Hansen gives brutally honest Canucks assessment: 'Rebuild should have been done four years ago'
Vancouver Canucks fans have called for a rebuild before, but the request has fallen on deaf ears.
The Canucks have never gone in that direction, but one of their former players thinks that it might finally be time for the organization to rebuild.
Jannik Hansen appeared on Sportsnet 650’s Canucks Central on Friday, where hosts Dan Riccio and Satiar Shah told the former winger that most fans were in favour of going the rebuild route.
“Yeah, I think I would be on board with that too,” Hansen replied.
The 39-year-old referenced Canucks’ Pacific Division rivals such as the Anaheim Ducks and Edmonton Oilers, who went through extended periods of suffering before collecting talented crops of young players.
“You can’t go into a season and say, you know what, Vancouver Canucks, that’s the team to beat this year,” Hansen said. “The way the team is constructed, the way you’re doing things, always subtracting and adding. Like, they’re just not getting the players you need in the quantities you need.”
Hansen mentioned that the Canucks, despite having good players, need much more in their lineup.
“Don’t get me wrong. Quinn Hughes, [Thatcher] Demko, when he’s healthy, [Elias Pettersson] of three years ago. Those are the type of players you can see yourself winning with.”
“But, you need four more. And you don’t have the draft capital to get these players unless you get extremely lucky and you find somebody in the sixth round or in the fourth round that all of a sudden is a top-five player. And we know how hard these players are to find.”
The Canucks appeared to stumble into drafting three franchise pillars in 2014, 2017, and 2018 when they snagged Demko, Pettersson, and Hughes, respectively.
But now, Demko can’t stay healthy, and Pettersson’s production has fallen off a cliff. That’s nullified any potential Stanley Cup aspirations that the Canucks had.
And, as Hansen mentioned, they’d need more than that anyway.
“Thinking you can trade your way to a centre now that that’s going to push you over the top, or find it in the UFA market with somebody who is 30 years old, like, it’s not going to happen.”
Hansen continued to pile on top of the messaging from multiple Canucks management teams.
“It’s the third management team that’s in place now that’s singing the same song. ‘We’re going to retool. We’re right there. We’re almost there.'”
“Well, we’ve seen over the past decade that it’s not really almost there.”
“This rebuild should have been done four years ago. And then you should have been coming out of it now, where he’s in his prime and not been fiddling around in the middle of the league for the last five years.”
Hansen was traded away by the Canucks back in 2017. In the eight years since, the Canucks have made the playoffs just twice, with one of those appearances happening in the 2020 COVID-19 bubble.
As Hansen alludes to, the fans deserve better.
“I have to anticipate that the fans here are knowledgeable and that you go out and tell them, ‘you know what, it’s going to be some tough years. The building is not going to sell out.’ And Aquilini is going to lose a little bit of cheddar on that account too.”
“But going forward, we will have a roster that hopefully can compete and can win that Cup.”
The Canucks have made it past the second round just three times in franchise history.
“Ownership has to be okay with there being 12,000 or 15,000 in the building instead of 18,000. And obviously, no playoff games for whether it’s two, three, or four years.”
“But again, I think it would be okay. At least there would be a path and not just status quo, which we’ve seen for so long, which most likely is going to play out like it has in the past.”
Vancouver is currently 27th overall in the NHL standings with a 8-9-2 record.