No matter who the Vancouver Canucks hire to succeed John Tortorella, it's almost guaranteed that things won't be quite as interesting around the team next year.
So much has happened, no one's even remembering back to his screaming match with Oilers' assistant Keith Acton from the first weekend of the year—setting the tone on Hockey Night in Canada for a tumultuous season ahead. I wonder if all the attention heaped on the coach this year is part of what took a toll on the players? After all, aren't they supposed to be the stars?
Regardless, the door has now closed, and I don't imagine Torts will be coming back to Vancouver to take the reporters out for burgers and beers and explain his system. An opportunity lost.
I'm assuming the Canucks are starting to consider possible replacements for Tortorella, but the general manager's job is at the top of the to-do list.
Jonathan Willis has a thorough but unenthusiastic evaluation of the latest name being tossed around, Los Angeles Kings' co-director of amateur scouting Mike Futa in the Edmonton Journal. Click here if you haven't seen it yet.
There's also an interesting breakdown on The Hockey News' website today, looking at the shift in general manager hires away from high-profile players from the Old Boys' Network. Click here for that story.
The article features a good breakdown of today's top candidates, but I'm not so sure Ken Campbell's thesis actually works. I mean, prototypical "old boy" Brian Burke's playing career only went as far as college hockey, which is significantly less substantial than, say, Marc Bergevin's 1,191 NHL games.
I always think of Dallas GM Jim Nill as a player first. He was on the '82 Canucks! Nill played 524 NHL games in a career that ended in 1990 so yes, he served a long apprenticeship in Detroit before getting his call to the throne.
The story looks closely at Futa, Jim Benning and Nashville's AGM Paul Fenton and gives the inside track on the Canucks' job to Benning.
I've seen a few people mention in the comments that Boston won't give Benning permission to leave until after the draft, but haven't seen a source for that. Can anyone direct me to the origin of that idea?
It seems unlikely to me, given that Trevor Linden mentioned twice in his press conference on Thursday that he hadn't gotten any pushback from the organizations he'd contacted regarding candidates. He even said at one point that he was pleasantly surprised by the lack of pushback, so he certainly didn't sound like he was being blocked in any way from pursuing his presumed No. 1 candidate. He's still selling the idea of having someone in place by the end of May, so either (a) he's not that interested in Benning after all or (b) there's no issue here.
I know Nucker has been pushing hard for Anaheim's AGM David McNab but really, there's no buzz at all around his name. He's not even mentioned—yet?—in Jonathan Willis' rather extensive list of possibilities at the bottom of his story on Futa.
I hate to rain on Nucker's parade, but one glaring black mark I see on McNab is the fact that he'll be 60 next year. I think the team will want to try to go younger in their selection. Futa's 46, Benning's 51. Ron Hextall is 49. Hextall also had a pretty significant NHL career, though he has paid his dues since then in managerial roles with the Kings and Flyers.
McNab has been with the Ducks for more than 20 years. At his age, there's a good chance that his life is pretty settled and he's looking towards retirement rather than trying to make a splash in an unknown, potentially volatile situation.
If anyone has any interviews with McNab or other information suggesting that he is interested in making a move, please share them in the comments.