Vancouver Canucks

Is the Vancouver Canucks rebuild on treacherous turf after coach firing?
April 11, 2017, 2:38 PM ET [210 Comments]
Carol Schram
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The end-of-season postmortem continues today for the Vancouver Canucks, as players meet with the media to discuss their years and where the team will go from here.

Here's the link if you'd like to watch.



I'm seeing a lot of somber faces—understandably. I'll dig into the comments tomorrow, which I'm sure will include more insight into injuries and hopefully some announcements of players committing to the World Championships.

Yesterday, Trevor Linden and Jim Benning addressed the media to discuss the firing of Willie Desjardins and where the team is headed from here. It really all boiled down to this:




The locals who keep tabs on the team every day can sometimes cause ideas and issues to snowball, so I was interested to read two takes on the Canucks situation from outsiders yesterday.

The first came from Mark Spector at Sportsnet—who has been covering the Edmonton Oilers for eons.




The title of his article says it all: "Canucks going down same dark path as hapless Oilers of before."

"As a guy who had a front row seat to the Decade of Darkness that has finally lifted in Edmonton, here are the hard facts," writes Spector. "The Canucks don’t have nearly enough legitimate NHL players, and forcing kids on to an NHL roster to “find out if they can play” is the worst possible solution."

"So the setting was familiar," he added. "Two front-office suits explaining how a “new direction” was needed, so they both decided it was best to fire the guy underneath them. The Oilers management did it, like, five times, and frankly nothing took until the suits were changed out in Edmonton."

As for the young talent in the mix, Spector warns "Boeser looks good. So does Bo Horvat, Markus Granlund and a few others. But how good? Years will pass, and history tells us only a small percentage (maybe one-third) of the players you thought would be good actually turn out that way."

He's not wrong. Remember those years in Edmonton when the future hung on Sam Gagner, Magnus Paajarvi, Nail Yakupov? Heck, do you remember the Oilers taking defenseman Alex Plante at No. 15 in the 2007 draft? He played 10 NHL games.

Even during the Linden/Benning regime with the Canucks, we've seen promising players fail to live up to expectations. We thought Cole Cassels was going to be the next Patrice Bergeron when he outchecked Connor McDavid in the 2015 OHL playoffs, and that Alex Grenier was a sure thing with his size and scoring after the 2015 AHL playoffs. And we're still clinging to the idea that Jordan Subban could be a power-play quarterback at hockey's top level, even as he struggles to play a 200-foot game in Utica.

Development is no sure thing. The Canucks have done well to unearth some decent talent from unikely sources but for every Troy Stecher or Nikita Tryamkin, there's an Anton Rodin or a Philip Larsen—long shots who ultimately did nothing to help the team.

Spector says the change in the Oilers' fortunes came when the new management group was brought in, led by Peter Chiarelli and Bob Nicholson. The simultaneous arrival of Connor McDavid certainly served as a buffer for any mistakes that management made along the way, but their other big moves have worked out—Cam Talbot has been the No. 1 goaltender the team needed, and even the Adam Larsson-for-Taylor Hall trade is looking pretty good at this point.

As the Canucks make their third coaching change in five seasons, they're already trending down the path that the Oilers took after their 2006 trip to the Stanley Cup Final. My hope is that the Canucks brass is able to look critically at what happened in Edmonton and learn from those mistakes, so they're not repeated here for the next decade.

Over at The Hockey News, Ryan Kennedy offers a bit more optimism.




"The Canucks are not devoid of talent right now," writes Kennedy, who spends a lot of his time looking at prospects. "They have holes and they have disparate parts, but they are not building from scratch and many of the important elements are there."

For this reason, Kennedy supports the idea of bringing in Travis Green as the team's next coach.

"Green has paid his dues in Utica, wringing the most out of lineups that have been bereft of talent, compared to other farm squads." Kennedy also correctly acknowledges that most of the Canucks' young players have not come up through the Utica pipeline. "So Green hasn’t been coaching the best; he’s been coaching the rest. And yet, the Comets still have an outside shot at the playoffs this season."

Here's another man Kennedy thinks is deserving of his first head-coaching opportunity.

I’d like to see Todd Reirden get a shot. The Canucks would have to wait on this one, as Reirden is currently an associate coach with the Washington Capitals, but he’s ready for a head coaching gig.

Reirden is in charge of the Caps’ defense, which has become an incredible strength for the Team That Ovie Built. Washington ranked first overall in team defense this season and while goalie Braden Holtby deserves a huge dollop of credit there, the unit itself has really come together under Reirden’s structure in the past couple seasons.

Now, if you’re Vancouver and you don’t tab Green for some reason, doesn’t Reirden and his structure sound like a positive way to go? Again, you have a coach that can grow with your core and hopefully, if all works out, the whole team comes together for something great in three or four seasons.


As the Canucks move down the Pacific Division food chain to become the new Oilers, it looks like the Los Angeles Kings have become the new Canucks. Reminiscent of Vancouver's situation when Linden and Benning were brought in, the Kings parted ways with general manager Dean Lombardi and coach Darryl Sutter yesterday.




There is one key difference in the Kings' situation—Luc Robataille and Rob Blake are not just former stars. They have also been working with the organization for several seasons, so they do have experience and are already known by ownership.

Still, Los Angeles enters this next phase with some massive long-term contracts and some players that are starting to get up there in years.

Marian Gaborik - 35 - four more years
Dustin Brown - 32 - five more years
Jeff Carter - 32 - five more years
Jonathan Quick - 31 - six more years
Trevor Lewis - 30 - three more years

You can count me in with the group that believes Darryl Sutter won't be back as an NHL coach next season. He was lured off his farm to join the Kings back in 2011 and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to get back full time.

To wrap up today, let's take a look at the playoff bracket. Five series featuring Canadian teams—quite a change from last year.

Click here for the link to the NHL's Bracket Challenge. Let's see your picks! I'm always terrible at this, but I'll share mine tomorrow.