A New Name in the GM Sweepstakes: Scott Howson
Thanks to Nucker for picking up Elliotte Friedman's "30 Thoughts" column from Sunday, where he mentions that former Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Scott Howson could be on the Canucks' radar for the GM position.
Click here to read.
Call me crazy, but I don't mind this idea. Columbus was a team in flux for much of Howson's tenure, but he put a lot of solid pieces in place that have the team looking at a bright future ahead.
Howson joined the Jackets in June 2007, just before the draft, and was fired in February of 2013.
Click here to take a look at the team's draft record over that time.
There's a lot of love for Jakub Voracek and Ryan Johanson on this board. I was also very impressed with Ryan Murray and especially Boone Jenner during the Jackets' first-round playoff series against Pittsburgh. Howson has just one true first-round clunker in his collection—Nikita Filatov—but makes up for it with some solid late-round selections like Cam Atkinson, Matt Calvert and Dalton Prout, who all contributed during the playoffs.
The Rick Nash trade saga dragged on far too long but Howson got a solid return when he did make that deal in September 2012: Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, Tim Erixon and a first-rounder look pretty good, especially with Nash's horrible playoffs so far.
Howson also made the deal that brought in Sergei Bobrovsky in the summer of 2012, giving up only a second-rounder and two fourth-rounders for the player who won the Vezina Trophy the following season and is now the anchor for the Jackets' recent success. He has also given up just five goals in four games for the undefeated Russians over at the World Championships so far.
Before his time in Columbus, Howson was assistant GM with Edmonton from 2002 to 2007. He returned to the Oilers as a scout a month after he was let go from the Blue Jackets, then was elevated to senior vice-president of hockey operations a month after that.
The fact that Howson would have been a key member of the Oilers' braintrust during the disastrous summer of 2013 is certainly concerning. Other than Edmonton's run to the finals in 2006, he doesn't exactly bring that "winning culture" model that Vancouver should be looking for, but it seems like Howson's pretty solid in the areas of the player development and talent analysis. I think he's worth considering.
More on Ray Shero:
Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't feel like Ray Shero will turn out to be a true candidate here in Vancouver.
Botchford has some thoughts on Shero
here, breaking down some pros and cons. He says it "doesn't get much better than the James Neal trade." I couldn't disagree more.
Neal's a big power forward who has put up good numbers in the regular season, but he's now weighed down with baggage. A series of suspensions has left him with a reputation as a dirty player. He's had concussion issues. And he was terrible in the playoffs—not just because of his lack of production but also his untimely penalties. Neal was a definite liability in those last three games against the Rangers—and he's signed for another four seasons at $5 million a year.
Matt Niskanen has turned out to be the gem of that trade with Dallas, but he's now a UFA who will be almost impossible for Pittsburgh to re-sign under their current salary structure.
Here's a blast for the past for me—I did my very first writing about the Canucks for LCS Hockey back in the dark days of the 90s. Based out of Pittsburgh, editor Michael Dell has cranked up the LCS machine again recently, and put up a VERY detailed post about the Penguins' salary structure last night, and how it compares to recent cup-winners.
Click here to take a look.
His basic conclusion is that the Penguins simply have too much money locked up in their top three/top six forwards to build enough depth through four lines.
It's a blessing and a curse to have talented—and expensive—players like Crosby and Malkin. And the cap rollback means that big deals signed before the lockout have bigger impacts than were originally foreseen. But Shero has been tinkering with his lineup ever since 2009 and still hasn't found a way to get his team back over the playoff hump. I find this troubling.
Elliotte talks about this issue in his "30 Thoughts" as well, and also mentions this detail: "Shero had a clause giving him final say on hockey decisions." With the management structure here in Vancouver, he certainly wouldn't get that same authority if he was to sign on with the Canucks.
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