Tag Archives: mike gillis

Willes: Hot seat must be uncomfortable

Posted on May 20, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

This will make the long weekend seem even longer: the musings and meditations on the world of sports.

When the Vancouver Canucks’ season ended two weeks ago the team’s coaching staff returned to their respective summer retreats believing they were about to be fired.

And they understood why. If you inject them with truth serum, they’ll tell you the Canucks could have used a second-line centre — or any NHL-calibre centre come to think of it — this season. The team also could have used the $5.4 million in cap space tied up in its backup goalie. And they most certainly could have used more help than Derek Roy at the trade deadline.

But Alain Vigneault, Rick Bowness and Newell Brown are veteran hockey men who understand that coaches are generally the first casualty after a disappointing season. What they don’t understand is why they’re still waiting to learn about their fate while general manager Mike Gillis conducts a review of...

No quick-fix solution to Canucks’ problems

Posted on May 17, 2013 by admin in Sun Hockey | No comments

VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks have no salary-cap space available, a shortage of National Hockey League-ready prospects and lack portability among their key player contracts. Other than that, general manager Mike Gillis’ summer “reset” of the team shouldn’t be a problem.

The week after their second straight first-round playoff elimination, Gillis was still working through his coaching review and a planned summit meeting with ownership, while his top assistant, Laurence Gilman, continued to tour North America for potential minor-league locations.

The really heavy lifting — think Superman shifting the moon’s orbit — still lies ahead. And it doesn’t take a superhero to understand how difficult it will be for Gillis to make even a few impactful roster moves to catch up to the NHL curve towards big, brawny teams.

It took the Canucks years, literally, to configure their team the way it is: skilled, fast and too small up front. The evolution spanned managerial regimes; most of the core players were...

Rivermen won’t play in Peoria, so Canucks’ new AHL farm team likely to land in Utica, N.Y.

Posted on May 16, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

It’s not a front-burner issue for the Vancouver Canucks — not with the uncertain fate of the coaching staff after the NHL club was swept in first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs — but that back-burner issue of relocating the franchise’s new AHL club is heating up.

A source has indicated Utica, N.Y., is the front-runner to be named home to the Peoria Rivermen, who were purchased by the Canucks from the St. Louis Blues on April 18.

Canucks general manager Mike Gillis had explored keeping the club in Peoria, Ill., but the city was seeking an agreement that would allow the money-losing club ($400,000 US last season) to operate at a break-even budget.

Another option was striking a territorial arrangement with the Abbotsford Heat to operate a league rival at Rogers Arena — a tough sell to the Fraser Valley Sports and Entertainment Group and AHL — but Utica was always somewhere on the radar.

The...

Canucks: Loyalty can be deadly

Posted on May 14, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

It was telling in the aftermath of the Boston’s Game 7 shocking win that Bruins forward Milan Lucic admitted he thought it was over.

Not just the game, when the Toronto Maple Leafs went up 4-1 in the third period, but also his team’s run. But the Bruins came back to win 5-4 in overtime.

Looking at that clock ticking down when down 4-1, Lucic didn’t just see another first round bow out, he saw a window closing. He thought the team would be shaken up and maybe coach Claude Julien fired, too.

That’s some benchmark. This is a team that won the Stanley Cup just two years ago.

There are similarities to be drawn between the Bruins and the Canucks, the 2011 finalists, even if Boston is in the second round and Vancouver is not.

Both teams are generally intact from 2011. Both teams have head coaches who have been there for at least six years. Both teams oozed disaffection during the regular...

Ex-Canucks prospect Connauton embraces chance to start afresh as star in Texas

Posted on May 14, 2013 by admin in Sun Hockey | No comments

VANCOUVER — It seems Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis is not the only guy reaching for the reset button.

Former Canucks prospect Kevin Connauton has already pressed his.

Initially shocked by the trade early last month that sent him to the Dallas Stars as part of the deal that brought Derek Roy to Vancouver, Connauton now thinks it may have been the best thing that has happened to him in his pro hockey career.

“Coming here was really a positive thing, it was a fresh start,” Connauton, now playing in the American Hockey League playoffs for the Texas Stars, said Tuesday. “I was able to hit the reset button and it’s been nothing but positives since I got here.”

