canucks management and their main shortcoming: interpersonal relationships
i apologize for writing a thesis built off of hate but i fear that in my heart i’m a complainer with lots of opinions, which is why i’m making this post 😭. for those who weren’t around, the management prior to allvin/rutherford — jim benning — was completely inept. believe it or not, we are in better hands right now. with last year’s success, it truly felt like the current group was turning the franchise around — and don’t get me wrong, they have done a lot of good. but since they got here, they’ve had one glaring flaw above all else and it is how they treat/speak about people. it’s becoming harder to ignore and as someone who’s loved this team for so long, it’s so frustrating to see these guys come in and constantly treat people in the organization like shit. so, let’s take a journey! this is literally so long, so if you’re genuinely interested maybe wait until you have more than a couple free minutes to try reading it 😭
a quick table of contents:
the firing of bruce boudreau
the bo horvat trade
threatening petey with a trade so he’d re-sign
asking jt miller to help pettersson get “tougher”
patrik allvin placing blame on his best players, then failing to maintain this opinion
allowing the perception of the miller/pettersson “rift” to spiral out of control
throwing brock boeser under the bus
1. the firing of bruce boudreau
the way allvin/rutherford treated bruce boudreau was their first big misstep as management, and imo remains the most inexcusable. bruce was the head coach brought in right around the same time that jim rutherford was hired, but rutherford didn’t pick him and it became very evident that he (and later on, allvin) wasn’t a fan. bruce was publicly criticized:
"If we were playing in a real strong structure, it would make it easier for our defence to play,'' [Rutherford] told a Vancouver radio station on Nov. 7. "And it wouldn't matter who was on our defence. But right now, we don't have that strong structure, and we need to change the makeup of our defence.''
bruce later said he had thought he was going to be fired after those remarks were made, but they kept him around. for months.
mid-january, after it was being reported nationally that bruce would be fired and rick tocchet was expected to take over, rutherford was quoted saying this:
"All I can say is that Bruce [Boudreau] is our coach right now.”
"But with that, I'm calling and talking, but don't know that we're making a change and don't want to make a change,"
rick tocchet was literally in vancouver as these rumours flying were around, but it was another week before they actually fired bruce.
way to go, jim and patrik.
2. the bo horvat trade
bo horvat was drafted by vancouver in 2013, became captain in 2019, and was traded in 2023. the canucks were essentially going to need to make a choice between miller and horvat, because both played the same position (top 6 centre) and were due for new contracts around the same time. miller wasn’t playing fantastic at this point in his canucks tenure, and the team tried to trade him but weren’t happy with the offers. they ended up re-signing miller in the 2022 offseason, and bo’s future was uncertain. he ended up having a phenomenal start to the year offensively, driving his up price too high, and he was traded.
this year, he said this about that whole situation (emphasis my own):
"I was never mad at [Miller]. Honestly, the way it was all handled is what I was most upset about," Horvat said. "They said one thing, and they did the complete opposite. It's just frustrating when you are told one thing, and the opposite happens. That's not to say I'm not happy where I am right now.
"Obviously, I love Long Island, love being here, and I'm happy to be here, but, yeah, just the way it was all handled rubbed me the wrong way.
the canucks have since traded jt miller as well, so now we have neither 👍
3. threatening petey with a trade to get him to re-sign in-season
when asked about his contract prior to the 2023-2024 season, elias pettersson said he wanted to wait until the off-season so that it wouldn’t be a distraction.
in the 2021-2022 season, he had a slow start to the year after missing training camp due to his lack of contract and starting the season with a wrist injury. he later admitted that the new contract contributed to what was causing this slump:
“I’m probably too honest, but I was a little caught up with like, new contract, missing training camp, expectations were raised.”
