STELLAR & CELLAR
Shanahan has Matthews, Tavares and playoff aspirations; Linden has young talent and fingers crossed
One of the joys of expressing any opinion related to the Vancouver Canucks in a public forum is half your audience believes you’re a craven apologist for the organization and the other half believes you’re a know-nothing troll exercising a personal agenda against their team.
There are even those rare and wonderful moments when you are both within the space of two paragraphs. This is the sports writer’s harmonic convergence.
But, against all odds, one of this space’s many admirers raised an interesting point during a recent back-andforth and, given the events of last weekend, it’s also timely.
Trevor Linden was hired as the Vancouver Canucks’ president on April 9, 2014. Brendan Shanahan was hired as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ president two days later.
As you may be aware, the Canucks and Leafs have taken divergent paths since both men took over their respective franchises. The Leafs are coming off a 105-point season, have just signed John Tavares and appear to be positioned for a long run as an elite NHL team.
The Canucks are coming off 26th-, 28th- and 29th-place finishes and while they’ve assembled some good young pieces, they appear to be two seasons away from competing for a playoff spot … and that’s being generous.
So where did the Leafs go right and where did the Canucks go wrong? How have the Leafs reinvigorated their franchise, while the Canucks failed in their stated goal of remaining competitive while rebuilding their core? Obviously, the answers to those questions would fill a book, but we’ve been given 1,000 words to enlighten the masses. With that in mind, here are some thoughts. Excuse us if we paint with broad strokes.
There are a couple of things that stand out about the teams Linden and Shanahan inherited and their early moves. For starters, both the Canucks and Leafs were coming off disappointing seasons: 84 points and 12th in the East for the Leafs in 2013-14; 83 points and 12th in the West for the Canucks. Both teams also featured largely veteran cores. And both teams had experienced head coaches: John Tortorella and Randy Carlyle.
Linden, of course, came in and immediately cleaned house. GM Mike Gillis had been fired the day before Linden took over and Tortorella went soon after. After one season, assistant GMs Lorne Henning and Laurence Gilman were also let go along with director of player development Eric Crawford.
Linden’s new hockey department would include GM Jim Benning and assistant GM John Weisbrod. Willie Desjardins was hired to replace Tortorella. That first summer, the Canucks signed Ryan Miller and Radim Vrbata to fairly significant freeagent deals and traded for Derek Dorsett and Linden Vey. Nick Bonino, Luca Sbisa and a first-rounder were added in a forced trade with Anaheim for Ryan Kesler.
The Canucks would rip off 101 points that season and make the playoffs, largely because Daniel and Henrik Sedin finished in the top 10 in NHL in scoring.
The plan seemed to be working. Then it didn’t.
Shanahan, meanwhile, waited a year to restructure his hockey department. Carlyle was fired during the 201415 season and Dave Nonis, the GM Shanahan inherited, was let go after the season. The Leafs then hired Mike Babcock as their head coach and Lou Lamoriello as their GM. Wunderkind Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter were already in place as assistant GMs.
This was the start of Shanahan’s vision for the Leafs — the much-ballyhooed Shana-plan — and it began with the hockey department. Babcock was the best head coach available and signed a groundbreaking eight-year deal. Lamoriello is a Hall of Famer in waiting. Dubas is one of the game’s bright young minds. Hunter could have been the GM of his own team.
The new front office was also aware of the plan and executed it with discipline and precision. The bloated contracts of Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf were dealt away. Joffrey Lupul and Stephane Robidas were disappeared.
Resisting the urge to sign other big-name free agents, the Leafs would record 68and 69-point seasons, respectively, in Shanahan’s first two years. That yielded the fourthand first-overall picks, which turned into Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews, and the Leafs were on their way.
Now Matthews was a product of blind luck, but the moves that took place in and around the 2016 draft were not. Kessel didn’t fetch much, but he did produce a firstrounder, which along with a second-rounder turned into Freddie Andersen. The Leafs made their splash in free agency — Patrick Marleau last year, Tavares this year — after their young core had been assembled.
While this was going on, they built a powerhouse with their American Hockey League affiliate, the Toronto Marlies, who featured Leafsin-waiting like Travis Dermott, Carl Grundstrom, Andreas Johnsson, Garret Sparks and Miro Aaltonen during this spring’s run to the Calder Cup. The Marlies’ head coach, Sheldon Keefe, is also one of the rising stars in his profession.
They’ve ticked a lot of items off their to-do list in the space of four seasons. Then there’s the Canucks. The encouraging news is they’re in the process of assembling their young core and better days may be ahead. The more sobering news is if everything breaks their way, they might be in the place the Leafs were two seasons ago.
As for the larger questions about the direction and administration of the franchise, they remain largely unanswered.
After four years, Linden has put together an organization — head coach Travis Green, assistants Manny Malhotra and Nolan Baumgartner, director of amateur scouting Judd Brackett and Utica Comets GM Ryan Johnson — that should grow with the team. They’ll be entrusted with developing the organization’s good young players into a competitive NHL team.
It’s just unclear how long that will take.
Looking back, it’s now apparent the Canucks erred in a couple of areas. The Sedins’ big season in 2014-15 created the illusion the competitive life of that team could be extended. They didn’t exactly mortgage the future, but several of their big moves — signing Loui Eriksson, trading for Erik Gudbranson and Brandon Sutter, other signings — were made to keep the Canucks relevant in the standings while they rebuilt the nucleus. It just didn’t work out that way.
On his way out the door, Tortorella warned the Canucks’ core was stale and you wonder where they’d be right now if they took the organization down to the studs four years ago. You also wonder if a more experienced executive would have encouraged that direction.
In all likelihood they’re still looking at another season at or near the bottom of the standings. That will be four seasons in a row if you’re scoring at home.
When he signed his megadeal, Babcock promised there would be pain coming before the Leafs turned things around. Turned out that pain lasted two seasons. Yes, they got lucky with Matthews, but the young centre is hardly the only difference between the Leafs and the Canucks.
In Vancouver, the pain continues. Relief may be coming, but right now it’s a distant speck on another horizon.