It's simple..

we need more offense... our Defense is stacked.. bieksa is young and is probably our best trade bait in that position.. therefore, he's expendable..

we need to give up something in order to gain something, people..

for those of u who keep complaining about how we shouldn't trade bieksa, who else should we use as trade bait then?

He stands in front of Luongo after every whistle. He pushes ppl around and brings a tough presence on the ice. Honestly there are so many times when a guy from the other team is in Luongos face and everyone just stands there and watches. Defencemen need to get the point across that if you're going to the net, you're going to get hurt. The Canucks do not bring this presence dispite their d core. Bieksa and Mitchell are the only two who punish people.
He fights when he needs to and is good at it.
He hits.
He is pretty good offensively.
He makes good outlet passes and doesn't make a lot of mistakes.
He's good at bringing the puck up the ice.
Yea, he does look tough and doesn't look like a big pussy like Salo for example.

IMO, GM's don't sign players based on their facial appearance lol

So he 'underperformed' last year. His ppg was down 15% from his previous year which isn't too bad. His job isn't to get points. The Canucks had a great 06-07 and a shitty 07-08 and statistics reflect it. And it is unfortunate for him to suffer such an injury last year. I heard and can understand how it can be extremely difficult to recover fully. It's not like other injuries where you can play with it even if its only 90%.

i really don't think our defense is "stacked" per say. ohlund and salo do tend to get hurt a lot... and are definitely injury prone and not as great as they used to be.

Sami Salo.

Injury prone. I'm sure a lot of teams looking for a pp guy.

His last 3 years with the Canucks he had

59
67
63

gp..

Also in Ottawa he missed two seasons because of two different injuries.. wrist and shoulder.. Canucks took a huge risk with him (at 3.5 million!) and I don't think it's working out. jmo.

Finally someone else who gets it. The Canucks need to hold on to Bieksa because like you said, he really is a gem. That and some of our defensive corps are getting up there. I love Ohlund (I don't think he ever gets the credit he deserves), but he's getting past his prime, and Salo is getting more and more broken down every season he plays. I'd rather get rid of him for whatever we can get (draft picks even, whatever), than be saddled with some injury riddled Finn who does dick all.He's not even a force on the PP anymore.

Salo has a no trade.

Bieksa had a great year the year before and a not so great one last yr. He only played 12 games before getting injured. I think he'll be fine. He's on our top D pairing for a reason. He's tough, mobile, and can move the puck.

And I don't get all the Nonis lover's out there. We're kinda in this position of no scoring depth cuz of him, not Gillis. They seem to remember only and the good and forget about all the bad.

Last year we never had Darcy Hordichuk. Rest assured he will punish whoever takes liberties with the goalie or anyone else, thats what he gets paid to do and why they brought him in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHwdvkwX854

met Bieksa at Oakridge last year

nice guy, shook his hand and took a pic with him

nobody else seemed to recognize him

Salo used to be at Oakridge all the time, in the past, too. Bumped into him dozens of times. Dude likes wearing a toque.

well hopefully if Bieksa is not traded this year he comes into camp 100% and can show what he can do going into this new situation

And I like seeing the training camps going on during the summer and focusing it being in whistler this year but I really hope they can come out training camp injury free or maybe we should begin questioning Roger Takahashi? maybe it's time to move in a newer direction, someone with more experiance and newer practices

Yes

Lets put all the blame on Takahashi because the Canuck players injure themselves.

the team is going to be full of pussies this year cooke gone... i think cowan is gone too which other tough guy

Groin strains are almost always caused by conditioning

as for losing cooke, i think we've brought in more then adequet replacements

Are you saying because Cooke is gone the team will be full of pussies? I have to be interpretating what your wrote wrong because Cooke is the biggest pussy in the league. Cowan didn't have a great year last year by any means but he'll be back this year they signed him to a two year deal last off season. They added Hordichuk who fights and Johnson who hits and blocks shots, the team isn't going to be softer then last year it's going to be tougher. The lack of scoring is still the biggest issue bar none.

^ agreed, cooke is the biggest pussy of the league.

nonis built the team from the back end forward without sacrificing the entire farm. and he did this after Burke traded away all of our draft picks for temp players that made no impact.

look at what Nonis put together from the back end forward.

goal:
Luongo - one of the top 3 goalies in the NHL

defence:
Mitchel, Salo, Ohlund, Miller - 4 veteren Dman, all of which made under $4million but Mitchel and Ohlund easily play as $5m defencemen
Bieksa, (Bourdon), Edler, Krackerjack - 4 young guys who are (would have been) solid on the roster now, and would have been the guys when the top 3 retire.
it can be easily argued we have one of the best defence core in the league.

3rd/4th line:
Kesler, Burrows, Pyatt, Pettinger, whoever else - Kesler and Burrows are very reliable at what they do both against the top line and on the PK

2nd line:
Sedins - what needs to be said?
if nonis was still around, we would have fabian brunnstrom on the 2nd line with the sedins. that deal was done untill nonis was fired.

and all this while we still have shannon, raymond, jaffry, hansen, grabner, schneider, etc all coming up the pipe.

all that was left to be filled in was the first line which with the $20million we had to spend this summer could easily have been filled in with a couple free agents and a trade.



last year it was fairly well understood that 'next year will be the year'. the bottom end was built. we were just 2 signings and a trade away from being a very solid contender. now look whats happened with nonis being fired?

reminds me of the time we played the pens...cooke dropped his gloves to fight yet he doesn't throw a single punch!:confused:

Hahaha! I remember how last season started. So many vets on the injured list due to groin injuries resulting to a poor start. Though it did pick up in the November/December months.

Good post. +1

I wouldn't trade Bieksa, his 3.75m/year really isn't that unreasonable if you compare it to what some of the other guys are getting nowadays, Jeff Finger for 3.5m, Rob Blake for 5m.

You can't have enough depth on defense, there was a time last year where Edler was the #1 guy on the back end, 5 out of the top 6 were all out of the lineup at the same time.

i really wish we had brunnstrom.

lol at u guys thinking sedins are second line i bet u fools thought detriot wouldnt win the cup this year cuz they had a swedish captain and soft euros

Nonis did the same.

Carney, Weinrich, Sean Brown, McCarthy, Santala, Smolinski, Sopel

Rentals for draft picks. It's what you do when you have or think you have a contender. When you're rebuilding, you stock up. Only problem was we missed the playoffs twice in three yrs.

Last yr it was expected we would make the playoffs and build upon the 2nd round loss to Anaheim. With Luongo not standing on his head, it became apparent the team in front of him wasn't very good. You can't win games if you can't create offense.

Nonis isn't a bad GM, but I don't think he's anything special cuz of his inability to make changes before they become a problem + his over-tendency to go after low risk players who can play defense and plug. He doesn't have an eye for what makes a good skill player. And he way underestimated our problems up front.

So what would ppl here have done with the cap room (16.5M) ? Was the Sundin offer good / bad? Keep Naslund and Morrison? Blow it on whoever you could get? Would Brunstomm have been our savior? (he's a bad fit on the sedin line btw).

Please don't say u would have gotten Hossa or anyone else who clearly wasn't coming here.

rumor: Floatuzzi to calgary

NOLAN AGREES TO TWO-YEAR DEAL WITH WILD

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=2427...s=secStory_nhl