On an emotional level, this last week has been a tough one for Vancouver Canucks fans.
We've seen beloved players Eddie Lack and Kevin Bieksa shipped off to new homes, and the Montreal Canadiens are convinced that Zack Kassian is going to be the answer to their offensive woes.
Yesterday, the dismissal of front-office figures Laurence Gilman, Lorne Henning and Eric Crawford sent another round of shockwaves through the fanbase.
As Paul Chapman points out in
The Morning Skate over at
The Province, the dismissal of the management types has created a rare consensus among the paper's hockey writers. Ed Willes, Tony Gallagher and Jason Botchford are all seeing red flags.
Yesterday's announcement didn't create nearly the same level of panic for me. In any type of business, it's pretty normal to see high-level advisors gradually get moved out after a big regime change.
If anything, this all seems quite methodical—that Trevor Linden and Jim Benning took a full year to see how things have been done and learn from the old management group, then cut ties after the big work of the draft and free agency was complete. I assume this plan has been in the works for awhile.
Botchford says that Benning's going to be picking up a lot of the scouting work that had previously been done by Eric Crawford.
Benning is proven to be a great talent evaluator when it comes to selecting amateur players in a draft, but can he be a great GM and can he do it without people like Laurence Gilman who know the league, the CBA and the cap inside and out?
And is Benning really going to absorb some of, or all of, Eric Crawford’s role? (which was the initial indication).
Crawford managed both pro and amateur scouting and they would be appear to be monumental responsibilities to add to a GM’s daily routine.
Can Benning really take on more responsibilities when he already has one of the most difficult-to-execute concepts in hockey — rebuild and win, all at the same time?
If Benning spends more of his energy in the area where he's strongest—scouting—and leaves some of the other elements of the job—like, say, contract negotiations—to team members who are stronger in those areas, I don't think that has to be a bad thing.
Even as Benning has been roasted for the juicy contract extensions that he has handed to Luca Sbisa and Derek Dorsett, consider the fact that, unlike the Gillis regime, he's not handing out massive long-term deals. Chris Tanev got five years at reasonable money. Dorsett got four years. But even Sbisa's contract is only three years long and the deals he executed over the last week were all quite short—one year for Bartkowski, Weber, Beiga, Cannata, Fedun, and two years for Markstrom and Bachman. And other than those first free-agency deals with Ryan Miller and Radim Vrbata, there's not a no-trade clause in the bunch.
For me, the big housecleaning does bring back memories of the late '90s, when Pat Quinn's firing in November of 1997 ultimately led to a downward spiral that hit bottom with a 58 point season in 1998-99, the year that Pavel Bure held out and was eventually traded to Florida.
Those lean years were painful but the team found its way, and it will again.
I want to see what happens as Linden and Benning go all-in on their philosophy in Year 2 of the rebuild.
Prospects Camp Starts Monday
So—with an eye to the future, here's the info I was after yesterday, regarding the Canucks development camp in Shawnigan Lake.
Though I speculated yesterday that goaltending prospect Thatcher Demko would be absent due to his hip surgery, he is slated to attend—he just won't take part in any on-ice activities.
The roster does include familiar names like Cole Cassels, Jake Virtanen, Jared McCann and Jordan Subban, as well as brand new draft picks Brock Boeser, Guillaume Brisebois, Dmitry Zhukenov, Carl Neill, Adam Gaudette, Lukas Jasek and Tate Olson—all seven new acquisitions.
The biggest splash so far has been made by 25-year-old goaltender John McLean, who's listed at a whopping 6'9".
On-ice workouts kick off on Monday morning.
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