Rob Williams: New coach and a new front office. What do they foresee for the Canucks captaincy and Elias Pettersson's future?
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Getting towards the weekend here on Sakaris and Price featuring Jeff Patterson and now bringing in Rob, the hockey guy, Rob Williams from the Daily Hive. He's soon to become Rob, the soccer guy. It's like a snake shedding its skin at the beginning of the season. You're beginning to change over. We'll get to that in just a second here, Rob. Did you just call him a snake? I did, yes. Naturally, not behaviorally.
So he struck me as a very pleasant fella.
It's true. Best I could come up with. Like a molting mammal? I don't know. A leopard changing his spots. The Canucks continue to make some news here deep into June. There's press conferences galore here this week. An announcement of a possible director of player development here in Dean Hermiston as well. They are the gift that keeps on giving here, this rebuilding team, huh?
Vibes are high. I think that... Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day where, you know, you've got Manny Malhotra gets hired and we get not one, but two pressers out of it, right? We get Ryan Johnson from Buffalo and then we get both of them, you know, a couple of days later. And it's not like a thing that the team's dodging or like it's like no bad news comes out of it. Like just everything's positive. I thought Manny... hit all the right notes, answered everything really confidently. And I think it's been the same from all the guys, right? Like the Sedins, Ryan Johnson, Manny Malhotra, they've all like they haven't said anything to like set a five alarm blaze. They've answered confidently and concisely and clearly all the questions that have been posed to them.
They seem like they have an idea of what they want to do. They're also not painting themselves into a box where they're really nailed down to one thing or the other. And I haven't got the sense that they're like really dodging questions either. So they've really found that right, that right balance and, and yeah, And look, until they start making the wrong draft picks and making poor trade, they haven't had a blemish on their record yet.
What front-office and coaching changes did the Canucks announce this week?
So it's easy so far. And these are beloved figures in the market. So it's going to be a PR home run to begin with. But I think beyond that, I've been really impressed with how they've handled themselves. At least in terms of dealing with the media, they've got that part down.
Somewhere Jim Rutherford sitting and thinking, one, two, three media availabilities, and there hasn't been a headline yet. What's going on with this group? Look, that's the way he operated. It's so clear here. They've talked about organizational alignment and cohesion. Just listening to Manny yesterday, and I can't remember if you were around when Ryan Johnson was here as a player, Rob, but It struck me. There were so many similarities to the way Manny and Ryan approached the game as players. They were methodical. They sort of focused on some of those areas that aren't the most glamorous in the game but are important to team success. And all these years later, you can see why they had success in Abbotsford.
Those two guys just really do feel like they are in lockstep.
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't on the media. I was in Vancouver, but not on the media scene when they were around as players. But, I mean, I remember following along where... Wasn't it the captain skates where Manny Malhotra got the whiteboard out? Like, when he first joined the team, like, he screamed that he was going to be a future coach, right? Like, that just... That was, like, not surprising at all. And, yeah, I just... It's... it's, it's really cool. I think the fact that they've got, we've got all these former Canucks players here, there, there is, there's this part in the back of my mind with all of these hires where like the vibes are high and everything. And I've sort of got this voice in the back of my mind though, where I'm like, Oh, some of this reminds me a little bit of the, of the Trevor Linden president experience.
I know it's different. He didn't have any experience before he got into that job where these guys have paid their dues a lot more for sure in management.
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