Canucks: If Rutherford and Allvin’s moves are synonymous, why does Rutherford get to stay?

In the wake of Patrik Allvin’s firing on Friday morning, I found myself coming back to one thought that just wouldn’t go away. It’s the one posed in the headline.

If Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin’s moves are synonymous, why does Rutherford get to stay on as the Vancouver Canucks‘ president of hockey operations?

As president, Rutherford has had the final say on the Canucks’ moves over the last four years. It wasn’t Patrik Allvin acting alone when the Canucks chose to keep JT Miller over Bo Horvat. It wasn’t Allvin acting alone when the Canucks then committed $92.8 million to the player they knew had issues with Miller.

It wasn’t Allvin alone who decided to let Elias Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, and Ian Cole walk in free agency, only to replace them with Danton Heinen, Daniel Sprong, and Vincent Desharnais (a disasterclass of an offseason that this regime somehow never really owned up to, instead pointing the finger at Miller and Pettersson, along with other issues that were clearly not their fault to explain why 2024-25 went so poorly).

And it wasn’t Allvin’s call alone to head into the “Win for Quinn” season with a weak centre corps and a rookie head coach. It was Rutherford who spearheaded the Canucks’ effort to trade Quinn Hughes, with Wild GM Bill Guerin sharing that Allvin redirected him to Rutherford when Guerin called the Canucks’ GM to discuss a Hughes trade.

So why is Rutherford seemingly off the hook? Why does ownership seemingly feel that removing Allvin as GM and letting Rutherford spearhead the search for a new one is sufficient?

Of course, the only person we will actually get answers from today is Rutherford himself, and it’s not really fair to expect him to answer the question of why he gets to keep his own job. It’s feeling more and more like a necessity for us to hear from Canucks ownership, but as long as Rutherford is in place, the organization seems happy to let him continue to be their head spokesperson.

But in a case like this one, fans have questions that realistically, the guy writing the cheques and making these decisions is the only one qualified to answer. Will they get those answers?