The wait for the Vancouver Canucks to confirm their new front office already feels interminable, and we cannot help but ponder why there might be a delay in announcing what it will all look like. While it is probably something as simple as sorting out the contracts required, a game of what-if suggests deeper issues.
What If the Delay Is About More Than Contracts?
Let us play a game of what-if. What if this is about something else, about how the search has played out and the possibility it has left Ryan Johnson feeling frustrated by the process. It got me thinking of what happened with the Cleveland Browns earlier this year: it was widely assumed that veteran defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz would become the team’s new head coach. But management had other plans, looking at a younger option in the LA Rams’ Nate Scheelhaase. Word got out that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam basically made it a requirement that any new coach would only be approved if they kept Schwartz on — except that Schwartz did not want to stick around. And so the Browns hired a whole other candidate, a little out of left field, in former Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator Todd Monken.
The reason I thought of all this is how things have played out for Johnson: widely believed to be president Jim Rutherford’s first choice to take over for Patrik Allvin. Johnson remains in the mix we believe, but clearly has not won the GM position outright as it seems Evan Gold is the preference of at least some members of the ad hoc search committee ownership and management apparently assembled.
Could the Canucks Follow a Similar Path?
And so we came to Friday’s news that perhaps the team would try to have both veteran assistant general managers work in the same front office; it might work but it is hard not to think of it as two parties being shoved together by circumstance, rather than process. In the Browns’ case, Schwartz left the scene altogether and so management’s choice of Scheelhaase did not get hired either. Makes you think anyway.
The Search Process
The search started with Ryan Johnson, then they spoke to 17 or 18 candidates according to Rutherford, most of whom we understand were rather similar to Johnson in terms of current position and experience. Rutherford’s inclination was to look around the next wave of NHL managers and it sure seems like he did. But what did ownership really think of the pool of candidates? It seems they are about to hire a third-straight general manager, which is perhaps surprising for an owner who has long been understood to like to feel that he is able to bring in star talent. Did he want to find a star GM? And in the process did he come to realize that finding a star GM was not in the cards?
In the end we are supposed to get a new GM this week and all this pondering will surely be for naught.
Whitecaps Ownership Search
There remains no formal bids for the Caps. But there are a few groups who have at least started kicking tires; whether they come to a different conclusion from the 30 or so groups that laid out their financial means to Goldman Sachs and were given access to the Whitecaps’ books and did not bid remains to be seen. As I wrote earlier this week, the Caps’ revenue challenges remain. They need to find ways to sell more and bigger sponsorships. That likely needs taking over bigger control of B.C. Place. And even then they may struggle. There is also the standing question of a future stadium. There remains the memorandum of understanding between the team and the city of Vancouver at Hastings Park, but as everyone knows by now that will be a very complicated project if it is pulled together. The balls all remain up in the air.
