What The Hell Was That? Questions About a Questionable Season –

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Giants have just completed one of the worst seasons in recent memory with something like 7 road wins. Last year they made the playoffs only to get swept 4 straight in the first round. The 2012-2013 season was their nadir and possibly the worst the franchise has suffered winning only 21 games. After that season there were no shake-ups no changes and the brain trust was allowed to continue to be in denial that real changes needed to be made. The year before they were eliminated in the first round going down in 6. They have the acquisition of Adam Morrison to thank for the delay of a much needed retooling. The 20 year old made them respectable down the stretch, but even he could not bring them up to a competitive playoff level. The year before that they were eliminated four straight in the first round. The year before that made it to the third round, only to be taken out in 6 by Tri-City. That was the last respectable season the Giants have to hang their hat on. That was 5 years ago.

Since then we have been middling to average with no real changes taking place with the real nuts and bolts of the team. The management remained the same. The coaching staff more or less the same and worst of all – the scouting group remained the same. Since that time we have had five years of first round busts and have not improved our team through the draft or by developing players with potential. A few players elevated themselves despite the organization behind them and one of the best players in recent years was a very late round pick, by the name of Brendan Gallagher.

Our euro drafting has been even worse. While other franchises are getting top level quality players with their two euro spots, we have been filling them with also-rans, pipe dreams and project players – none of which have broken into the top scoring echelon. We have also drafted a lot of under-sized “skill” players incapable of elevating their games at the WHL level and too soft to really make a consistent impact. Basically we have failed across the board on the scouting front and even worse with our player development.

So the question remains – where do we go from here? Do we continue with the same management team and the same scouts and expect a different result? We got rid of Don Hay after many seasons in the off-season this past year and everyone in the front office were eagerly pointing at him as being the cause of the all the team’s problems. Yet we dragged our heels for months getting a new coach, eventually losing out on multiple candidates we were unwilling to commit to (or pay for – trying to lowball most of the best candidates early in talks I hear) and settling for a troubled Troy G Ward, formerly coach of the Abbotsford Heat. Had they had any real leadership and management in place they would have gone after their guy early, not waited so long and paid market value. The new season was greeted with the same lip-service by the brain trust. The same promises made and the very same denial continued unabated. To me Ward seemed to be the wrong choice from the get-go. It was funny, but from the first time he talked about the team at the seasons ticket pick-up party he seemed to be evasive and uncommunicative. I felt his answers were pat and tended toward the negative, not the realistic and it almost felt like he felt he was slumming it a bit. Maybe that’s some hindsight, but I did comment a few times how I got a bad vibe from this guy from the get-go, to people I was with at the time.

Fast-forward to November where he was summarily dismissed under extreme team duress and was a veritable poison in the dressing room. Claude Noel gave the team a lift right away winning his first 6 games, but the reality of the back room spectre clawed back and began to drag the whole lot down. At the trade deadline we should have been sellers, acquiring some real talent to play with Tyler Benson. Yes, TYLER Ronny Toigo, Tyler – not Tyson – you dumb fuck. Once again we did not make many moves and did not move major pieces like Mason Geertsen who could have got us a top level journeyman to push Benson next season. I like the Zane Jones acquisition, but I would have dealt Bellerive not Hamilton if push came to shove. I can only assume that the other team didn’t want Bellerive. We also continue to hold out for players like Ty Ronning, who despite the name plays nothing like his dad. In the POE his numbers were impressive, but he has been a major disappointment at this level and despite the injury excuse he really has not done anything with the ice-time he has been given. Small skilled players without hunger or durability are frustrating at this level and Ronning lacks that hunger and it hurts him and the team.

Questionable choices are being made at all levels and to me it feels as if we are rewarding poor judgement and reinforcing that culture throughout the franchise. Tough decisions are not being made. Coaches at all levels are allowed to languish in their positions despite being unable to full-fill their job titles. When was the last time our skills coach actually enhanced and improved the team’s skill? When was the last time our special teams coach had a top three PP or PK? We have a current assistant coach who seems more yes man than assistant to me and his post-game interviews are always superficial and falsely positive. Is that how he coaches? Does he shy away from pushing the guys to do their best and allow them to just be good enough? I know Hay’s time was done here and he no longer played/coached the kind of intense forecheck game we had come to love, but at least he made average players better and brought focused hungry journeyman up to a point where they were considered NHL prospects. We have not had that kind of progression in years.

I personally feel the time has come to reassess every position, every employee and every manager in the group. This is a broken franchise and starting by removing all of the nepotism is a start. Who is Peter Toigo and why is he a Vice-president? What are his credentials other than being named Toigo? Why does Bonner’s Dad continue to head a damaged and wanting scouting division? There are those who will argue some of the decisions made around our scouting, but the proof is in the players. Our player development needs a serious over-haul, but when we get players who are not quite up to their draft position then other questions need to be asked. How do other teams get these top prospects while we seem to get perennial journeyman who can never make the jump from potential to elite? Why do we, year after year, see young kids with potential only to see them plateau and often sag as their career moves on? Quite a few of our players who appear to have some nice potential, who seem like they just need to play and get some seasoning to reach that potential, often slip with each passing season instead of improve. This is quite a disturbing trend in my mind. Even players like Jackson Houck who has the potential to be a lot better (and has been better number-wise at least) is being allowed to float, disappear for periods at a time and really not put in the effort he is capable of giving every shift. Is that simply a player issue or is it a deeper poor development issue? I suspect mainly the latter.

As far as I am concerned we should have cleaned house after that dismal 21 win season, but we continued to work in denial and now we have the same situation with no last minute saviours to squeak us undeservedly into the playoffs. These problems have been most evident for about 4 or even 5 years and yet nothing has been done to address the team’s major deficiencies. Deficiencies like a perennially porous defense (notably dropping off after Craig Bonner’s departure), a woeful lack of player size despite the team being pushed all around the ice for years now and questionable player development. We used to have those things. Are people just getting lazy? Complacent? Wishful? Everyone knows that Junior hockey goes in cycles, but we are 2 or 3 years past our renewal period. We have squandered top picks regularly, made very questionable drafting choices and then exacerbated those choices by not taking our skilled players to the next level and beyond.