Connauton’s improved play with the Stars is not making that Roy trade look any better for the Canucks, who also sent a second-round pick to Dallas.

The 23-year-old defenceman finished the regular season with Texas, accumulating two goals and six points in nine...

Canucks still looking for an AHL home

Posted on May 13, 2013 by admin in Sun Hockey | No comments

VANCOUVER - The Vancouver Canucks have been given 30 days by the American Hockey League to decide what they are going to do with their AHL franchise.

The Canucks received that extension at an AHL board of governors meeting Monday in Springfield, Mass. Canuck assistant general manager Laurence Gilman attended that meeting but refused interview requests.

The Canucks really have two choices to make regarding the Peoria Rivermen franchise they purchased earlier this year. After deciding against leaving the team in Peoria for the 2013-14 season, they must either find a new home for the team or they can pay the AHL a $150,000 fee and have the league declare the franchise dormant for one year.

That latter option is the least palatable one for the Canucks as it would mean the team would have to scatter its prospects around the AHL and have them playing under a variety of different systems and coaches, outside their sphere of influence.

That clearly is...

Willes: Canucks can only make excuses while appearing to wring every nickel they can from fans

Posted on May 12, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Just so you know, Game 7 of the Canucks-Sharks series was scheduled for Monday night. Can't give you that but we can give you the Monday morning musings and meditations on the world of sports.

* If you listen to Mike Gillis' season-ending press conference, you'll hear the Canucks' GM begin by attempting to take some responsibility for his team's shortcomings, then spend the better part of 40 minutes explaining why it wasn't really his fault.

There was the lockout which completely altered the trade market. There were injuries that made it difficult to assess the team. There was a league-wide trend away from speed-and-skill and towards size-and-heft. There was the Canucks' own success, which hasn't allowed them to pick early in the draft. And there was the Eastern media, who've typecast the Canucks as divers and complainers and the Vancouver media who haven't done enough to change that perception.

Add it all up and it's no wonder the image which exists of this team...

Burrows: Canucks’ inability to ‘close games out is … frustrating, embarrassing’

Posted on May 12, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Humility, affordability and loyalty best describe the past four seasons for Alex Burrows. Reality may best describe the next four.

The Vancouver Canucks right winger has a four-year, $18 million US contract extension that kicks in next season and includes a no-trade clause. It's a palatable $4.5 million annual salary cap hit and the yearly payout of $6 million, $5 million, $4 million and $3 million rewards slogging through a previous deal that made Burrows one of the best NHL bargains at $2 million annually.

However, nobody understands the deep unrest sparked by being swept in the Western Conference quarterfinal series more than Burrows. He knows one postseason victory the last two springs has put the entire organization under the microscope and that the coaching staff may be gutted. Core players may be moved as general manager Mike Gillis attempts to re-set the organization under the constraints of a reduced $64.3 million salary cap ceiling that the club has already...

Size matters in hockey, but it’s not necessarily the answer for the Canucks

Posted on May 11, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Suddenly, Game 7 today between the Detroit Red Wings and Anaheim Ducks seems important in Vancouver.

So do the fortunes of the Chicago Blackhawks.

Of all the fallout from GM Mike Gillis’s apparent surrender last week, pushing Canucks fans to cheer for the Blackhawks is the strangest.

What many took from Gillis’s mission statement-like presentation was essentially this: He appears ready to cave, abandoning the forward-thinking, analytics-based pressure offence he brought with him in 2008 for dumbed-down, dump-it-in, vanilla hockey.

Oh joy.

It remains to be seen if he was serious, semi-serious or just distracting those adorable salmon in town who only swim in one direction when it comes to what they think will fix the Canucks — size, size, size.

Well, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ top three centres are Tyler Bozak, Mikhail Grabovski and Nazem Kadri. They’re all under 200 pounds and the team is acquitting itself just fine, thanks. And against the Boston Bruins, too.

Those in Vancouver on the other side of...

Canucks face killer cap crunch in reset mode

Posted on May 10, 2013 by admin in Sun Hockey | No comments

VANCOUVER — It’s not a rebuild or a reload for the Vancouver Canucks, it's a reset.

Whatever the term — and reset is kind of a catchy one, don't you think? — general manager Mike Gillis has some work to do in massaging the Canucks’ lineup. And it's going to be all about money.

