The Vancouver Canucks Have Been Terribly Mismanaged and Have No Plan

General manager Patrik Allvin was hired last January.Derek Cain/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Bruce Boudreau’s tenure with the Vancouver Canucks lasted a mere 14 months. He did not complete a full season with the team and finished with a 50-40-13 record over 103 games and no playoff appearances.

Yet the 68-year-old head coach received raucous appreciation and commendation from the Vancouver faithful. Certainly, it was not for his performance on the job.

The Canucks have said team culture is a priority for years. Over the course of seven seasons, former president and general manager Jim Benning made a number of additions ostensibly with this in mind, with Loui Eriksson, Erik Gudbranson, Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel and Brandon Sutter among them. Sure, the analytics might not justify the contracts, but you have to consider the intangibles. Leadership. Locker room presence. Playoff experience. Playing “the right way.”

It did not work. Benning was replaced by Jim Rutherford as president on Dec. 9 2021, with the hire of Patrik Allvin at GM soon after. Rutherford would bring in new staff and perhaps employ different tactics, but the mission was the same.

“When you’re changing the culture, sometimes when you have people that have been here a long time, it’s harder to do. … I think the more new fresh people we have in there, the easier it’s going to be to do,” Rutherford told the media in his first press conference.

Between Benning and Rutherford, the emphasis on culture over the past nine seasons has produced definitive results: No playoffs in seven seasons, with one series win. The seventh-worst points percentage in the league. Four different head coaches. The most unceremonious of firing of a head coach that was essentially planned months in advance. A disconcerted locker room.

Veteran defenseman Tyler Myers admitted that outside “noise” had affected the team in a way he had never previously experienced in the NHL. The squad was also allegedly divided regarding the organization’s decision to sign J.T. Miller while leaving captain Bo Horvat practically begging Canucks management to meet with his agent.

Accountability is supposed to start at the top, yet Rutherford seems unwilling to take full accountability for the mess he has constructed, including when he was pressed by the media for answers on why he handled the situation in a manner that frustrated players, fans and media alike.

“First of all, it’s played out in a way that’s out of our control. We can only do our business the way we see fit. We can’t change our business based on speculation,” Rutherford said.

Vancouver fans did not give Boudreau a hero’s exit for his accomplishments on the job. They recognized that he was the person who brought a measure of dignity to an otherwise calamitous franchise. It should be obvious that the emperor—in this case, Rutherford—has no clothes.

Any reasonable person could conclude that the perennial losing by the Canucks would justify, if not mandate, a concession that a rebuild was necessary. Rutherford refused to accept this notion last season and over the summer.

At the 2022 trade deadline on March 21, the Canucks were 11th in the Western Conference in points percentage. It was the perfect time to tear down the roster as much as possible. Trading top players like J.T. Miller (29 years old), Conor Garland (26) and Brock Boeser (25) would have yielded a number of assets and cap space. None was moved then or in the summer.

According to Sportsnet 650’s Satiar Shah (h/t Canucks Army), the New York Rangers made an offer for Miller involving top young players Filip Chytil and Nils Lundkvist. A deal with the New York Islanders for Miller was also apparently in the works at the 2022 NHL draft only for the Canucks to ultimately re-sign him to a seven-year deal.

This leaves Vancouver in no-man’s land. Horvat should be gone by early March. That will leave Miller as the team’s most senior star—a player who is allegedly creating locker room tensions and receiving criticism for lazy performances. Rick Tocchet was reportedly brought in as head coach to get Miller in line.

But his resume doesn’t evoke feelings of a savior. He was a successful assistant coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins, helping the team win two Stanley Cups, but his stints as head coach for the Tampa Bay Lightning and Arizona Coyotes were unremarkable.

The team is tied up with numerous regrettable contracts. There is the Miller deal, which does not even start until next season, when he will be 30 years old. Oliver Ekman-Larsson, a shell of his former self, will be 32 next season with an unpalatable $7.3 million salary through 2026-27. Tyler Myers, a borderline third-pairing defenseman at this point, will eat up $6.0 million next campaign.

These contracts will make much-needed additions difficult in the short term. Boeser is yet again underachieving with a $6.7 million cap hit that extends through 2024-25. Moving him will be fruitless at best and could require cap retention at worst.

Meanwhile, most of the players who one would hope are locked up for the long haul are not. Franchise center Elias Pettersson has one more year remaining on his contract before becoming a restricted free agent. Thatcher Demko, the 27-year-old goaltender who is struggling this season but has otherwise been a sturdy presence, has three years remaining on his contract.

Andrei Kuzmenko, one of the few pleasant surprises after his signing out of Russia, is a 26-year-old who is nearly at a point-per-game pace. He is on a brilliant $950K cost to the cap this season and is the type of player worthy of a long-term contract. Teams with tight salary-cap situations would have been frothing at the mouth to acquire him at great expense. Somehow, the Canucks found a third option: signing him to a two-year extension that makes him no part of a long-term picture.

The Canucks also have fewer draft picks in 2023 than originally allocated plus lack their 2024 second-round pick, which they moved in a bizarre trade to acquire replacement-level defenseman Riley Stillman. That will be little help to one of the worst prospect pools in the league. Winger Jonathan Lekkerimäki is the only potential difference-maker, and he is struggling in the Swedish Hockey League in his post-draft season.

Unless the organization beats the odds and finds a way to fix team culture and make the roster competitive in the next couple of seasons, one has to wonder why Pettersson, Demko and Kuzmenko would want to be a part of a franchise that is consistent in nothing except perennial failure.

Rutherford was supposed to bring a new perspective to an organization mired in mediocrity for years. Instead, he is continuing the former regime’s lack of inspiration and blaming everyone else for not seeing the genius of his ways.

This franchise has never won a Stanley Cup in its 40-plus NHL seasons. It’s been a decade since the team had a makeup capable of conceivable success. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Yet at this point, the fanbase isn’t even focused on winning. The bare minimum that Canucks executives owe to those who invest significant amounts of time, emotion and money into the team is an organization that isn’t a leaguewide mockery.

Rutherford and Allvin have failed to bring about the change they promised. They have seemingly zero self-awareness to the creation of their own circus. As the team heads toward another period with zero identity or a conceivable blueprint, there is no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.