Rutherford reveals what went wrong between Pius Suter and the Vancouver Canucks
Western Family and the Vancouver Canucks teamed up to create Bar Down Blast, a limited-edition ice cream. Vanilla flavoured blue ripple ice cream and caramel-filled mini chocolatey pucks.
It was arguably the biggest mistake of the Vancouver Canucks offseason.
The decision not to re-sign Pius Suter has had huge ramifications on the Canucks so far this season.
They have the worst penalty kill in the NHL. Their centre depth is arguably the league’s worst as well.
Who could have seen this coming?
Both of those massive detriments to the Canucks success could have been avoided if they had just re-signed Suter.
Instead, he signed a completely reasonable two-year deal with the Blues worth $4.125 million per season.
Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre recently had a one-on-one with Canucks president Jim Rutherford, where the GM revealed what actually went wrong between his club and the Swiss centre.
“He was a guy that we thought we were still in on when he went to St Louis,” Rutherford was quoted as saying in the article. “I know he wanted to come back here.”
“There seemed to be some miscommunication on term [based on] what it eventually ended up. We would have considered bringing him back [for longer than two years], but it didn’t work out.”
Pius Suter tied for the Canucks team lead with 25 goals last season. (Nick Turchiaro/USA TODAY Sports)
Canucks fans could feel justified in having some confusion over Rutherford’s rationale here.
The fact that there was any miscommunication with Suter is hard to stomach. Vancouver was the one team that had months to talk with Suter and find some common ground on a new contract before he hit unrestricted free agency.
Bringing him back made even more sense considering that this team lacked centre depth and was set to enter the season with an injury-prone Filip Chytil as the next guy up after Elias Pettersson.
Chytil got off to a decent start with the Canucks but was injured in the team’s sixth game and hasn’t been seen since. There’s no reported timetable for his return.
Suter, meanwhile, has provided immense value early in St. Louis. He leads the team with 10 points in 17 games. The 29-year-old leads all Blues forwards in terms of ice time on the penalty kill.
His five goals this season are more than any other Canucks centre has scored this season.
The miscommunication between the Canucks and Suter may bring back memories of a former Canucks GM when he talked about losing Tyler Toffoli back in 2021.
āIt got to a point where I know Tyler wanted to come back and we were trying to figure it out,” Jim Benning told Canucks media in 2020.
āWe kind of ran out of time with him getting offers and one he needed to take,” Benning said.
Well, if something doesn’t change for the Canucks in the near term, they may be running out of time to turn their own season around. And keeping Suter in the fold probably would have given them more time to solve their issues.