Chapter 1: What game are the Canucks playing that could impact the Oilers?
What's up? Welcome to Canucks Talk here on Sportsnet 650. I'm Jamie Dodd. My co-host is Thomas Trance. Trance covers the team for the Athletic as well. We're broadcasting live from the Kintec studios. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec. 650-650 is the Dunbar Lumber text line. And of course, This hour of the show is brought to you 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. What's going on, Drance?
Well, I stopped by the recycling depot this morning. I think it's very important. I think it's very important that we encourage everyone listening to this program to recycle.
Did you go to the zero waste center?
No, you know what I did? I dropped by the really bad hire blue bin and I picked up a recycled Marc Bergevin for our consideration. And, you know, I think the most important or most... In all seriousness. No, the most reliable source of recycling is NHL teams completely out of ideas, hiring general managers who's...
Behavior and assessment of both character and players has been demonstrated across a decade-long track record to be unworthy of continued leadership in the NHL and handing them the keys to some of the most valuable properties in the sport.
Mm-hmm.
So that's what I was doing at the recycling depot today.
We'll talk more about that in a little bit. I do honestly want to give a shout out to the Vancouver Zero Waste Center on Southwest Marine. No, it rocks.
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Chapter 2: How does the playoff format affect the Canucks' strategy?
The keyword. Yeah. Sensibly is the keyword. All right. We'll talk more about Mark Bergevin and the latest rumblings around the Canucks front office in a few minutes. You're coming up on the show later. Brendan Batchelor is going to join us live from Edmonton. Now, of course, I usually introduce Brendan Batchelor as the voice of the Canucks here on Sportsnet 650, and he is.
Tonight, he's the voice of the Canucks on Sportsnet TV. Moving up and calling this one on TV for the last game of the season, so we'll get Batch's thoughts from Edmonton and maybe talk in depth about his career path. And now he's calling a game on TV. We probably won't do that, but we'll get his thoughts on the conduct season and the final game of the year from Edmonton.
When batch joins us at 1230. And then we got some open time to wrap up the show. So make sure you send in your thoughts and your questions. Six 50, six 50. Tell us who you'd like to see picked out of the blue bin. Sure. I mean, I'm sure there's someone in there that would do a good job. Yeah, sure. There's lots of people in there that would do a good job.
I just don't know if Mark Bergevin is among them. Oh, I'm very confident he's not. All right. Let's go right now, though, to the whiteboard.
All right, fellas. Let's focus up.
It is your daily deep dive into what's up with the Canucks for today, April 16th. And the headline is Trancer. We're here. We did it. It is the final day, final game of the Canucks season. 82 of 82. It's finally here. After months and months of... Like, what, 3,300 winning percentage or 300 points percentage hockey? We're getting here. And most of that is thanks to the last week.
Yep. It's been leaner than 300.
The four-game win streak and then the three-game win streak and in between. Oh, boy. That was tough. It was tough in between there.
At least it was predictable. Yes. The... End of the season is often a bittersweet time, but I think this year it's just like, thank goodness, right? We've got the draft lottery to look forward to. There's going to be draft talk to get into. We'll get to watch playoff hockey and discuss sort of the team building implications of that for the Canucks and a rebuilding team.
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Chapter 3: What are the latest updates on the Canucks front office?
Yeah, this is the worst season in franchise history and it ends tonight.
Thank goodness. Thank goodness. And it will end in Edmonton. They take on the Oilers and stuff on the line in a very actually meaningful way here for the Edmonton Oilers. They can clinch what? We got a text. From GW, choose your fighter, Bergevin or Francis.
Oh, man. I can go do 10 minutes on that. No problem.
We also had somebody text in agreeing with me saying the Zero Waste Center rocks.
Yeah.
No Zero Waste Center. I'm telling you. It's fantastic. Just don't hire from there. No, don't hire from there. Yes. Take your old fridge there. That's where it goes. Right. If for some reason the people bring your new fridge aren't taking away your old fridge, which is really obviously the best situation. But anyways. All right. So Edmonton can clinch second place in the division with a point.
So just getting past regulation or obviously a regulation win. And that would obviously give them home ice advantage in the first round. However, if the Canucks can pull off what I will call the improbable and beat Edmonton in regulation. Then the Edmonton Oilers are going to have to look at the Undertown scoreboard and see what LA and Anaheim are doing.