— and i suspect that that experience largely contributed to why he didn’t want to sign his new one in-season last year.
this was supported by his agent in january 2024:
“But he wants this team to win too, so he doesn’t like the distraction. We have to balance whether or not we think 'engaging' is a distraction or not, and a lot of that comes down to what the client wants.”
initially, rutherford and allvin implied that they were fine with this:
“There's not anybody getting anxious here,” Rutherford said. “Come the offseason, then things will get a lot more serious if in fact the situation gets to that point.”
however, as they approached the all-star break, their pressure on him to sign ramped up. they threatened to trade him to carolina if he didn’t re-sign prior to the trade deadline:
the Vancouver Canucks and Carolina Hurricanes had discussions about Elias Pettersson that advanced to a stage where both the Canucks and the player needed to make serious decisions about where their relationship was headed.
The Canucks ultimately decided in favour of another attempt at extending Pettersson, and he, facing the possibility Vancouver could move him, allowed agents Pat Brisson and JP Barry to resume negotiations. Previously, the talented forward indicated he preferred to wait until after the season.
he signed a few days later, and i can’t help but wonder how things may have turned out if management had just respected his desire to save the negotiations until after the season so as not to cause distractions. you can say they were just doing their job, but this is a player who had experienced a new contract in-season distracting him in the past and expressed he didn’t want that to be the case this time. He was initially supported by management, until they realized he had been serious — and then the daggers came out.
4. asking jt miller to help pettersson get “tougher”
near the beginning of this season, pettersson and miller had a bit of a physical and verbal scuffle during practice. seemed standard enough in terms of tension between teammates, regardless of their history, but elliotte friedman then reported this:
“I think it was felt that as great as he is, [management] needed him to be tougher.”
“And, what I also believe is that they didn’t want it to be up to Rutherford or Allvin or Tocchet to do it. They really believe in their leadership group; they believe that Hughes is a strong captain, and they believe that Miller is a strong alternate captain and that their group is a strong group. They said, ‘You guys are the ones who have to do it.’ Miller’s obviously taking that very literally.”
I think the message comes harder from some guys – Miller – as opposed to other guys – like Hughes. But I think that’s the goal here. They feel that tough love is the way.
“There’s a couple of other things at play. I don’t think he [Pettersson] always likes it.
at the time, i thought this was a weird call for rutherford/allvin to make. it had already been well-documented at that point that miller and pettersson didn’t have the best relationship, and this was before all the shit about a “rift” even started. so asking miller to participate in this little “toughening up petey” exercise felt like a bad choice to begin with. in hindsight, knowing what happened this season, it’s an even more egregious judgement call on management’s behalf — out of all the guys on the team, your choices include the one petey probably had the worst relationship with? and you didn’t think there might be consequences? way to go!!
5. patrik allvin placing blame on his best players, then failing to maintain this opinion
at the end of 2024, allvin did an interview expressing his general dissatisfaction with the canucks’ season thus far. in it, he was pretty blunt about his opinions on the star players, barring hughes:
“I think it's fair to say that you expect your best players to be the difference-makers, and the best players when you need them. And unfortunately, I think we haven't got the most out of those specific guys. If those guys would have performed to their capability, I think. . . we probably would have won a couple of more games. So it's hard. Do I expect more from them? Absolutely.”
less than a month after making these comments, he did a mid-season availability where he suddenly had a totally different mindset. instead of targeting players’ production, he mentioned the injuries, adversity, and outside noise as reasons why his team was struggling and specifically suggested he was happy with pettersson’s willingness to improve. almost as if his bad cop approach didn’t work, and perhaps made his players even more self-conscious, so he changed direction.
6. allowing the perception of the miller/pettersson “rift” to spiral out of control
to be clear, we still have no clue how significant miller and pettersson’s issues with each other were this season. i’ve generally been of the opinion that things were blown out of proportion, and there was probably more going on that led to miller’s trade. however, i don’t know that and it would be unfair of me to act as if the alternative isn’t a possibility. obviously the trade happened for a reason.
regardless of how serious things were, though, management absolutely fucked up by how much they allowed this to fester. every time the rumours seemed to die down, more came out. whenever a potential miller trade seemed to fizzle out, suddenly a new pettersson rumour popped up. when media and/or fans took the idea that one might need to be traded seriously, it was always discussed as if it was “one or the other.”
jim rutherford, my nemesis by this point, literally caused things to go to shit a few days before the miller trade:
Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford doesn't see any way to keep J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson happy together as teammates.
