All year, there have been rumblings of discontent in the Vancouver Canucks franchise. British Colombia’s media corps have had a field day covering the ups and downs – mostly downs – of as tumultuous a season as there’s been in recent memory, and now, the morning after the Canucks were eliminated from playoff contention, the axe has fallen.
General Manager Mike Gillis is out the door, following another big name, Roberto Luongo. The difference is, Gillis will head to the unemployment queue while Luongo, trapped in a strange and frustrating goaltending saga in Vancouver, has found a new home and a new lease on life with the Florida Panthers.
In many ways, the mess with the popular Luongo, who was benched in favour of back-up Corey Schneider in the midst of their 2012 playoff run, and, despite whispers that quickly became a dull roar across Vancouver, instead of trading Luongo away in the summer of 2012, it was Schneider who went, heading east and south to the New Jersey Devils, leaving Luongo to step back into the starting role.
The entire episode was as confusing as a badly-written soap opera, and the goalie situation reared it’s ugly head again in Vancouver this season, when Luongo was benched for the team’s outdoor Heritage Classic game in favour of mostly-untested back-up Eddie Lack. Days later, Luongo was off, and the wheels had come right off in Vancouver.
Not-hard-to-believe tales of discontent amongst star players like Ryan Kesler littered the newspapers. Kesler, an American, wanted a trade to a team south of the border, though you wonder if he simply wanted to play anywhere but in the Canucks organisation. As a whole, the team was struggling to adapt to the shot-blocking style of new head coach John Tortorella. All the while, the Canucks, a Western Conference powerhouse who went within sixty minutes of claiming a Stanley Cup in 2011, faded from irrelevance.
In some ways, that 2011 final was the beginning of the end – and certainly a calamitous moment in the history of both the Canucks franchise and the city itself. You know the series: when Luongo inexplicably melted down, when Boston somehow won a Game Seven on Vancouver ice against all the odds. When the city rioted in the aftermath, a black eye for the game and for the city. In many ways, the Canucks haven’t been relevant since. Certainly, they haven’t scaled those lofty playoff heights again
All of this on Gillis’ watch, though it is unfair to pin the hire of Tortorella on him. If you believe the whispers – and I tend to, for these things are rarely made up – it was the owners of the Vancouver Canucks, the Aquilini family, who wanted to hire Tortorella, the former Rangers coach, whose demise in New York with the Rangers had come about because of something approaching a player mutiny.
Gillis was overruled by ownership. It’s hard enough for a GM and coach on good terms to work together, let alone a GM with a coach he didn’t even want. Worse, it was a definite knock on Gillis, whose advice the Aquilini’s listened to but didn’t heed. How’s that for a punch in the gut?
Three years ago, Mike Gillis was the GM of the Year in the National Hockey League. Now, after a “him or me” ultimatum didn’t go in his favour, he’s no longer at the helm of a franchise. Though, perhaps that’s not a bad thing. The situation in Vancouver isn’t great. Aside from working for owners who are happy to overrule their General Manager – you know, the guy they hired to run the hockey operations – the Canucks are in disarray. They’ve traded away two great goalies, have suffered through injuries to key player, and enough bad press to last a lifetime.
In Tortorella, the Aquilini family have a coach who favours a style of game unlike any being played in the Western Conference. That’s not a good thing. Their coach is trying to make that style of game work with an aging roster. Tortorella’s success has come with a much younger roster, more amendable to being moulded the way he wants to mould them, not a club of veterans who aren’t used to the defensive-minded scheme, and, by all accounts, not all that keen on learning.
A year ago, Alain Vigneault was fired because he didn’t put a team on the ice who could score goals, or so the rhetoric out of Vancouver went. Interestingly, the Canucks then went out and hired a guy famous for running a system where goal scoring takes a back seat to shot-blocking and defensive hockey.
Tortorella’s system favours a grind-it-out sort of play, rather than one that keeps the NHL’s in-arena scorers busy. I don’t get that hire. Interestingly, Vigneault (who basically swapped with Tortorella, heading from Vancouver to the New York Rangers) is preparing to take his team to the playoffs.
The hire was a bad one. We might have suspected it at the time, but the dramas throughout the year have pretty much confirmed it. Gillis is gone because the owners don’t want to admit that they were wrong. Also, Tortorella is on 5 years and $10 million, which is a hell of a lot of money to swallow. Along, of course, with their pride. The dysfunction and general lack of communication between the owners and the hockey people at the Canucks is a massive red flag. You can’t win a Stanley Cup with a house so divided.
With the Western Conference as stacked with talent – Chicago, Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Jose, to name just a few – as it is now and appears poised to be for many years to come, this is a time for Vancouver to either sink or swim. They need to win and win quickly next year, or risk being left behind. Whoever comes in as the new General Manager will be straddled with a coach who’s clearly in favour with ownership, and that’s an uphill battle in of itself.
The Aquilini family, in releasing Gillis, said that “a new voice is needed” but you can’t help but wonder if a General Manager who will tow the party line is actually what the Canucks owners want to take their franchise into the future. Gillis obviously didn’t. Tortorella won the battle of ultimatums.
Will that translate to wins and competiveness on the ice? Only time will tell.
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