Chapter 1: What is the latest on the Vancouver Canucks’ GM search?
Thank you.
Canuck Central on a Thursday coming to you live from the Kintec studio. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec. It's Satyar Shah with Abik Nizar. And this hour of Canuck Central is brought to you by your lower mainland Boston pizza. The playoffs are here and BP is ready. So skip the couch, catch every hit, every goal, every save, every playoff beard.
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Shane Malloy, get into the draft and also how to put together a strong front office that can take you into a new era. We'll talk to Shane about that. And also Landon Ferraro is going to drop by at 5. And we'll chat with Dave Babich. That's all coming up at 5 and 5.30 as well. What's happening, Vic?
Let's go. NFL draft. It's a draft day, not the draft we're excited about, but...
Yeah. The one we're really gearing up for is the NHL's June draft. We don't know yet where the Canucks are picking, but in less than two weeks, we will find out. 12 days. 12 days, man. 12 days. 12 days from now, we are going to find out where the Canucks pick, but I love the NFL draft, so I can't wait to get home and watch it.
First round begins at 5, so I'm not sure we'll be breaking down the picks, but if the Browns get their selection in before the show is over, you might get some excitement or you might get a rant. We'll see what happens. I don't think they will. Six picks in the hour? No, they're probably going to trade down anyways. Probably not going to get to that on the show.
What pick are the Seahawks?
I believe it's... The last pick?
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Chapter 2: How is Brock Faber performing in the playoffs?
Other than like, hey, pack some snacks.
Yeah. Or mine is like, please, just don't step in front of vehicles.
Just don't do that.
Which is good advice, to be fair.
Yeah.
And I mean, there are people, I see the text are coming in, like Mike in New West was offering to drive you past New West and it can be your secret.
No.
No.
No shortcuts.
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Chapter 3: What are the expectations for Quinn Hughes in the playoffs?
Yes, the Canucks are still GM-less. Ray Whitney's name has been bandied about quite a bit the last 24 hours. I know Dolly was talking about it and others have brought it up and saying that he's gaining some steam. And I'm kind of tired of doing the... Like, I'm annoying people because every day I'm, like, making a couple of calls. Like, nothing's changed. Hey, I just want to know what's going on.
I want to know what's going on. So... I don't think that they're quite yet at the finalist stage. I don't know if somebody has truly emerged yet as the leader of the bunch, but they're going through their interviews. And as much as we're hearing names now, I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more as some time goes on. And it is a pretty healthy list.
What I've heard is, and I know Irv mentioned this too, but people have essentially cold called. They've been like, hey... What about me? I might be interested. You know, so I think... I want one of those people. Hello?
That's a culture changer right there.
Exactly. So I do think it's one of those things that... I'm not sure if saying they're surprised by the level of interest, but there has been quite a bit of interest from people that are very eager to get back at being a GM or be a GM for the first time. Obviously, some of the very high-end type candidates... That's what we've talked about in the past.
You're being headhunted if you're the Sonny Mades of the world right now, right?
Some of those, and you mean some names we haven't considered, they may not be as keen on the opportunity. So there certainly are people that may have other options and good options at some point that aren't as enthused by the opportunity. But there are a lot of people that want to be a GM, that love to get into a front office. But the sense I got is they're not at the finalist stage quite yet.
And we'll see what happens over the next week or so.
But yes, more names emerging. Yeah. Really enjoyed Ray Whitney as a player. Yeah, he's awesome. Unbelievable player. What longevity, too. Every year, he's like, he's 36. He's not going to do it. He's like putting up like 75 plus point seasons near 40 years old. Yeah. Unbelievable.
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Chapter 4: What factors are influencing the Canucks' draft strategy?
You guys know they're going to pick third, right? Like, okay, sure.
Sure, but we don't know that yet. We don't know. And again, like, it's a 55% chance they pick third. There's also a 45% chance they don't. It's not quite 50-50, but, you know, it's not the same as... Like, before, when the Canucks had, like, the, you know, third or fourth best odds, and they had... three lottery positions, your chance of getting a top three pick was like 30%.
It was like 60 some percent chance you're going to be picking later on. That was a lot more assured. Like this is like, it's a lot closer than I think people understand in terms of getting a top two pick. It's almost like they have the best odds. Yeah. And you know, and it's only two lotteries, not three. So that's one of those things.
This one's asking... Also, we'll do the simulator here in about 10, 12 minutes.
Yes, sir. This one is asking, is Ventura a legitimate candidate? Has he interviewed? If not, do you expect him to... I know the team is interested in him, but I know Drance reported this already, that they had not yet asked for permission as of a couple of days ago. But I know they're working through the list.
And I wouldn't be surprised if they're talking to certain people, like in terms of their sequencing, that they'll get to more people as time goes on. So I wouldn't close the door on Ventura. And maybe it's happened here over the past 24 hours. But as of yesterday, when I checked in on that as well,
I don't think they had completed an interview yet, or at least nobody has yet let it be known that they've spoken to Ventura. But he is on their list. I know he's a name on the list, but in terms of where he is in his candidacy, that's still very much undetermined. Is he someone that would wait out till May 5th? And I will say this about Ventura. Yeah.