“It only gets resolved for a short period of time and then it festers again and so it certainly appears like there’s not a good solution that would keep this group together.”
Rutherford told Mason he has held talks with both players to try to get them to see if they could co-exist for the good of the team.
“As you know, sometimes emotions get deep and as much as people try sometimes you can’t get over it. It certainly appears that’s what’s going on here.”
the reason he did this was most likely because he knew the miller trade was imminent and he wanted to make sure the heat was on the players — not management — in case people reacted badly. but it’s incredibly pertinent that despite him placing the blame on both players, and allowing the perception that they had to “choose” either miller or pettersson, jt miller was going to be traded regardless.
allvin made this even more clear in his post-trade meeting with the media:
After orchestrating one of the most impactful mid-season transaction days in franchise history, Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin said Saturday that he never viewed his roster decision as a choice between J.T. Miller or Elias Pettersson.
He viewed it a matter of team culture, involving everyone on the team.
he also implied that the decision to trade miller had begun ~2 months prior (right around his leave of absence — either during it, or directly before/after):
“This was a conversation between myself and J.T. and his agent. It started about two months ago with his health and the environment we had. During the time and during the discussions leading up to yesterday, I felt that he probably needed a fresh start in where he was in his life and in his age, and with his family, (and) that this was the best option for him and the Vancouver Canucks.”
and here is him confirming that this was not just a trade that occurred solely because miller and pettersson didn’t get along:
I wouldn't just say it's about two players; it's about 23 men in a dressing room.
the issue here is obvious, i think: everything that had been leaked to the media up until this point — and in other cases, explicitly stated by the director of hockey operations, jim rutherford — implied that the two of them were refusing to be mature about the situation and couldn’t coexist. it was implied that one of them had to go to change the environment. the fans were always going to equally blame whoever left, as well as whoever stayed, because of this.
and the whole time, they knew that miller would be traded. so why on earth would a management group choose to let all of this drama unfold with petey in the crossfire, and allow him to be blamed and carry the “burden,” when it was never one or the other? throwing a player who is already struggling (and is only 26 years old) under the bus even more, because you as management didn’t bother to contain your in-house drama, is totally unacceptable to me.
7. throwing brock boeser under the bus
that brings us to the catalyst, if you will, for this whole post. after doing nothing at the trade deadline, which meant that pending ufa brock boeser was not traded despite also not yet having a new contract, patrik allvin had this to say:
“If I told you what I was offered for Brock Boeser I think I would have to run out of here because you would not believe me.”
brock is the longest-tenured canuck. he is the only remaining player to have been teammates with the sedins. he has been through so much shit during his time with the canucks, both personal and professional, and yet despite all of this he’s been clear that he wants to stay. and the GM decided to just publicly tell everyone that nobody wanted to pay a good price to trade for him.
brock “read Allvin’s comments about the trade market for him and hasn’t really processed all of it.”
take frank seravalli’s info with a grain of salt, as i always do for canucks news, but he at least believes that because of this, brock is going to go to free agency.
longest-tenured canuck. beloved in the locker room and by the fans. has sacrificed close to a decade of his career to a team that’s made the playoffs twice, and yet still wanted to stay. and our general manager went and fucked all that up because he didn’t want to take accountability. thanks, patrik.
and for the record:
According to multiple sources, Carolina and Vancouver talked earlier in the day, with the Canes telling the Canucks that they needed to finalize the deal with Dallas but would be walking away from that deal with at least one first round pick, which they would then flip to the Canucks. When the Canes eventually called the Canucks (maybe even as soon as 20 minutes before the noon Pacific deadline) offering the first round pick the two sides previously talked about, it appears that it was too late for the Canucks.
is a first-round pick a best-case scenario return for a 40-goal scorer? no. is it so unbelievably bad that patrik allvin would be laughed out of the room by the media? nope, but that’s what he decided to imply about a core piece of this franchise.
in conclusion
this management group has been described as “ruthless,” but capable. sure. jim rutherford has certainly won stanley cups. but the amount of situations that have escalated and/or turned sour because of their inability to be courteous with their staff are becoming too numerous. they’ve never worked in a market that’s as scrutinized as vancouver is by its fans and media before, and they keep doing things that will never fly under the radar.