Because a combination, it's a three-way parlay here, right? Canucks win in regulation. LA and Anaheim win their games tonight. I believe Anaheim is playing Nashville. LA is playing Calgary. If all three of those things happen, the Oilers would fall all the way down to wild card two. and face the Colorado Avalanche in the first round. So, look, is that likely? No.
But it's a downside that I'm sure the Edmonton Oilers are extremely, extremely motivated to avoid. You don't want that. You absolutely do not want to be crossing over to the Central. What's the scenario? Canucks win in regulation. Canucks beat Edmonton in regulation. LA and Anaheim both win. LA is playing Calgary. Anaheim is playing Nashville. They need three separate outcomes.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of hiring a new general manager?
The three-way parlay here?
Yeah. Well, let's be real. It's as important as me laughing at Marc Bergevin and Ron Francis as general manager candidates or presidential candidates in Vancouver. So you need a Ducks regulation win. It needs to be in regulation? No. Okay, Ducks win and a Kings win. Yeah, just any win. It doesn't have to be in regulation. Okay, only 10-1. Plus 935. There you go. So you're saying there's a chance.
There's absolutely a chance. The Canucks just have to take care of their end of things. I'm not going to do the spoiler thing, but if the Canucks can end the season having won four in a row and deny the Edmonton Oilers the easiest path possible to the conference final, that would be great.
I don't care. I don't even care about the three wins before this at all. it would just be hilarious.
And like, we want, you want to talk about giving the fans something to cheer for forcing Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers to not just cross over to play Colorado in round one, but then even if they did pull off a huge upset in round one, having to face the winner of Minnesota, Dallas, like that is a huge, huge FU to the Edmonton Oilers.
If you can pull it off in the last game, here's the other thing for us to track because the Colorado Avalanche are plus 300 to win the Stanley cup. I mean, they are massive favorites.
Yeah.
The Edmonton Oilers currently plus 1,200. So let's come back tomorrow once we know the outcomes of this game and see how much this was priced into the futures odds.
Right. How much it changes as a result of however the standings might end up here. So, I mean, that's really the key thing. to know about the schedule tonight is there is a chance for the Canucks to meaningfully impact the Oilers chances at winning the Stanley cup with a win today, which is incredible. And we'll see if they can do that.
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Chapter 5: How has the Canucks' season performance been evaluated?
Right. Yes.
Where it's just like, what is happening here? It's a, it's a indefensible blunder. And an absurdity that diminishes the game itself. And it needs to change. It's like three on three. Three on three has also become just an absolute catastrophe. And an active league that cared more about their fans and the product would address it
immediately this summer but really would have addressed it proactively because you could see where this was going with the frequency of shootouts shooting up and just you know how intelligently to their credit NHL coaches and people like the Sedin twins have just completely ruined the game state In the West, obviously, the seeding is bad, mostly because of the Pacific imbalance.
But it's not quite as catastrophic. You're not going to get something that's, like, as obviously unfair. Although, damn, you are going to get the second versus the third place team.
You already get two versus three, yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, the playoff format is going to wreak absolute havoc on the playoffs. And that's without even factoring in, you know, if... we had had a play-in, right? The games down the stretch for the Islanders, the Blue Jackets, and the Detroit Red Wings, in which all of those teams completely packed it in and made all of their coaches mad.
So angry.
So angry. Those games would have had consequences. Those games would have mattered.
Todd McClellan would have been in a way better mood last night.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential consequences of the Canucks' decisions?
He says that possibility is bigger than we may have assumed a few days ago. He also brought up and he said not reporting anything, but just throwing it out as a hypothetical. Mark Bergevin as a potential replacement. Irfan Ghaffar today had this tweet. Plenty of talk about the future of many people in the Canucks organization over the last little while. Zero decisions have been made yet.
Whatever choices are made are not only in mind of next four to five years, but you have to set up the foundation for the next 10 to 15. And ownership knows that. Canucks, baby steps.
You guys have barely ever thought on six-month timelines.
Let's try to set up the foundation for next year.
Then we can start talking about 10 years from now. I mean, if these reports are true, right? The Canucks are now, now, with a week left in the season in which it's been obvious that they'd be 32nd place for months, deciding like, hey, we should probably come up with a plan for like a decade here. Yeah.
It's like, it's like, we're really, the Canucks are scrambling at the last minute to chart a course for 10 to 15 years. It's like, guys, you didn't even think two months ahead to have a plan for this moment. What are we talking about? Like you might not be the group that thinks in decades. I don't know. You might not be the group. Never too early to start, I guess, or never too late to start.
