During the Canucks’ 4-1 loss to the Penguins at home, fans were chanting “Fire Benning” and threw a jersey on the ice.
Not even 24 hours later, Benning was told to pack up and leave.
The Canucks not only fired GM Jim Benning, but they have also fired head coach Travis Green. The first report on Benning’s firing was from Irfaan Gaffar of TheFourthPeriod that Benning and Green, along with assistant GM John Weisbrod and assistant coach Nolan Baumgartner, would be let go.
The announcement was made official hours later, with Stan Smyl elevated to interim GM, and Ryan Johnson was named interim assistant GM. In coordination with the moves, Bruce Boudreau was named the team’s newest head coach, the 20th in franchise history, with Scott Walker being named an assistant coach.
After 2,755 days, the Benning era ended with a Canucks team holding the second-worst record in the Western Conference and the worst record in the Pacific division. Seven years and seven months have passed by, and the Benning era had more bad than good.
Benning was brought in because of his reputation as a scout and because of previous GM Mike Gillis’s terrible drafting.
At that time, the Canucks looked to have a bright future. Benning, and to an extent, Judd Brackett, the Canucks’ previous Director of Amateur Scouting, ended up drafting the likes of Thatcher Demko, Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Quinn Hughes, Vasily Podkolzin, and Nils Hoglander.
But there were mistakes at the draft table too.
The decisions to take Jake Virtanen over Nikolaj Ehlers or William Nylander and Olli Juolevi over Matthew Tkachuk aged very poorly.
Other than Demko and Hoglander, the drafting outside of the first round was not great.
Mid-to-late round picks usually don’t pan out, but there is the opportunity to get a steal. Adam Gaudette looked like a good 5th round pick at first, but he couldn’t get his defensive game plan going and he was eventually traded to the Blackhawks.
Players picked past the first round during Benning’s time in Vancouver didn’t pan out, thus were either traded (Gustav Forsling and Tyler Madden), waived (Kole Lind and Jonah Gadjovich), became career AHLers, or left the organization. Others, like Jack Rathbone, Mikey DiPietro, and Danila Klimovich, still have potential.
Not a single Canuck developed in the AHL during Benning’s tenure became an NHL regular. The last Canuck to do that was Chris Tanev, who made his NHL debut in 2011.
Benning gave away draft picks like he was chucking footballs deep, even also trading away young players too early. Jared McCann enjoyed a breakout season last year with the Penguins and is enjoying another one this year with the Kraken, Jonathan Dahlen is playing solid in his rookie season with the Sharks, and Forsling looks like a decent defenseman with the Panthers.
Those futures were traded away to make the playoffs when there should have been a rebuild from the start. Instead, Benning was living “day-to-day” and not thinking on the long-term. Trading for Erik Gudbranson and Brandon Sutter were bad moves.
That’s not to mention the terrible free agency deals Benning made. There are a lot to name, but Loui Eriksson, Jay Beagle, Tyler Myers, Antoine Roussel, Sam Gagner, and Michael Del Zotto were not good signings.
There were even some questionable extensions, such as Tanner Pearson, Luca Sbisa, and Derek Dorsett. The free agency signings and the extensions took up a lot of the salary cap.
With the money that Benning spent, the Canucks became a team with cap issues before their Stanley Cup window even opened. Now it remains closed.
Then comes the terrible asset management. Not trading Dan Hamhuis and Radim Vrbata were both bad moves. What’s even more mind-boggling was that Tanev, Jacob Markstrom, Tyler Toffoli, and Troy Stecher all were let go in free agency. Toffoli even said that Benning never offered him a contract.
What does this point to? The organization lacked good communication. Ex-Canuck Shawn Matthias played two seasons with the team, including in Benning’s first year. On the Pucks on Net Podcast, he revealed that he was never offered a contract and never even spoke to Benning.
Trevor Linden “amicably” parted ways with the organization, and the revelation was that he wanted to turn the Canucks around from the direction Benning is driving the team towards, but Benning and team owner Francesco Aquilini had other plans. Brackett wanted autonomy over the draft, leading to his departure in 2020. If this says anything, it shows the front office essentially became a dictatorship.
