Chapter 1: What recent developments are there in the Vancouver Canucks' GM search?
Thank you.
What's up? Welcome to Canucks Talk here on Sportsnet 650. I'm Jamie Dodd. My co-host is Thomas Drance. Drance covers the Canucks for The Athletic as well. We're broadcasting live from the Kintec studio. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec. 650-650 is the Dunbar Lumber text line. This hour of the show is presented by Waffle House Diner.
Enjoy chicken and waffles, the Waffle House Special Classic Full Breakfast, and more. Dine in or order on your favorite delivery app. Breakfast done right. This segment also brought to you by JanPro, reliable cleaning, clear communication, and service you can count on. That's JanPro. Start clean, stay clean. Visit JanPro.ca. What's going on, Drance? Not much, buddy.
Just tracking the list.
Tracking the list. That's right. Counting the lists.
Yeah. And you know what? I'll be honest with you. I feel like it's a little bit silly season. The process is still less than a week old. Yep. And we've had a lot of fun this week.
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Chapter 2: Who are the potential candidates for the Canucks' front office?
A lot of jokes.
It's been great.
A lot of laughs. Mostly at the Canucks expense. I don't have a high degree of faith in this organization to run processes smoothly, and that faith has not been solidified or, like, resuscitated by what we've seen across the last six days, by any means. But also, it's a little early to know as much as we want to know, right? Yeah.
I think this list is going to be like, I think the first interview list is going to be 20-plus people long.
That actually get interviews, though.
Yeah. Because that's a lot, even to squeeze into a week. I think across the first 10 days of this process, I think there's going to be a lot of interviews. And so, you know, we have only a very small window into what this looks like and who's being considered. And it's like every time we hear a new candidate, they sort of get their 24 hours in the news cycle.
And it's fun and we need to talk to talk about. but I would say that the short list, which I would expect like sometime mid next week, like sometime mid next week, we're going to start to hear about a shorter list or a, a second run through in the process. And I think that's going to be when you'll have a much better sense of like, what are the themes here? Is it experience versus inexperience?
Is it hockey guys versus new age analytics guys? Uh, is Ryan Johnson still in the mix? Like all of the big questions will have a much better sense of in four days. Um, And I think it's really important, like, you know, what you're seeing in Toronto with people just spinning their wheels, being like, is Ryan Martin the right fit? It's like, guys, come on. What are we talking about here, right?
Like the least credible crew. I mean, we talked about the gazpacho four on this radio show, right? But the reported Leafs finalists this week was like considerably less inspiring than that.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does an inexperienced front office face?
John Chayka?
John Chayka is like legit worse.
I don't know about that.
John Chayka is by far a more concerning candidate than anyone on the gazpacho four. Not Peter Shirelli. Not Peter Shirelli.
Thank you.
Thank you. But like, I have to think about it. Yeah. You know, like at the end of the day, Peter Shirely didn't get excommunicated for a year. No, that's true. He didn't cost his team draft picks for doing pre-draft and pre-combined interviews.
Yeah, that's true. That was a bad.
And he didn't abandon his team on the verge of the playoffs. Like there's so much about the Chayka situation that granted, I think working for Marulo and company was probably uniquely challenging. That's like very, very hard to explain. And that's without factoring in that, like, Merulo was partly his, like, he partly was involved in finding Merulo.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How important is experience in hockey operations leadership?
Because that was weird. We all thought he was going there.
Is it true that signing... Jonathan Kovacevic and Connor Brown deals with no trade slash no move clauses caused you to miss out on a Norris caliber defender who happens to be your best player's brother.
Yeah. That is correct. Why do you ask? All right, we're going to chat with Brendan Batchelor a little later on in the show. We'll get Batch's thoughts, maybe how he manages his lists in his day-to-day life, but also just on generally the Canucks search for GM.
Batch is a big survey monkey guy. Sure.
Does anyone use that in their daily life? I'm just going to send myself a survey monkey and compile the data here.
I mean, Hey, it's not a shared Google doc, but it's not a shared Google doc.
Dan Rosen from nhl.com will join us at one 30 to chat Stanley cup playoffs as well. But right now let's go to the whiteboard.
All right, fellas, let's focus up.
It is your daily deep dive into what's up with the Canucks. And we'll start with the headlines. And I actually think you did a good job of kind of summarizing the moment right now because we are still very much in the early stages of this process. And sometimes there's really... interesting, juicy, or more than anything, just kind of hilarious and fun to talk about nuggets of reporting.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the draft war room scenario for the Canucks?
We don't have to belabor all of these results too much, but I'll just run through them quickly. And if you have anything to add, you can. Flyers beat the Pens 5-2 in a wild, wild game. Classic rivalry action in the playoffs. They're up 3-0 now in that series. Rick Tockett with a chance to sweep Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Dallas beats Minnesota 4-3 in double overtime thanks to Wyatt Johnston on the power play. They lead the Wild 2-1. And Anaheim beats Edmonton 6-4. They tie the series at 1-1. McDavid, no points in two games so far in that series. I think just from a pure surprise level, the Flyers being up 3-0 in that series. Shocker.
With a chance to be the first team to advance from the first round, considering where they were before. going into the Olympics and how we were viewing the Philadelphia Flyers to this point now is an incredible turnaround.
