Who should take the blame for the mess in Vancouver?

On the latest edition of Zone Time, the crew ask who is to blame in Vancouver, why is the team so bad and who needs to go for the Canucks to truly rebuild.

They also discuss some Hockey Hall of Fame bubble boys, including John Tavares, Shea Weber, and Ryan Getzlaf. Subscribe to Yahoo Sports NHL on YouTube for the latest episodes of 'Zone Time'.

Video Transcript

SAM CHANG: Really? No one's been good other than Thatcher Demko, Nils Hoglander, and maybe JT Miller once in a while. But other than that, like if you look at that team, people-- there are people here who are like, oh, well, this is-- you know, people said over the summer that Jim Benning had a really good off season and he put together this great group of forwards.

I was like, it's a great group of forwards relative to the previous year and it's a great group of forwards because he got rid of Roussel, Beagle and Louis Eriksson, all of which were contracts he signed--

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Yes, yes.

SAM CHANG: Yeah, I guess it's better. But when the bar is on the floor, who cares what better is?

RAHEF ISSA: Literally, that's so true. I mean, the other thing is like, I think a big issue with Jim Benning and the Canucks is that every year it seems like Jim Benning takes a look at his team and says, I genuinely think this is a good team. And I think that's where a lot of the issues are.

It's because he truly genuinely, deep down, like he honestly believes that the Canucks are going to be good. They're going to make the playoffs. It's like, yes, they're going to be good. And they're going to make the playoffs.

Meanwhile, every single like, model out there that predicts like performance, has the Canucks finishing like firmly out of the playoffs. So I just don't understand where the delusion comes from. It's amazing. He reminds me of kind of like Peter Ciccarelli.

In that it's clear what the issue is. It's clear like a very easy path for the Canucks to like start to right the ship is like get rid of the guy who sunk the ship. Like I don't know. It seems so, so self-explanatory. And yet you have Aquilini meeting with Jim Benning and saying, what is the issue?

You're safe. Don't worry. We're not going to fire you. That's not happening. I wonder, though, what is the issue? Why are we bad? It's such a difficult question to answer.

OMAR: It's the hot dog meme.

RAHEF ISSA: It is. We're all wondering, who did this? We're all wondering who did this.

OMAR: It's straight up the hot dog meme. It's like, oh my God, it's so funny. It's so funny to watch.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Can we please put it the hot dog meme up on the screen for those watching on YouTube, just so people could have the context, whether it's the one from the actual show or the one where they photoshopped Jim Benning's head on the hot dog?

SAM CHANG: Do the one with Jim.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Oh my god. Whichever one you prefer. So I just want to ask this then. So it seems pretty clear that Jim Benning may not be the right man for the job in Vancouver. What about Travis--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

What about Travis Green, the head coach, like should he take flak for this too?

OMAR: No.

SAM CHANG: I think that a lot of people are giving him flak. There are an outrageous number of fans who are like, this is Travis Green's fault. These are his systems. He can't get the players to buy in. And look, he's been there for five years. It may be time for a change. But at the end of the day, you cannot convince me that if Travis Green had all the players buying in, if you had their top six playing like their top six, that they would still be anything other than average.

Like, what is he supposed to do with the roster he's been given. This is a team that apparently needs Travis Hamonic to make or break their defense Travis Hamonic. They paid him $9 million.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Lord help them.

SAM CHANG: And he's apparently the difference maker.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Lord help the Canucks if they need Travis Hamonic to save their problems, Sam. Lord help the Canucks. I'm sorry. I'm just going to be real here. God help the Canucks if Travis Hamonic--

SAM CHANG: It's not an NHL blue line. They don't have a group of-- they have like maybe three NHL defensemen.

OMAR: Yeah. And then to that point, like it's like the beauty of professional sports is that like the head coach is the easiest position to change, right? Like you know, players have contracts. GMs will have a vision and like the coaches, you can just, a couple of years and you're just gone. And it's just like, I feel so bad for Travis Green.

Because like, I would love to see what he could do with a team that is built right. It's like he's playing Scrabble. Like you ever play a game of Scrabble and like you really need like an A, you need an E. Maybe you need an L an M. And you pick up, you just have X's and O's and stuff. And it's like, what the heck am I supposed to do with this?

It's Travis Green is playing an unfair game of Scrabble. And it's not fair. It's literally not fair. But at this point it's probably going to be him that gets canned.

Because you know like, people will look at you know, that he's been there for five years. And for an NHL head coach, five years is-- once you kind of get past that three year mark, then you're kind of in the territory, you can be fired. But he's going to get fired for something that, yeah, maybe you can argue yeah, he has a hand in it as well.

But like, I don't know, man, Benning has been around for so long. And the team always finds ways to fall, except that one time where they made to the second round. And that was cool.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: It was a good time. There was a lot of hope out of that year. Yeah, but hey, you know like I know everyone likes to pooh pooh on the bubble. But like, some games were played. Experience was gained by players.

We can't act like it never happened.

SAM CHANG: No, it happened. But what happened was then they deluded themselves into thinking that that was like steady growth.

RAHEF ISSA: Yeah I was going to say like that that just like furthered Jim Benning's delusion that he's actually built a good team, which is clearly not the case. So maybe it was actually a bad thing for the Canucks. Like maybe if they just did not-- like maybe this experiment could have ended like a year earlier or something. Who knows?

OMAR: Yeah I remember talking to a friend and the one I saw the Canucks make the second round. And you know, after our relative grief. I was like I wonder how like, if I was a Canucks fan, I'd be kind of upset. He was like, why? I'm like, because now Jim Benning's going to say, see? I was right.