Welcome Matt: Canucks' Allvin has plenty to prove in second year on job

Jan 26 2023, 8:14 pm

sekeres and price

Not sure Patrik Allvin is celebrating his first-year anniversary as GM of the Vancouver Canucks given the events of last weekend.

But hey, he’s got the coach he wants and we can start judging him from here.

For now, I’m going incomplete on the grade because we don’t know how much of this past year has been his vision and how much of it was the vision of president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford. Think that was clear when Allvin explained Sunday that the decision to fire Bruce Boudreau had been weighing on him from the jump.

I say incomplete because I don’t think the J.T. Miller or Bo Horvat decision was an Allvin call. I think it was made by Rutherford and chairman Francesco Aquilini.

I suspect the smaller potatoes like trading Jason Dickinson, Mikey DiPietro, Travis Hamonic and drafting first-round pick Jonathan Lekkerimäki were more Allvin’s speed.

This Andrei Kuzmenko re-signing today locks up a fine young player who has chemistry with Elias Pettersson, but at the cost of more cap space committed on the wing, and means the team has less trade capital at the deadline.

The Canucks aren’t winning a Cup in the next two years anyway, so this is another short-sighted move unless it locks up Elias long-term.

As we talked about yesterday, Allvin is going to have to ascend in this organization with Rutherford vowing to zip-it and given the succession plan that was always in place.

Next year, I’ll have a grade. In the interim, Allvin has plenty to prove.

Matthew SekeresMatthew Sekeres

+ Offside
+ Hockey
+ Canucks
+ Sekeres and Price
ADVERTISEMENT