Ryan Miller stopped 46 of 49 shots last night and earned the Canucks a point they didn’t quite deserve in a 3-2 OT loss to the Rangers. Jacob Markstrom has been playing well (.922 Save % for the season, even better lately), and Ryan Miller has been on fire since he came back from injury, withstanding 50 shot barrages against the Caps and Rangers to get 3 out of 4 points.
I still rue that the Canadiens didn’t snap up Jacob Markstrom when the Canucks waived him out of the 2014 camp, one-way contract and all. I figured all that potential and 6’6″ frame could be run through the stephanewaiteificator and realized.
And while I’m ruing, I still am having indigestion over the Jarred Tinordi trade. The Canucks’ Jim Benning managed to convert one of his first rounders who’s been lagging in his development, Nicklas Jensen, another great Dane, who’s passed through waivers already, plus a seventh-round pick, into Emerson Etem, a big speedy winger who also isn’t setting the world on fire, but has a chance to play bigger minutes and ‘fit’ better on their roster than the Rangers’, replete as it is with Hayeses and Kreiderses.
Emerson Etem is exactly the kind of player who I’d be okay with as a return for Jarred Tinordi. I know the Rangers wouldn’t have made that deal, they already are dealing with Dylan McIlrath on their blueline, but this kind of dealing surplus for a need. Instead of surplus for Wat(ley)?
Last year, there was a lot of angst over the Jiri Sekac trade, and I was sorry to see the guy go, I thought he was exactly the kind of piece we needed on our roster, but I understood the trade. We flipped a LW for a bigger RW, surplus for a need. I was on board.
If we were going to get such pitiful return for Jarred, and be saddled with the joke that John Scott is, we should have kept him, stashed on our roster, and used him when we, um, I don’t know, needed to spell Andrei when he faltered, maybe, or when Nathan was banged up and needed a break.
Think of it this way.
You have a ’63 Corvette, the one with the split rear window, in really good shape all in all, on blocks in your backyard driveway. You purchased it at what you thought was a price you couldn’t pass up. You knew it would take some work, some time, but it would pay off in the end.
Turns out it’s going to take a little more work than you thought, but in the meantime your attention has been on other matters, stuff that always comes up. Best intentions and all. But you know that when you get around to it, it will all have been worthwhile.
Except that the wife has been giving you the look, pushing you to either get down to business, or sell it, clear it off the property. You kind of don’t want to sell, but you get what she’s saying, don’t really resent her for making that case.
So you put it on the market, and get few nibbles, some jokers come around and offer risible amounts. They think they have you over a barrel. You want to chase them out of your yard with an axe handle.
So you sit down with your wife, explain the situation, and come to an agreement, a timetable. You don’t need to get rid of the ‘Vette. You’d have sold to the right buyer. But in the current situation, you’re much better off holding on to it and seeing the project through.
And a year down the road, while riding in style on Sunday drive, after many swear jar incidents, bashed knuckles, and extra little investments, your wife agrees that it was the right decision to not fire-sale it.
I thought when Marc Bergevin took over, and we worked all the Bob Gainey and Pierre Gauthier mistakes out of the system, that we’d slow and steady our way to perennial contender status.
The way we mishandled Jarred feels a lot like Sisyphus’ boulder rolling over top of us all the way back down the hill, to my estimation.
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