Have you seen the 3.8% shirts? Oh yeah, that's where they were at their lowest probability of making the playoffs. By the way, that's how you know Rick Tockett was like a whiteboard guy.
He's like, that is a good idea to track the playoff odds. Shout out to Rick Tockett.
Um, Did you hear his quote? Talk? I feel like this isn't getting enough play. What was it? No, I don't know. I've been in the game 40 years, said Talk. And I'm not just saying it. This is one of the tightest groups for me as a coach or a player. I have nothing to do with it.
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Chapter 6: How does the Canucks' current roster impact their draft strategy?
It's all them. Love it.
It seems to be a lot of greener pastures out there.
Yeah. Also, like, I mean, that Canucks team in 2024 was so much better than this Flyers team. This Flyers team's like, now you add Martone and that gives you another gear. Yep. But when you look at their center depth and when you look at the state of that blue line, and then factor in their goaltending, which, you know, I know Vladar and Samuel Ersan have played well, but let's be real.
Like, I think this is like the 26th best true talent team in hockey.
Mm-hmm.
And they're one game away from being one of the final eight. I mean, it is remarkable what structure and a team pulling all on the rope at the same time, meaningfully and durably and being willing to sacrifice for one another can accomplish.
And it's so frustrating that the Canucks with a way more talented side and like they were pulling on the rope in the same direction to some extent, but not perfectly right. Like not durably, not,
not to the point where people weren't worried about their touches on the power play when they had a four minute double minor late in a game seven against the Edmonton Oilers with a chance to advance the conference final. And like, that's what it takes. And I still come back to that. The fact that like after the game, there were people in the organization who felt like,
the team's inability to work together, the best players on this team's inability to work together and sacrifice on that power play sequence, like, the fact that there was a political angle as the Canucks frittered away that opportunity tells me far more, and this is going to be my, like, least stats guy take ever, tells me that anyone talking about, like, how close that team was is, like, out to lunch and has no idea what it takes to win in this league.
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Chapter 7: What are the risks of drafting based on fan sentiment?
They're probably like a legit elite winger short. Yep. You know, a legit scoring, like a Jake Gensel caliber guy short. But that lack of cohesiveness, that lack of vibe, you know, was also their defining trait and their legacy.
Yes, 100%. Their legacy ultimately, and I think this was only solidified by what we heard last week when the remaining players spoke to the media. Like, I think the legacy of that team should be that it formed one of the worst locker room cultures in recent NHL history. And I think that's supported by the evidence. Yes, it is.
The trades.
I'm not going to say the worst, but just when you look at everything that transpired there and hear how the players talk about it afterwards and how the players who have left talk about their time there and the nonsense and the drama.
Yeah, it deserves to be remembered like that. I also there's like this amateur sleuthing that's happened now where it's like, was Garland the perpetrator? You know what I mean? And it's like, guys, you know, like, I think there were a lot of perpetrators. Oh, I think I think there was a lot of people with blame. I think it was an environmental thing.
Like at the end of the day, you know, it's not like one guy for for reasons that we think or at least partly or significantly about sort of what's going on between their ears was going through it. Like that happened to multiple Canucks star players. You know what I mean? It's not like one guy wanted to leave. It's like everybody wanted to leave.
You know, I think the idea of like assigning blame to one person is to misunderstand what it takes to build a good culture or to have a fragile culture. working relationship with people that you, you know, aren't really cooperating with.
It also like underestimates, I think how much needs to go wrong for it to get that bad. Because we're not just talking about, like, you know, they don't really work that hard. But they're good dudes or whatever, right? Like, this was levels below that.
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Chapter 8: What strategies should the Canucks consider for their upcoming draft?
It was a really noticeably bad culture.
Man-o-man text. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did Drance just say, once you get into the playoffs, anything can happen with the reference to the Flyers? I'm certain I did not. I don't think I heard that. I'm certain I did not. Maybe he means you were implying it.
I don't know. I absolutely did not. We can go back and check the tape. Yeah. Okay, to the broadsheet. And you referenced this a little bit. But, man, I've just... I've had...
amazing time over the last 48 hours following the list drama with the vancouver canucks starting with elliott friedman's reporting on monday that there were on tuesday i should say but there were three lists uh sat on canuck central yesterday and god bless them for this did some reporting asked talk to people in the in the organization about it and here was sat what sat had to say and he was very clear like listen i'm just passing this along thank you
I'm just passing this along. But basically, as he said, what he's hearing is they're all working off one list. And he goes on to say, you know, it could be like a Google Doc or something. And anyone can go in there, or at least any of the three people can go in there and add people to the list. He also suggested that maybe there's subcategories within the list.
Now, are subcategories their own lists or not, if they're in one Google Doc? Can you have three lists if they're all in the same Google Doc? So, I think it's like... And who is the, like, anonymous oscillant in there, adding extra names, adding Marc Bergevin constantly, only for it to be deleted? Yeah, like, no, it's like, stop this. Stop this, except no, no.
The edit history is just Bergevin out, Bergevin out. So, one list, two lists, my list, your list, Mike's list, Frank's list, Jim's list, shared list.
Yeah.
It's a shared list. We're building this. By the end of the week, we're going to have. But I think that's a good start. Yeah. And then, like, honestly, we can keep most of the middle of the thing as we discovered.
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