The Canucks made the playoffs just twice in the Benning era—2015 and 2020. That was in between a whole lot of losing. Since Benning was hired, the Canucks had a .487 winning percentage, one of the worst in the NHL since that timeframe, not including the Kraken and the Golden Knights.
Horvat’s prime years are continuing to get wasted, as well as the primes of guys like Pettersson, Demko, Boeser and Hughes.
One of Benning’s setbacks is his inability to build a competent defense. The Canucks have given up 1,867 goals since the start of the 2015 season, the 5th-most in the league during that span.
It could have been a lot worse had it not been for goaltending from Ryan Miller, Markstrom, and Demko. The only teams that have given up more goals than the Canucks are the Sabres, Senators, Red Wings, and Oilers.
Benning is a likeable person and it’s for sure he will rebound for this. But he’s just not meant to be a general manager. He couldn’t build a winning team.
Years from now, the Benning era will be looked back as a dysfunctional era of Canucks hockey.
It was evident that Benning needed to go. It should have happened years earlier, but it’s better late than never. You can argue that it was one of the darkest times with the Canucks. The hope is that the next Canucks GM can put behind the dysfunction of the Benning era.
As for Green, he was hired by the organization as the head coach of their former AHL affiliate, the Utica Comets, in 2013. In four seasons with the Comets, Green had a 155-110-33 record, with two playoff appearances. The Comets finished first in the AHL’s North Division in the 2015 season and made it to the Calder Cup Finals, losing in five games to the Manchester Monarchs.
After the Canucks fired Willie Desjardins after the 2017 season, Green was promoted as the Canucks’ head coach. They made the playoffs just once in his tenure—the run in the Edmonton bubble, where they beat the Blues in the first round and then almost came back from down 3-1 but lost in the deciding Game 7 in the second round to the Golden Knights.
Although he signed a two-year extension last May, he didn’t last long in his new deal. He leaves the Canucks with a 133-147-34 record.
The glaring issues for the Canucks this season have been the lack of star power, and Green was not able to find the right mix. Pettersson was largely invisible, with just four goals in his first 25 games. Boeser led the Canucks in points last season, but he had 10 points in his first 22 games of this season. Even Horvat is struggling, with just 13 points before Green’s firing.
By the end of November, Canucks players were not hiding their frustrations with the organization. With a 4-1 loss to the Penguins, marking their 7th loss in eight games, JT Miller was asked if everyone is still buying in on the team. He only had a three-word response: “I don’t know.”
Miller’s response sparked another wave of criticism against the underperformance of the Canucks.
The hiring of Boudreau is a massive upgrade to the Canucks. Boudreau is an experienced head coach who brings an offensive play style to the team. He found success with the Capitals, winning four straight division titles in Washington, and the Ducks, with four straight division titles in Anaheim as well.
Team owner Francesco Aquilini said that he might have been “to patient” in waiting for the Canucks to turn the season around.
“These are difficult decisions,” said Aquilini. “These are not easy. I mean, to fire everybody at the same time, that’s a hard thing to do and maybe I was a little bit to patient. I was hoping for a turnaround. We were losing these games by one goal and maybe I was too optimistic, and so we made the change when we made the change.”
Boudreau, who won his first game back as an NHL head coach, 4-0 over the Kings, said at his introductory news conference that he was wanting to get back behind an NHL bench.
He said he wants the Canucks to be aggressive offensively, but one that is also responsible in the defensive zone, too. He knows that the team has areas where they need to improve, but he also sees promise in the team’s young stars, even those who underperformed so far this season.
“As far as I’m concerned, all of these guys have opportunities right now to start over,” he said. “I’m not going to look at somebody and say ‘Geez, you weren’t very good for the first 15 games so you’re not going to get a chance to play.’ It’s ‘This is what you’re supposed to be. Let’s see what you’ve got.’”
Talks are heating up on who will be the Canucks’ next GM. One prominent name is Marc Bergevin, who was recently fired from the Canadiens.
