Chapter 1: What challenges are the Canucks facing in building their front office?
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Chapter 2: Who could potentially replace Jim Rutherford as GM?
That's how you watch Playoff Hockey. It's Satyar Shah and Biknazar on Sportsnet 650. As we come to you live from the Kintec studio. And as always, get your thoughts in to our Dunbar Lumber text inbox, 650-650. A lot of reaction on the text inbox. And people are... I think a lot of fans are excited about the future and others are, let's say, a bit skeptical about what's going to happen next.
And I think that's going to be the question.
I think fans are excited for September because they'll get through the drama of what these next six weeks is.
The draft lottery, the draft. They're excited for those things. I think there is a level of... I'd say existential dread about what could happen next if things don't get aligned. And I think Canuck fans in general, many of them, live in a constant state of PTSD, right?
So when you start thinking about what can happen next, it's very easy to put two and two together and think back to the past and be very skeptical and pessimistic about them getting it right. But people want to rebuild, at least for the time being, in a rebuild. People want a regime change. It seems like regime change is happening.
So there are positives in terms of the team is finally moving in the direction a lot of fans want.
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Chapter 3: What criteria should the Canucks consider when hiring new executives?
And the question just is, can you hire the right people? And that's what it comes down to. And that leads us to the open, brought to you by FiberTech, your exclusive dealer of house of roll luxury plumbing fixtures. Visit their state-of-the-art showrooms and experience centers in Surrey, Vancouver, and Coquitlam, or check out FiberTechBC.ca.
And ultimately, the start here is going to be how the Canucks build out their front office. And, you know, we talked about this a little bit on Friday. I got into it a bit today with Halford and Brough as well when I joined them this morning. And we kind of touched on it briefly with Frank Cervalli.
The Canucks want to be adding, I think, obviously, they feel like they need a GM as soon as possible because they don't have a GM. And they obviously are going to need to have an executive that does the president of hockey operations duties to some extent once Rutherford leaves. The question is, as we discussed on Friday, how do you sequence that?
But one thing I do wonder about here is, and when we talk about GM with little GM experience, RJ fits that role. Ryan Johnson fits that role. He's been an AGM. He's been a GM of the Abbotsford team. But he is an inexperienced GM. But he's somebody that the organization has familiarity with.
So if they go and hire someone like RJ, I think they feel like they have to bring in another experienced executive above that person at some point. And I think what's going to happen is initially, if they bring that person in before Rutherford leaves and Rutherford stays on for a while, that person will come in as a VP initially. And then... Maybe at some point, they become the president.
But essentially, there are two different duties that have to be filled here, the president duties and the GM duties. The question is, can you hire both in close proximity? And how much does that truly matter?
I thought maybe with the weekend, from where I was on Friday to where I am right now, my head would stop spinning.
No, it hasn't stopped.
Like, Friday was a head-spinning day of, yeah, like, you can do all these things. You're really threading a needle. But... you're making it unnecessarily complicated than it needs to be.
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Chapter 4: How does the Canucks' current management structure impact future decisions?
And then you think, okay, like, again, we talked it out on Friday. It's like, yeah, you can do it. And then you come to today with some fresh eyes. You're like, no, that's just like, it's, it is. I think we can understand like, okay, that seems to be the plan. But that is so needlessly complicated to structure it in such a way that it has to be designed.
And, you know, the phrase Frank used earlier is like the guardrails. The phrase I like to use often is like, what's the criteria in which you're applying people to your role? And I'll go back to the coaching decision. Like one of the markers that they talked about was, oh, Adam Foote knew what happened in the room last year.
I don't know why that needed to be part of the criteria, but okay, you applied that and you filtered in such a way that he became a prime candidate. The filters you're applying to this feel like they are so specific. And is it allowing you to dip into the full spectrum? breadth of candidates to look at, like, who's actually the most competitive person for the job?
Or are we doing it with specific ideas in mind? And that's the bit where I look at and say, with Rutherford still around, with... Adam Foote's still around with Rian Johnson pushing up. It feels like not only do you have to thread the needle, you're also minimizing your list of candidates that would be interested in it because of the dynamics that are at play.
