Friday, July 6, 2012

Not Hating Gillis Anymore (As Much Anyway)


I am not a huge fan of Mike Gillis, as can be seen by my dozens of tweets and posts about his "stupidity," and overall ignorance when signing Free Agents (see "Marco Sturm signs one year $2.5 million deal with Canucks), and his hatred of my all-time favorite Canuck, Pavel Bure. However, this summer I have realized maybe I don't hate him, as much as I thought anyway.

After the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter deals, I realized something: Other than the Roberto Luongo contract, Ryan Kesler (four years left) and the newly signed Jason Garrison (six years), have the longest contracts on the Canucks. Gillis has not fallen into the trap almost every other General Manager has, signing players to obscenely long term deals.

Now this isn't always a bad thing. Henrik Zetterberg has nine years left on a 12 year deal, with a cap hit of $6 million per season, and I think anyone can say that was a good move. However, there are always the Rick DiPietro and Brian Campbell contracts to show it can be something that can handcuff a team.

Gillis, to my amazement, has been able to put together a perennial top tier team without a few of those. Could you imagine having Kesler on a deal with eight more years instead of four coming off two off-season injuries? How about Mason Raymond on an eight year $4 million plus deal?

Maybe Gillis was scared straight by the Luongo deal, or maybe he has yet to find that player he feels is worth a decade plus contract. Either way he has avoided handcuffing this team for the long-term, and that has caused me to gain a bit more patience with the man.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Back With A Vengeance..Kinda, Sorta, Not Really, Yet


So a few months back I had a post about me moving into the shadow of Rogers Arena, Seattle. Well I learned something: No matter how much your boss assures you of something, GET IT IN WRITING. So after leading me on for over six months, Seattle turned out to be a mirage. But when that door slammed, a window opened.

Shortly after Seattle was taken off the table, Minnesota was offered to me, on paper this time, and I jumped at the chance. Professionally, this is a great opportunity, but more important I AM OUT OF OHIO! No more living in the armpit of the nation. Also, I am moving to a place where they not only know what hockey is, but they love it. This is a major upgrade.

However, this does not explain almost four months of silence. Well my unbelievably unreliable computer had hardware issues, twice, leading it to be out of commission for quite awhile. This has caused me to give up on Dell's for good now. Second I moved from my apartment into a friend's apartment for the "impending move" to Seattle. So I had to compress an entire apartment worth of stuff into a bedroom a third of the size of my old one. 

I have been coming up with some good ideas for the blog though, and will hopefully be able to implement them soon enough. This new position has given me more resources so a new computer is in store for the future, as well as more time to focus on the Canucks, and really the NHL for that matter.

I am looking forward to sinking a lot more time, resources and effort into this, as it is something I truly enjoy. One of my favorite things is to not only blog about the greatest hockey team in the world, but interact, read about, and discuss the greatest hockey team in the world with all of you. More to come soon!