According to a report from Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News, the Canucks are interested in bringing in Bergevin as their next GM.
In his resume comes a 344-265-81 record through his nine years in Montreal, including a trip to the Eastern Conference Final in 2014 and a Stanley Cup Final appearance last season.
In between those two flashes of success is a half-decade of mediocrity, during which the Habs missed the playoffs three times, finished 5th in the division or lower in three occasions, and only made the 2020 playoffs because the NHL expanded that year’s playoffs to 24 teams.
That’s not to mention that they also made the playoffs in 2021 due to division realignments—they had a losing record that season.
Along with Bergevin’s resume is a tough drafting record, with just one of his eight 1st round picks from the past eight years remaining with the organization. He even gave away Mikhail Sergachev to the Lightning in a trade where the Habs lost badly and had Jesperi Kotkaniemi poached away from them via an offer sheet.
The positives, however, was that he signed key pieces to the Habs’ Stanley Cup Final roster such as Brendan Gallagher and Phillip Danault, and traded for others like Shea Weber and Jeff Petry. Inking Tyler Toffoli to a four-year deal at $4.85M per year is a bold move too. Petry at under $7M is solid too, although the term might be an issue down the line given his age. Jake Allen kept the team together at times when Carey Price was not available, with Bergevin locking up through 2023 for under $3M per year. That’s decent.
But none of that matters if he is part of a series of recent disgraces that should automatically disqualify him from consideration.
He oversaw his Canadiens in the 2021 Entry Draft where they selected Logan Mailloux, despite the defenseman being charged in Sweden for distributing a sexual photo without consent. Mailloux himself asked teams not to select him, yet Bergevin stepped forward.
He was also the director of player personnel for the Blackhawks in 2010 when Kyle Beach was sexually abused by then-video coach Brad Aldrich. When the story broke out, Bergevin said that he wasn’t consulted about the abuse, which people really doubt.
This shows the Canucks don’t care on who they are looking to fill regarding their vacancies.
The Flyers recently fired Alain Vigneault after the team stumbled on an 8-game losing streak, replacing him instantly with Mike Yeo, an assistant with a .514 winning percentage as a head coach in his stints with the Wild and Blues.
This case is less egregious than with the Canucks, as it’s mostly a stopgap with the Flyers. But as reports are showing that former Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet was the leading candidate for the Flyers’ head coaching job, you would want to wonder how much longer the cycle continues.
There are better candidates for the Canucks’ general manager job, anyway. Two prime candidates who could be better suitors than Benning are Eric Tulsky of the Carolina Hurricanes and Chris MacFarland of the Colorado Avalanche.
Tulsky is arguably the best non-GM executive in the NHL. Every owner should offer him money when he steps out in the public, hoping that he would turn the franchise around, the Canucks included. He rarely loses trades, can identify high-end free agents in the open market, and can draft and develop players—areas in which Benning has struggled mightily with the Canucks. He’s a huge reason why the Hurricanes are a deep, talented, fast, and cap compliant team with a loaded prospect pool despite being in the middle of a contention window that is going to stay open in the years to come. He has been a key front office piece for years. While it is not likely to happen, as he is entrenched within the Hurricanes organization, that doesn’t mean one should not hope of this possibility from happening.
MacFarland helped make the Avalanche into a good hockey team. He joined the Avs in 2015 after 16 seasons with the Blue Jackets, shortly before the Avs started their ascension to the league’s elite. He is 51 and has over 20 years of experience in the NHL’s front offices and is an influential voice with arguably the best management group in the league. He is ready to take a general manager role.
They may have hired Jim Rutherford as team president, but he will be the team president, as well as the interim GM and not Smyl. Rutherford was previously the GM of the Penguins, but resigned because of personal reasons. In addition, it was said that the Sedin twins, Doug Jarvis, and Chris Greer were going to be more involved in the club’s day-to-day operations.
But as of now, the search for the Canucks’ next general manager continues as they try and make a turnaround with Boudreau as their head coach.
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