Yeah, and I think that's absolutely true. And I do think there is a possibility here that the Canucks do hire somebody with experience. And if that person with experience is the GM, then that alleviates that possibility
initial need for a president so to speak because that initial person whenever Rutherford leaves they could maybe move into the president role at some point or hold both duties and at some point when they feel they can maybe split those and you're still in charge so I think there's still a lot of different ways this can take form here that take shape here in terms of how things move forward and I do think experience matters but I don't think it matters necessarily
for the GM himself. But there could be a situation where they just make the one hire and it is somebody with more experience and they end up just entrusting that person with all the decision making moving forward. Like, nothing's been fully determined yet.
To the point of what we've heard here in the last 24 hours is an experienced GM, right? If that scenario develops and it's not a first-timer going through the process, if it is an experienced GM, that would tell me someone that's going to assume the Rutherford role and graduate from a position and have to go through the entire GM search all over again.
Of the different scenarios, like, that one to me is more encouraging. Or just get the one person and then that person can just handle it all? Or at least... Again, the issue here is who's taking over for Jim Rutherford?
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of hiring inexperienced GMs?
I don't disagree. It's not hire a GM. It's who's taking over for Jim Rutherford. That's the issue here.
Yeah, and I think... I think the way they're posing it right now internally is that what they're looking for is somebody that's going to take charge of all the hockey decisions. But they understand there needs to be somebody as an executive that can do all the other things, all the other duties that are necessary.
And the candidates that can do both are very few, but they're also the ones that don't excite the fans. These are the retread hires. And I don't want to mention the name again because it already caused a lot of stress in the market. But you know who I'm talking about? He who shall not be named. Former Montreal executive.
Do you have a lot of DMs over the weekend?
I got a few. And again, I think he's... And I can't sit here for sure and say that he's a leading candidate. Former Canuck Mark Bershman is who we're talking about here, by the way. I think that's the one that gives a lot of Canuck fans stress and fear, right?
But that type of person would be the type of person that you can be like, okay, well, he understands what it takes to do some of the other duties as well. But that doesn't give you a lot of confidence here moving forward. And...
I think as much as we're sitting here and talking about Ryan Johnson, I think part of it, the way ownership views it is, if we bring Ryan Johnson in, we're going to need somebody else with experience here as well. Or if it's a Sam Ventura, we're going to need somebody else with experience here as well. I don't think they feel comfortable just giving the keys.
And I would say this, I think it's different giving somebody a GM position as your first job. I think it's difficult to all of a sudden make somebody the president if they've never, never been a GM in the first place. I know the team tried that with Trevor Linden in the past. And obviously, it took a lot of learning on the job from Trevor.
And when he figured it out, that's when he got shown the door, essentially. But he also had business experience.
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Chapter 6: How might the Canucks approach the draft and player development?
He knew the market really well. There were a lot of things, and he also was part of the PA in negotiations. So there were a lot of things that he was involved with that a president would be involved with one way or another. So the hiring, as much as he was inexperienced, there were things on a CV that would qualify him to be in the role somewhat, right? Yeah.
A lot of these guys, like Sam Ventura, Ryan Johnson, they're not qualified to jump in and be presidents and do that duty. And that's not to take anything away from them. I would imagine if you ask them, that's asking too much of them too.
Yeah, there's the hockey component part of it. I think too, we've... The state of the conversation right now is based on the last two guys, Jim Benning and Patrick Alvin. There was an element of like they were the directors of scouting and now they're going to take the bigger job and now they get to manage the entire team's duties.
Would you be willing and I think there's a lot of fear of kind of going back down that road. But if you had the same dynamic at play that it was a new GM that had the scouting background, but you had the experienced guy above him, would you still want that? Now, that dynamic has basically just been at play right now with Rutherford and Alvin.
But would there be enough hands off the wheel from the senior executive that comes in to allow someone to do the hockey stuff? Because I think that's been the big issue here. It's not that Jim Rutherford's experience was not valuable to the organization. It's how much did Jim Rutherford do Patrick Alvin's job?
And I think that's where, to me, the sequencing matters in this situation. Because if you bring somebody else in and somebody above them, if you bring them in together... different story.
Like for instance, like if you have Ryan Johnson as the guy you want to make the GM and he's at least involved in the discussions around the VP or the potential new VP, potential new president, could you work through it together where it's like, hey, can we see if these guys are on the same page? And if they are, you move forward. Again, I think you should figure it out and then make the hires.
