Welcome Matt: Will Canucks ever win the Stanley Cup operating like this?
Everybody knows real estate’s cardinal rule: Location, location, location.
Lesser known, sports’ cardinal rule: Ownership, ownership, ownership.
You’ll find very few franchises that succeed between the lines when ownership is poor. Whether interventionist, undercapitalized, or just hiring the wrong people and/or setting the wrong direction, if the person or people at the top fail in their role, the organization suffers, including team results.
The Vancouver Canucks contended once under the Aquilinis, and they can again if ownership can simply learn from its mistakes.
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They finally have alignment between the chairman Francesco Aquilini, senior hockey management in Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin, and head coach Rick Tocchet. What’s needed now is an examination of the mission statement.
Because spending all-out and surrendering future assets to simply make the playoffs and letting the chips fall is not a successful formula in the NHL. A hard-capped league means teams are subject to competitive cycles, and as much as they’ve tried to buck that reality over the last decade, the Canucks still haven’t learned their lesson.
The core is there, but having wasted their cheaper, entry-level years, the task is now more difficult. Rutherford and Allvin pulled rabbits out of hats in Pittsburgh, winning two Cups with some of the worst defensive corps the Stanley Cup has ever seen.
They’ll need a repeat of that here in Vancouver. Or a change in philosophies from on high.
Barring that, this team won’t climb the mountaintop until there’s new ownership.