There should be a real conversation between the Vancouver Canucks and Elias Pettersson about where this is going and what the options are.
Donnie & Dhali: Elliotte Friedman, in an agent poll on whether the Vancouver Canucks are the most poorly run franchise. That’s what happens when you finish last. They had to turn around in the middle of the season with the Quinn Hughes situation. Now, where to go? They will have to sit down with Elias Pettersson and see where they are as they go into the rebuild.
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“Look, the important thing is that they lose, and if you lose, this happens, that’s when you get voted out.
And so it was, and another thing is that they had to rotate during the year. You know, when people say the Canucks don’t have a direction, I think it’s because they tried something and it didn’t work, it blew up and it didn’t work, and they had to trade Quinn Hughes, and all of a sudden, you’re like sinking a little bit, right?
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And now they know they’ve got a rebuild. They have to start over. And, you know, I think when you’re an age like this, that’s what happens. That’s what people think about you. And you have to expect if you finish 32nd in the NHL, people will say you’re a poorly run business, and you’re not where people want you to be right now.
The only choice in situations like that is, okay, how are we going to get off the mat? How will we get better? I mean, one thing I really liked about last night was that Douglas scored his first NHL goal, and you could tell those guys were legitimately excited for him. If they hadn’t celebrated that, I would have been really worried. I’m like, you have nothing if your colleagues don’t celebrate that.
So you look after your young men. He tries to build around them. He is trying to build around (Marco) Rossi. Trying to get around (Zeev) Buium. He’s trying to build around (Tom) Willander. He is trying to build around this particular group.
I think the biggest question of the season is going to be, I suspect it’s going to sit down with (Elias) Pettersson after a year, and there should be a real discussion about where this goes and what the options are. Like them, I think they should have a long meeting, put it all on the table and just say, you know, you can’t continue to have this conversation around your team for another year.
You cleaned everything you had to clean. It’s like the last thing you know, are you committed? Are we here? What can we do to get you back to being the player you were a few years ago? Or does everyone really believe that the right time is to talk about other places you are willing to go? And you know, to be honest, if I were the Canucks, I would do that. Are there places you want to go? Well, let’s give you permission to go meet and talk to people in that group, if they’re interested.
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I think that, to me, is probably the biggest thing of the offseason right now is an honest conversation with Pettersson as a representative and the Canucks. What are our options here? And if we don’t think they don’t exist, where do we go? Because you’re like moving on from everything that was hanging over you.
I think the last question Rick says is, do we think this can still work in Vancouver? And if we all really believe it, how do we get there? How do we fix it so that Pettersson can be the Pettersson we saw a few years ago.
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