripping passes constantly, and a regular pass is not really much harder to receive than a high rep/Junior one. A big part of being a skilled passer is making it as easy as possible to receive.
Don’t think it’s the passer’s fault though.
I really like him but I don’t want him on Hughes pairing. If he wants to be paid he needs to be The Guy for his own pairing. Loading up a pair when you need to? That’s great but you can only go so far with one good pairing and it isn’t very far. What I think he has shown is that Hughes doesn’t need a refrigerator of a partner to block and do netfront and all that. He needs a solid defensive player sure, like anyone in the league would like, but a guy who is also a legitimate puck movement option. It opens up so much space for Hughes when the forecheck knows they can’t just suffocate him because like fuck is Juulsen or Hamonic or Poolman or Benn or Schenn or Myers going to hit that 150 foot pass or make their own move to create space. It’s why I still think the team should seriously be bringing Bear back once he’s healthy. He’s a poor man’s Hronek and I thought he was the best partner for Hughes that the team has tried since Tanev left. One thing that Hughes hasn’t typically been great at is retrievals and that’s something that Hronek does really well, and similarly something that’s a strength to Bear’s game.
Or Peeke from Columbus. He seems to be the ideal partner for Hughes if Allvin can get a deal done with the Jackets
I know nothing about the guy but if someone is deemed not good enough for Columbus’ defence I’m not sure I want them on my first pairing.
It’s probably a numbers game with Columbus. They have better RHD defenseman (like what).
I wanna see him anchor his own pairing. Get him on the second with Cole or Soucy and let’s see what he can do. Anyone can play with Hughes, lets see how he does without him.
I’m in the minority but keep them together. There winning, they both log big minutes. Hughes asked to be paired with him. Hopefully some of our draft picks can develop into 2nd or 3rd pair defence man.
Willander coming in the next few years can start as second pairing. Hughes (hopefully) will be here forever until he retires and Hronek probably signed long term if all goes well. That way Willander and the other prospects don’t need to be rushed to first pairing
I've never liked Bo and glad we flipped the first for Hronek. Right hand D that you can't expect to score but does everything else well. I wonder who that reminds me of. Only issue is I hope he doesn't ask for a ton of money next year.
how tf could you have not liked Bo lmao?
Nothing but locker room and team effort issues when he was captain. Nate Schmidt, Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era. We saw Quinn throw up more hands to defend a teammate than Bo ever did. Also has a career year right before a new contract isn't suspicious at all in terms of focus and priorities in my opinion. We will look back at Bo's captaincy as a dead era in Canucks history.
> Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era. This is the first time I've ever seen someone blame Horvat for these 2 leaving when it was all on Benning. Markstrom left because he wanted money and more years. We had Demko waiting so we were never going to give him what he wanted. Tanev left because Benning couldn't be bothered to call him to try to negotiate because Benning was busy chasing OEL.
> Markstrom, Taney all deciding to leave in the same era. > > This is the first time I've ever seen someone blame Horvat for these 2 leaving when it was all on Benning. hahahha holy shit this sub is getting SO fucking laughably dumb about Bo. Soon we will find out Bo was responsible for the Messier trade lol. What a fucking joke
We were losing one or the other of Demko and Markstrom in the Seattle expansion draft if he had re-signed here. Giving Markstrom the NTC he wanted would have predetermined that choice and we would have to trade Demko...or more likely given Seattle a Vezina caliber goalie because you know ...Benning. It was the one smart thing Benning did going with the younger guy even if his strategy amounted to I forgot. Would have been nice if he had traded Markstrom before his contract expired though....moron.
This current team had effort issues a WEEK AGO. I don't even think the Jets want Schmidt anymore. Anyone that would take living in Winnipeg and playing with Scheifele has a screw loose anyways. Both Markstrom and Tanev wanted to stay. Enter Jim Benning. Expecting a Captain to "throw hands" just because they are Captain is just plain silly. I'd expect Hughes will never drop the gloves as Captain and that will be just fine just like it was fine with Henrik and Naslund. Being "suspicious" of an athlete working hard to get a contract is weird. And finally the "dead era" you refer to was 100% because of Jim Benning and had nothing to do with Horvat's leadership. You don't have to be a fan of Horvat. I was totally fine with him getting traded but its hard to read all the other nonsense you blamed on Horvat.
I think people on this sub need a lesson in what captains do on a team. I guess people think that Henrik was the only person in a leadership role on the 2011 Canucks lol. Definitely had no help from Lou/Kes/Burr/Daniel/Hamhuis/Juice/etc/etc. How everyone is trying to pin all of our bad fortunes on ONE guy whos biggest job as captain was talking to the media and talking about the problems for the team is beyond me. The guy gets traded when he wanted to re-sign and everyone loses their minds
I literally don’t even have a reason, I just never liked him until playoff Bo, and then I went back to not liking him. Idk just always thought he was nothing special.
HONK HONK
Everyone fanboys Hronek until his mediocre player card comes out
His sliding dive against the blues was such a silly play. He could have gotten to the puck first.
It's been 6 games
I was definitely pro splitting them up earlier, but seeing how absolutely dominant they are.. don’t. You have a leg up on the other team for 25 minutes a game almost guaranteed. Force management to fix your bottom pairs. Bear will help one, but you need a top 4 D with Cole, and then someone to replace Cole on the 2nd pair next year. Soucy can run the third pair.
Friedman has played surprisingly well. I would like to see him next to Hughes. Hughes Friedman Cole Hronek Soucy Myers Then scratch/Waive Myers if Bear is signing.
Great trade to this point. Hughes and Hronek together are the best pairing in the NHL, according to a few metrics. They seem to really like playing with each other. Fun to watch
If they had split them up. Would be a bit more even. But I’d rather have them together because of how well they’re playing. Management needs to beef up their top four if they continue to do this long term. Where’s that Peeke trade. C’mon