Let's start with some happy news out of Minsk this morning. Kevin Bieksa has been named captain of Team Canada for the World Championships.
Here's a story on the team and its preparations, from
The Globe and Mail.
Bieksa's also the first captain to come out of NCAA hockey since 1999 captain Rob Blake—this year's general manager.
This is an impressive honour. I think it speaks to the leadership that Bieksa has shown with the Canucks—this year in particular—as well as his emotional style of play. I'm hopeful that this new experience in Europe will be a good experience: a chance to help erase some of the bad energy that surrounded the end of the season.
The tournament starts tomorrow, with Canada facing France in an early game at 6:30 a.m.
Competition for Top Candidates:
After Ron Hextall signed on as GM in Philadelphia and Ken Hitchcock was extended for a year in St. Louis on Wednesday, it got me thinking about the state of the market for hockey's best and brightest this summer.
Top jobs are usually pretty scarce, but there are quite a few openings already this year: GM and coaching jobs here and in Washington as well as coaching gigs in Florida and Carolina. And who knows what's going on in Toronto?
That's quite a lot of competition, which I think is why we're seeing teams move quickly to lock up their incumbents, before they really get a chance to start exploring their options.
This could be bad news for the Canucks. After the train wreck of a season that has just passed, candidates might be reticent about the working environment here in Vancouver, or about how much power and autonomy they'll have under Trevor Linden, who's promising to be very involved.
For the Canucks, it's not just a matter of finding a promising candidate, it's also about getting him to agree to join the organization. That gets tougher if he has options.
The team has to get a GM in place before we can start to get any sense of what's going to happen on the ice next season.
A_SteamingLombardi commented yesterday that the Canucks' new team could end up being GM Laurence Gilman and coach Glen Gulutzan. Some sarcasm, I think, but it could turn out to be pretty close to the mark.
I'm hoping for new blood. We've already come this far down the road of change, so let's finish the job. But I'm getting nervous as I see other teams locking down their situations for next season. I hope we're not the team with nowhere to sit when this game of musical chairs comes to an end.
Do you think Alain Vigneault's job is in danger if the Rangers can't bounce back from their awful performances over the past three games?
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