"There was nothing": Linden describes bleak state of Canucks when hired
Trevor Linden appeared on the Donnie & Dhali show today and offered some more interesting insights into his time as president of hockey operations for the Vancouver Canucks.
One topic of conversation was the state of the team when Linden took over in a management role in 2014.
“It’ll be 10 years this April that I took the position. It was a tough spot to be in. There was nothing, nothing,” Linden said during the interview.
Linden was hired upon the conclusion of the 2013-14 NHL season. That year’s Canucks team had no players crack the 50-point mark, something that a whopping six players on the team managed to do this past season.
The team’s prospect pool was also barren after years of poor selections and trading away draft picks in an effort to bolster their competitive window.
One of the biggest disconnects between Linden and then-general manager Jim Benning was the decision to keep pushing for a playoff spot rather than tear down the team. It would take the organization years after Linden joined to fully embrace the rebuild, a process that was likely slowed by the team playing the playoffs in 2015.
“I mean we were still a few years away from being rock-bottom if you will because that first year we made the playoffs,” he continued. “You know, it was one of these things we had some iconic, great people, great players in their day but they were at the end, post apex, their value was declining. There was nothing coming. It was tough.”
The team was eventually forced to accept a rebuild and ended up with some high draft picks as a result.
“You know with young players, you draft them, three years later, they show up. Four later, they show up and, if you’re lucky, they take a year or two to figure out the pro game. They want to figure out themselves before they can be team-type players,” Linden said.
The savvy selections made with those picks during those years include Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, and Thatcher Demko, who are just now hitting their full stride.
Linden and Benning have been having a bit of a public feud over taking responsibility for some of those picks, with the former captain saying, “If Jim had his choice, he probably wouldâve taken a different player” during a conversation about the Pettersson selection with Sportsnet’s Canucks Central.
Benning responded, through Hockey Night Punjabi producer Raja Shergill, saying, “We were always going to draft Pettersson. The whole group liked Petey.”
The former general manager made another statement today, this time to Matthew Sekeres of Sekeres and Price, where it seems he wants the story to be put to an end.
Asked former #Canucks GM Jim Benning if he wanted to tell his side of â17 draft story:
âThere is no my side of the story. It was a collaborative effort from the GM, Assistant GM, Head Scout, Crossover and European scouts to make that pick.
I'm happy the team is playing well.â
— Matthew Sekeres (@mattsekeres) November 9, 2023