it’s all relevant to how good the team can be, too. do you think pettersson’s agent, pat brisson — one of the most powerful in the NHL — is happy about how this management has treated petey? do you think he’s going to be rushing to get quinn to sign an extension with them in a few years? do you think quinn will, after seeing how quickly jim and patrik turned on one of his best friends? it isn’t guaranteed that quinn will never again have his own poor stretch of hockey.
will free agents continue to want to come sign here, after seeing the soap opera they allowed to run rampant for months? will they feel comfortable that their position on the team will be safe? you can’t give everyone a no-movement clause, but i’m not sure how many UFAs will be eager to come here without one.
and given that rutherford and allvin are set on not rebuilding, this team won’t become a contender through the draft nor with their prospects — it has to be via trade or free agency.
so good job, jim. way to go, patrik. i’m so happy you guys are in charge of the team i’ve loved for my entire life.
I have acquired the Caps/Pens 24/7 DVD from eBay, so I can finally watch episode one. The sad part about the DVD is that it doesn't have the same soundtrack - they didn't license all the classic songs beyond the one showing on live TV. IIRC this is why I didn't buy the DVD at the time.
Not much worth a comment for the first 10 minutes or so, just a basic intro to the rivalry, the Pens win streak, and the Caps losing streak.
Boudreau was often not a super articulate or motivational speaker. I wonder in hindsight if he was intimidated by the camera? Because he stuck around for several years so he had to be connecting well with the players. I happened to listen to Carbery on the Line Change podcast today too, and there's such a big contrast there.
Boudreau with the ketchup on his mouth during the interview too.
Hang on the Pens locker room has a wall of identical razors. With jersey numbers (and presumably coaches names but I can't read them) above each one. Every razor is held up by two command hooks. It's like that ragebait tiktok come to life.
Now we watch Ovi shave (and possibly flash the cameraman). He has a Gillette sponsorship. And a freaky CCM commercial.
Little kid at a skating event telling Backy about how bad it is the team is losing. And a couple of teenage girls getting to skate holding his hands, aww.
The Pens are having their Christmas party and family skate. Matt Cooke's kid speared Max Talbot. "Oh yeah you play like your dad"
Sad Caps locker room after Boudreau yelled at them for looking sad on the ice.
Varly's having a bad time.
Lol someone biking along the river in Pittsburgh wearing a Caps hat.
Crosby and Fleury as permanent seatmates on the plane. They could totally change if they wanted to but it's just habit! Did that keep going forever?
I want to know what book "Harvard graduate Craig Adams" is reading. They don't show the front cover.
"Suck it Talbo" I love MAF
"Sid's definitely the worst" "I can't believe he's saying he's the best player" "Oh wait I just killed you! ...I didn't say that. I said you're the worst."
"Max is a douche"
Apparently they did get a distribution license for Right Back Where We Started From.
Fleury and Cooke leading the prank on Letestu and Lovejoy. "We're gonna find out who did it and probably do nothing about it."
And then Fleury informs us that Brent is always naked in their hotel room. The camera following him in finds Johnson fully clothed though.
Caps have "a little epidemic going on": Gordo, Brooks Laich, Nemo, Woody, Ian, Louie (I'm not even sure who the last 4 are? Some must be staff? Gordo = Boyd Gordon tho.)
Smitty: "It's hard because it's not like we've got extra guys laying around. We've only got a 23-man roster. We're gonna need most of them to play." This feels very familiar rn.
And Green left practice with a knee injury. Feeling even more familiar today.
GMGM
Omg I forgot about "He probably have sensitive skin, no?" Ovi arguing that Semin shouldnt be ejected for cross-checking a guy in the neck and making him bleed.
🌼🌼🌼
Caps down 4-0 and Hendricks fights Rangers #38, who was that? Its not Avery. Oh and Ovi fighting Dubinski! "Fucking come on for fuck's sake!" But the Rags score #5
Now Hendy fights Avery, but the game ends 7-0. I feel like Varly should have gotten pulled at some point, for his own sake if nothing else.