Hey, the lack of self-awareness, if these reports are true, is incredible. The other one I wanted to mention is Rick Dollywall today said, you know, the fact that it's taking this long to make decisions tells you, in his words, ownership is thinking hard about blowing this up. Obviously says ownership very unhappy. which makes sense with the way the season has unfolded.
It says everyone in every department is under review. And before I let you give your caption to all of this, you ever like, I'm not a big Oscars guy, but you know, if you just, if you read the people who do cover it really closely, there's like late surges for best picture, right? Like everyone thought this, what this, everyone thought La La Land was going to win it. Right.
But there's a late surge for moonlight. I'm hearing a lot of moonlight chatter. Hopefully the Canucks haven't entrusted this process to Ernst and Young.
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Chapter 7: What role does ownership play in the Canucks' management decisions?
And his contract status. This might be... Next season might be his last year. The Abbotsford succession plan I always thought was a relatively... Elegant solution was the words that I've been using for Rutherford to sort of extend his tenure. But if you get to a point where the organization or ownership's like, hey, we're not actually comfortable with Ryan Johnson as the next GM of the team.
Especially once Rutherford's out.
That's the big question, right? Without your supervision, then that becomes a different matter. And so, you know, I... That dynamic is one to watch, and that's sort of what I kind of take from reading between the lines and sort of putting together the smoke out there from both Sat and Earth. That said, the way that I look at like a Game of Thrones type scenario is as if it were a pond of fish.
Okay.
Sure. Think of it as like a giant pond of koi. Yep. Right? Love that.
Okay.
So you've got, you know, a team's president, Michael Doyle. You've got a team's owner, Francesco Aquilini. You've got Jim Rutherford. You've got some other... Alvin, RJ. Alvin, RJ. You've got some other fish in there too. Guys like Mark Bergevin and maybe Ron Francis. And, you know, some other fishies.
And if they start fighting, I have the habit of being like, okay, I've talked to none of these fish. I don't have any inside information. But I assume that the biggest one will win. And in hockey terms, that's like, who has the most stones? You know, who has the most weight? And it's not Canucks ownership, even though they have decision-making authority.
You know, I mean, this is a group that let Jim Benning manage the team for how many years? Nine?
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Chapter 8: How does the current situation reflect on the future of the Canucks?
It's like you've put the cart before the horse. That cannot play out in this sequence. And to then get to sort of the death of the regular season and be like, oh boy, we've got a press conference to prepare for. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? Do we trust this guy? Do we like his plan?
Well, and can we get a guy in by Monday? Because I still wonder how much of it comes down to that. Can we get a replacement that we feel comfortable with by Monday? And if we're not, maybe it's just Rutherford.
And so let's just say it. Like, this is asinine. This is not how a good organization is run. This isn't how a good lemonade stand is run. You know what I mean? Like, we're more prepared when we do this show. Yeah. Well, you are. Yeah. That's not how a billion-dollar organization is run at the ownership level.
And so the signs of dysfunction, right, to me, honestly, put me sort of in a position where at this point, At this point, there are two options that would suggest to me that this organization has any sense of a plan whatsoever. And one is, it's Rutherford on the dais executing the Abbotsford succession plan.
Because that at least seems sensible, whether you agree with them keeping Rutherford or not. Or if it's ownership on the dais saying, we're doing a complete reset. And I think, honestly, any other solution, any other name you could bring in...
To me, it's going to be another fruit of the poisonous tree situation like we had when they fired Jim Benning, where, hey, it's good that you fired Jim Benning. Oh, it's not good that you did it that way.
Sword Stan Smeal hired Bruce Boudreaux before you picked a hockey operations leader, then hired a hockey operations leader and had the next, you know, 12 months of your franchise's history shaped by the disagreement between coach and management, which you created, right? It's like, that's not better. So... Put it this way. I don't know exactly what's happening.
I don't have the latest information. I'm fascinated by what Sat and Nerf just shared with the market. And we'll see how this plays out. But my concern level is very high.
Yeah. And I'll just throw it out to everyone. We can mention this tomorrow as well. But let's say hypothetically something should go down on Sunday. We're going to do an emergency pod. I've talked to Canberra about that. So you get ready. And if something goes down. Of course. Yeah. Look at that. What else am I going to be doing?
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