But if you have Ryan involved in the process when you're hiring the president, it could have worked that way. Would that mitigate some of the concerns that we have about, hey, you're just going to bring somebody else in to be his boss that he didn't hire in the first place, and then you're going to have this question about can they work together moving forward?
Can you figure that out in the process with Ryan being involved? If it's Ryan. Again, just hypothetical saying if it's Ryan.
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Chapter 7: Who are some potential candidates for the Canucks' front office?
And if it's that situation, like... If I was one of the first time GMs kind of getting set up in that spot, I would want it in writing like, hey, it's my job to run the hockey department. I don't want any like you pitch ideas, of course, but I don't want any influence like what we just saw here coming from above me.
Yeah, and I think that's what Rutherford was trying to get across. I think a lot of his messaging was obviously to the fans and to the market here. But I wonder how much of that was also messaging to the hockey community at large that, hey, if you have interest in this job or we're coming to talk to you, you are going to have autonomy here.
And you put it into the public sphere right away that, hey, whatever may have happened in the past or whatever you think of our situation, whoever we're hiring is going to have the keys to the kingdom.
But if you're making the hire with the intention of, okay, there's going to be some training wheels on this. Because we need to have the more senior executive above you.
I...
I don't necessarily know if I need the senior person to have like a wealth of hockey experience.
No, and it doesn't have to be necessarily. But I do think that the senior person, especially if you're a president, you have to understand how to conduct a president duties. How do you manage up towards the ownership group? How do you handle practice facilities? How do you handle all the other factors that a GM doesn't deal with because he's too busy doing the hockey operation stuff?
You need somebody who has the acumen to do those sort of things. And if I'm looking at the candidates out there, I don't feel great about the veteran options that are being named, you know, for instance. like Fitzgerald, Kevin Adams. I may like those more than Bergevin potentially, but you still have some questions about that.
And, you know, one guy that has been talked about a lot and have a lot of time for him, even though he hasn't had a GM job yet. And then every time I talk to people around the league to speak very glowingly about him, that's Ross Mahoney. Now he's getting up there in age.
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Chapter 8: What strategies can the Canucks use to revamp their scouting department?
Again, nobody wants to see Bergevin in this market.
It feels like you're just boxing yourself into the very, very tough scenario here. Right? It's like some intriguing minds... As you're talking about, and Russ Mahoney is very well thought of, obviously long tenure in Washington, and think of how many guys they've kind of churned through their system to say, okay, well, you're only applicable in this Yeah. Design that we're creating.
It's like, just get the best minds. Just get the best people and sort it out afterwards.
So I was asking around, because I know we've have... The people we've talked about that we've heard linked to the job or people that we think we like or people that are being discussed as potential candidates. So I asked around the league a little bit, people that would know about... Who are some people that we're missing? Who are some people that we should maybe look at...
Watch a little bit closely in terms of potential candidates. And I'm not saying these people are involved, but what I would like to see is you have a chance here to build out your front office. To me, it's one thing to sit here and talk about the GM and the president. I think those are obviously the most important positions. But can you bring in somebody else as well while you're at it here?
Can you bring somebody else as an AGM that... you're going to revamp your scouting process a little bit here. Whether Todd Harvey stays or not, I guess that remains to be seen with their contract situations. Whether you bring somebody else in that can do the player development stuff. And a couple people that I've heard are really good at their jobs.
One is Martin Madden, who's the director of scouting with the Anaheim Ducks. And look at the stuff they've done in Anaheim in terms of their drafting and development. And Mark Iannetti with the LA Kings as well. Two people that are very well thought of across the league. Can you poach someone like that too?
And now you're pairing a couple of the inexperienced guys, whether it is RJ or Ventura or somebody, and then you bring somebody else in as well and give them a more elevated role. I think this is a unique opportunity here for you to really bolster your front office as well, to really reshape it and revamp it. And I think we sit here and we're so focused on the GM and the president role.
I wonder if they're going to take this opportunity here to perhaps poach one of the more promising AGMs and give them an elevated role here in Vancouver too. Because I think that would be a great way to go about it. Because it's one thing to sit here and talk about the GM and the president, but there's discussion about perhaps them revamping the scouting department as well.
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