Ovi inspecting his knuckles after the fight.
And a final voiceover on resilience and the rhythms of hockey.
tsn hockey analyst and former nhl head coach bruce boudreau on the leafs losing mitch
"losing mitch marner, they haven't, and they probably won't, and it's hard to do, replace somebody ... that good a penalty killer, that good on the power play, that good, you know, setting up your number one scorer in auston [matthews] ... maccelli ... I just don't see him moving any needle, to be quite frankly. I don't think pezzetta, I don't think he got a point in montreal last year ... I don't think that's a real big improvement or help for the team."
"right now, they're not better than they were when they lost in seven games to florida."
"marner means so much. I don't care what you say about the playoffs. he still averaged a point a game ... but at the same time, they had to change something. they couldn't go with the same group next year after losing basically for all the years that those guys have been together, so they had to do something. I just don't think they've done enough right now."
full transcript below the cut
"here in toronto, everybody obviously following the mitch marner saga, and I'm sure that you followed it quite closely as well, but I'm just curious. you look back on what brad treliving has done in the last week, it's still an incomplete off-season, but to this point, where are you at with the maple leafs, you know, on their quest to try and get over the hump?"
"yeah, it's interesting. obviously, I follow the leafs quite closely, or I think I do anyway, but they're not better today than they were a month ago. I mean, it's just, you know, nic roy is a good, they've wanted a third line center. I think he can fill the bill between third and, but he played a lot of fourth line center when vegas was a really really good balanced team, so. I think he's a good player, but losing mitch marner, they haven't, and they probably won't, and it's hard to do, replace somebody, a, that's gonna be that good a penalty killer, that good on the power play, that good, you know, setting up your number one scorer in auston [matthews], who will probably be, hopefully be healthy by the time the season starts and stuff. so they haven't, you know. the other little things they've done, for example, maccelli. you know what, for whatever reason, I followed him in arizona because, I think, his first year he did pretty good, and he was an american league guy getting called up, a smaller type guy that did okay. I just don't see him moving any needle, to be quite frankly. I don't think pezzetta, I don't think he got a point in montreal last year. he's a tough guy, and he grew up, I guess, right around the corner from where I lived, so you'd like him to do good, but I don't think that's a real big improvement or help for the team, so. it's going to be interesting where they go. I think matthew knies is going to be closing in on forty goals next year, I think if stolarz can stay healthy, I think they've got a real good goaltending tandem. but as far as them being better right now, they're not, in my mind. I really trust brad treliving to also know this, and he's going to do what it takes to make them better. but right now, they're not better than they were when they lost in seven games to florida."
"yeah, I totally agree. I mean, even if they'd resign marner, they still had to be better, right?"
"yeah, they would have. and if they had to resign marner, they're still not better than florida. but I mean, like, I think if they stay the same, they'll be hard pressed to be in first place, quite frankly, at the end of next year. and marner means so much. I don't care what you say about the playoffs. he still averaged a point a game, I think, in the playoffs. but at the same time, they had to change something. they couldn't go with the same group next year after losing basically for all the years that those guys have been together, so they had to do something. I just don't think they've done enough right now, and I hope that somewhere down the road there's another trade to get a top six forward, 'cause nick robertson's not going to do it either, I think, be able to do the job. but we don't know. we'll see. I still think it's a long summer yet, and teams will be talking right up 'till the end of september before they start. so we'll see."
Karl Alzner describes the first time he and John Carlson ordered room service ice cream as rookies roommates together when they made the NHL, and the rest of the Caps wax rhapsodic over his crossword skills.
we stand with papa Bruce and I hope he goes on to do greater things like becoming the gm somewhere else or coaching a team to the cup or becoming the prime minister of canada bc he can 😤
throw the entire canucks organization away; garbage, trash, embarrassing, a little ant that i crush-
Guys today I met Travis Konecny, Thatcher Demko, Tom Wilson, Nik Antropov, Bruce Boudreau and I saw Sarah Nurse but didn’t take a picture because we were on a rush.
