I'm Thomas Drance from The Athletic Vancouver: Imitator of obscure Russian-born ex-Canucks grinders on Twitter, one-time CanucksArmy overlord, author and former NHL PR guy - AMA

[u/Artemchubarov]

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[u/[deleted]]

Thoughts on Bennings tenure so far?

[u/Artemchubarov → u/[deleted]]

Obviously grading a general manager's entire resume is a complicated undertaking. So let's just focus on talent acquisition.

There's three ways you acquire talent in the NHL: drafting, trades, free agency.

In free agency and in contract work (extensions etc.), I think Jim's regime has stepped in some pot-holes.

There's a lot of expensive and very hopeful bets that are still clogging up the bottom-6 from a salary cap perspective, made even worse by the bottom-6 being perhaps the club's defining weakness. The Loui Eriksson contract is, obviously, the stand out mistake, but there's been more concerning deals along the way (Sutter, Hutton, Beagle, Schaller, Gagner).

In trades: mixed bag. We could go all day if we get too into the weeds on this topic - going back to the Kesler and Garrison deals, even - but there's certainly no homeruns in there at the moment, even if there are a few deals you might argue are solid singles or even standup doubles. J.T. Miller could change that equation either way. In my view though, the club made a possibly reckless bet on a very good supporting piece. We'll see.

At the draft table: The work has been solid and that's important. The talent evaluators I trust the most believe the Canucks have capitalized on their struggles the past four years to mine high-level of talent from the draft. Certainly the Boeser pick is a home run, everyone I trust loves Podkolzin and getting Pettersson and Hughes in back-to-back drafts is the sort of two-year sequence that can set a team up for a legitimate competitive window.

Overall, and partly because I don't believe that the Linden/Benning regime inherited as dire a situation as some like to say they did, I'd gives them a C+ grade for now, buoyed by the draft record and with a chance to improve if the young core comes into their own and if the club can manage the cap ably in the coming years.

[u/mrmcbluffy → u/Artemchubarov]

If any random poster on here only gave Benning a C+ they would get downvoted into oblivion. Good take all round, I agree C+ is fair. I’d have to break it into 2 parts I think, a C for the first few years and a B for the past 2.