The Canucks clean house: The bitter and the sweet of it

Son Brady, a goaltender, is involved with the junior team as well. Boudreau’s son Ben is the head coach of the ECHL’s Fort Wayne Komets, a team Boudreau coached from 1993-95, during his 17-year run coaching all over the minor pro map before his NHL break.

Another son, Andy, played university hockey in Ontario, and the entire family has for years run a successful hockey camp in St. Catharines.

Boudreau used to rent a separate room in the hotel they stayed at during the August camp just to house all of the stuff he had collected during the season to give away to the campers, including dozens of signed sticks and jerseys. The look on his face as he showed it off to a visitor was priceless.

We’ve spoken periodically to Boudreau in the almost two years since he was fired by the Minnesota Wild. And even though he did a lot of television and there were the junior teams, there was a great void in his life.

It’s why he agreed to be on Claude Julien’s coaching staff for two upcoming international tournaments.

Now he and Scott Walker, who was also supposed to join Julien’s staff on the Canadian team, will have more pressing matters as they try to revive the fortunes of one of the NHL’s sorriest teams, the Canucks.

And he’ll make this team better. His history tells us that. The Canucks will play with more pace and they’ll – in theory – learn to have some more fun. Although the fun bar has been set pretty low as Vancouver has staggered to an 8-15-2 record, which is good for last place in the Pacific Division.

Our guess is Boudreau is already been thinking about ways to unlock the mystery that is Elias Pettersson. And during Monday’s morning skate, Boudreau took time to chat with Brock Boeser, reminding him how he used to eat up his Wild and that if he starts shooting more, good things will happen.

“There’s keys to the offensive players that I think I can help with,” Boudreau said.

So, that’s the sweet part of it. A good guy gets to do what he loves doing. And the game is better with Boudreau behind the bench.

The bitter part?

Well, where to start?

How did a team that two years ago seemed poised to rejoin the NHL’s elite after a preliminary round victory over Minnesota and first-round upset of the defending-champion Blues completely off the map? And why did it take ownership so long to see that its prized possession was a tire fire? And more to the point, what part did ownership meddling play in creating that tire fire?

Even how this unfolded has an air of calamity to it.

As one longtime executive noted on Monday after owner Francesco Aquilini, in concert with interim GM and lifelong Canuck Stan Smyl, decided to clean house by firing GM Jim Benning, assistant GM John Weisbrod, head coach Travis Green and assistant coach Nolan Baumgartner: “isn’t all this a little backwards?”

There is currently an active search for a new GM, and as owner Aquilini alluded to several times during a Monday press briefing in Vancouver, possibly a president of hockey operations.

But the search for the coach, usually conducted by the GM and/or head of hockey ops, is already completed with Boudreau locked up for this season and next.

Maybe there’s no good way to make the wholesale kinds of changes that the Canucks were compelled to make. And really, firing both your coach and GM a quarter of the way into a season is as big an acknowledgement of widespread organizational failure as there can be, no?

But surely there’s a better way than how this all unfolded with Green twisting in the wind for the past couple of weeks while rumors that management was coach shopping were swirling about the team.

And credit Green, a good coach who will find work again and be better for this experience for handling this with grace and dignity.

He deserved better from his players, that’s for sure. And he deserved better from management and ownership.

Aquilini admitted that perhaps he was too optimistic, too patient.

“We could have maybe done it sooner, I don’t know,” Aquilini said.

He also acknowledged that whoever takes over as GM will need to communicate more about the Canucks' vision, which is something for which Benning, who rarely made himself available for comment, was criticized.

Certainly if Boudreau does what he’s done in the past with struggling teams, it will take some of the heat off the real work, which is redefining the identity of this team on and off the ice. This starts with the hiring of a new GM and possibly a president of hockey ops.

“Everything’s on the table,” Aquilini said.

Everything apparently includes the option of having a president of hockey operations who would work in lockstep with a new GM. Everything apparently means the door is at least theoretically open to former employees – presumably a reference to former GM Mike Gillis and/or possibly his former assistant GM Laurence Gilman.

Aquilini was asked about former Montreal GM Marc Bergevin, who was fired last week. Although Aquilini said he had not spoken to Bergevin and it seems ludicrous to think that he would be a legitimate candidate considering the chaos in Montreal, Aquilini did reiterate that all options would be considered.

Our first calls would be to Jim Rutherford and/or Ray Shero. Both men have won Cups and have navigated difficult waters with superstar-laden teams. They have the chops to come in and create an identity, and if the structure demanded it, to work with a younger GM.

Some have pointed to a moment in the Canucks' last game, a desultory loss to Pittsburgh, where a disgruntled fan threw a Vancouver jersey on the ice, as a kind of line in the sand. And Aquilini acknowledged that last game was difficult to watch. But the problems that plague this team are deep.

The drafting has been below average, and the construction of the current roster is fatally flawed.

It will be difficult, if not impossible, for a new GM to make meaningful roster changes without resorting to offseason buyouts, which will mean even more pain down the line. And that may be what it takes.

So, not only will Aquilini et al. have to make the correct call in filling the management role — or roles — but the owner will also take a long look at how he interacts with the people he entrusts with his team.

He insisted his role as owner is to support his GM. Managers manage, coaches coach and players play, the lines can’t be crossed, Aquilini insisted.

He will have to be good to his word or whoever walks through the door in the coming days will struggle to lead this team back to relevance.

Other teams have done the hard work.

Minnesota GM Bill Guerin took a hard look at the Wild’s roster and the culture in the room and bought out Ryan Suter and Zach Parise. The Wild are in first place in the Central Division, but the next few years will require deft handling of the roster because of the buyout penalties.

He did so with the support, but not the meddling, of ownership in Minnesota.

So change can be effected, but it takes the right people to make the right, often painful decisions.

And they have to be left alone to do the work that needs to be done.