I've heard like, okay, I haven't heard mixed things about him because I heard a lot of good things, but I've heard different things about how people view him around the league. Like, is he viewed as a GM type or viewed more as a, hey, I prefer this guy to kind of run up analytics, be an AGM, put him in maybe a VP position, but have him kind of do other things, don't make him the GM.
So it comes down to how you view him positionally, but obviously a person that is well thought of and is considered a very, very smart individual. Minor Madden Abbotsford. Ace Ventura. All righty then. Movie holds up well. Yeah, I haven't watched it in a very, very long time. But take a look at the NHL playoffs here for a moment before we get to the draft lottery, Bick.
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Chapter 5: How do playoff performances impact player evaluations?
And it's very clear that there is a legitimate Rick Talkett bump. And what's been really clear, too, is how big of a gulf there is between the acumen of a Rick Talkett and Adam Foote, who directly replaced Rick Talkett after Talkett turned down the contract offer from the Canucks last offseason. It's like you're comparing a coach's bump to a coach's crater, almost.
Sure.
You know, where you saw the Canucks perform well below expectation, whereas you see the Flyers perform well above expectation. And I think it's unlikely when you go through what the Canucks went through this season to have anybody have the team be above expectation. So maybe there should be this at least context of... all you can hope for is kind of an uneven effort.
You can't really expect you to be above considering everything that happened this year. But considering how the Canucks played and how organized they looked under Talkett, despite all the troubles, like all the stuff that happened last year, Bick.
Yeah.
And they got to 90 points. This year, all the stuff that happened, and it was a lot different. They ended up trading Quinn. It's a lot different. 58. One of the worst teams, one of the worst seasons in the franchise history.
Now, I think with the benefit of hindsight, we have a control and test group here, obviously, with last season and this season. You know, one of the thoughts was prevailing thoughts was like everything went wrong. So if you can just remove some of the landmines, you could improve on 90 points. Now, they changed personnel. Pocket goes out, obviously.
But when we look back at 24-25, and now knowing what 25-26 happened, do we say, hey, the potential of this group, even if Taka was here this year, was actually probably like an 82-point team? Or do you look back and say, hey, if Taka stuck around, they could have improved on 90?
Yeah, I mean... Given what Rutherford has said about Quinn Hughes' intentions all along, maybe it didn't matter. Maybe at some point this year that was going to happen. And again, I'm not trying to make this about EP40, but I do think part of what happened this year was he wasn't at that level again.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the NHL draft lottery for the Canucks?
But Still, not a great penalty last night.
No, and he's been good, but he doesn't look like regular season Quinn. Especially your guy, Brock Faber. He's been fantastic. He's the darling of the series so far in the back end. The game changes in the postseason. And we've seen that. I mean, there have been a couple like the Ducks and Oilers like, no, we're still playing regular season hockey.
But everybody else is like, we're playing playoff hockey, right? It's different.
That backhand pass by McDavid was preseason hockey.
Yeah. And Quinn's still fantastic. Again, four points. He's been really good. But can we make the argument he's the best defenseman in the league based on what we've seen in the playoffs? Even going back to his time at Vancouver, he was good, but it wasn't at the same level that we saw. And I'm not trying to do like Quinn's gone, let's just crap on Quinn or whatever.
But one of those things you look at his game, you're like, you know, he's not making the same impact through two games that we saw him in the regular season.
There was a play yesterday where it's like he circled the entire net. And it was like, it felt like vintage Quinn Hughes. It's like, here he goes in the offensive zone. And he basically just skated it in a full circle back to where he started. I was like, oh, you didn't make a pass. No, I didn't do anything with it.
And then he had to just kind of reverse it D to D, but it was just kind of one of those moments where it's more like, oh, this is tougher in the playoffs. As we know, it's tougher in the playoffs. But all the little passing angles just got cut down so fast by Dallas. It was pretty interesting to watch.
To your point, the discipline by the defenders is so much more on point. The focus on the players, they don't open up seams as often. So that edge he had, to your point, about just driving around, skating around, and somebody getting out of position, It doesn't happen as easily in the postseason.
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Chapter 7: How does playoff hockey differ from regular season play?
Moving up six spots. Winning today's draft lottery are the Winnipeg Jets. All right. The Jets need something good, I guess. And moving up three spots and claiming second, the Toronto Maple Leafs. What?
That's three days in a row. The Leafs have won. You know what? I'm going to put a positive spin on this. We're using up all the Leafs' luck now so they don't have any when the draft lottery actually comes around.
All right, so we are down to 31% of the time the Canucks have won first overall. That's still 6% more than the 25% chance. 26% of the time they have finished second. So 57% of the time they have been in the top two.
So it was still better. That's still 12% better than the 45% odds. But yeah, it's been a tough go here.
I will say, though, even the 57% of the time, I'd have to go back. We haven't really done this, but some of the times they didn't win the lottery and finish top two, right? So some teams have moved up. So that number is probably even lower than normal.
But still, it's about your chances of getting the top two, not necessarily winning the lottery.
We don't care how. Kind of like goals. They don't ask how, they ask how many.
That's all I care about. All right, we'll be chatting with Shane Malloy on the other side to get into the draft and also the best way to put together a front office heading into a new era of Canucks hockey, hopefully. This segment was brought to you by Shark Club, the place for Vancouver sports fans with 72 TVs showing every hit, putt, free kick, and grand slam.
Whatever you crave, find it this summer only at Shark Club. Shane Malloy is next on Canucks Central.
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