The Canucks have been a spend-to-the-cap team under Gillis, but that cap is coming down significantly in the 2013-14 season due to the lockout that squandered millions in NHL revenues. Gillis will have to shed at least $6 million in salary to stay within the new $64.3-million limit.

The Canucks currently have 16 players under contract for 2013-14 at a total cost of $63,502,777. This includes out-going netminder Roberto Luongo (we think, finally) and out-of-favour defenceman Keith Ballard, which would remove more than $9.5 million of cap space.

The 16 players are broken down into two goalies, six defencemen and eight forwards, certainly not enough to ice a...

Iain MacIntyre: Canucks to ‘reset’ the organization after ‘terrible season,’ says GM Gillis

Posted on May 10, 2013 by admin in Sun Hockey | No comments

VANCOUVER — Mike Gillis took the witness stand Thursday and for 45 minutes was grilled about the playoff failure of the Vancouver Canucks, his culpability and when he might get around to firing coach Alain Vigneault.

It may have been the easiest day of his summer.

The Canucks general manager acknowledged at his year-end news conference that the team has fallen behind the National Hockey League curve toward bigger, grittier, defence-oriented teams.

"From my perspective ... it’s been a terrible season for us," Gillis said. "We’re going to have to reinvent ourselves and do things differently in order to be successful. The macro look at this team is that changes have to be made."

Amen.

The Canucks’ need for more size and grit, particularly among the top three forward lines, was evident when they lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Boston Bruins two years ago.

It was reinforced by first-round playoff exits this season and last to the San Jose Sharks and Los...

Canucks: Questionable goalie calls might have cost the season

Posted on May 9, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

What Vancouver GM Mike Gillis essentially said in his post-mortem with the media is announce the end of the Mason Raymond era.

Small, supposedly skilled players are out. Big, supposedly tough players are in vogue. That, Gillis said, is what it will take to win the Stanley Cup. Goodness knows what he’ll say if the Chicago Blackhawks win it all again.

The Canucks’ core is likely to stay the same. There are just too many no-trade agreements. That means this reset will look a lot like that last reset five years ago.

Maybe they’ll even bring back the coach for kicks. Though someone will have to call him to tell him, because for the second year in a row, Alain Vigneault fled the scene of the crime, choosing not to man up for his season-ending session to answer questions.

Some will see it as bush league, and they would be right.

Roberto Luongo, however, manned up in Vancouver for what he hopes is...

Willes: Not in Gillis to acknowledge any responsibility for Canucks’ failure

Posted on May 9, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Given everything that happened this season, Thursday’s wrap-up presser might have been the time for Mike Gillis to present a slightly different persona; someone who acknowledged the anger and frustration of this market, someone who took responsibility for the Vancouver Canucks’ spectacular postseason failure.

But that wouldn’t be Gillis. That wouldn’t be the man who convinced Francesco Aquilini he was the portal to a glorious new future for the Canucks. No matter what you think of Gillis and the work he’s done as the franchise’s overlord, he remained true to himself on Thursday; a man utterly convinced in the rightness of his ways, a man who holds, if not all the right answers, enough of them to make the Canucks an elite team.

"Five years ago we came in here and reset this organization and it’s time to do it again," Gillis said.

OK, how much resetting he did five years ago is a matter of some debate. But this...

Canucks: With lower salary cap, Ballard will be prime candidate for compliance buyout

Posted on May 9, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Keith Ballard conducted what’s surely his last interview as a Canuck the same way he did in his first , three seasons ago.

He was honest, thoughtful and maybe a little too self-effacing.

Ballard, 30, suffered the embarrassment of watching all four games from the press box as the Canucks were swept by San Jose in the first round. Worse, he was effectively pushed out of the lineup by rookie Frank Corrado, who just turned 20 and was playing junior hockey a month ago.

“It’s not No. 1, but it’s up there for sure,” said Ballard of where it ranks on his list of career frustrations. “It’s disappointing that we got swept 4-0 and I didn’t get a chance to contribute. I didn’t get a chance to maybe make a difference and that’s frustrating on a personal level. I don’t think anybody saw this coming. Everyone is shocked by it.”

GM Mike Gillis talked about the need for significant change to his lineup for...