Canucks: The axe falls

Yesterday night, the Canucks fired general manager Dave Nonis. Owner Francesco Aquilini told the Vancouver Province's Ben Kuzma the decision was largely due to missing the playoffs.
"I think this important change in leadership is critical to the future of the team and the direction we need to take," he said. "It's not acceptable to our fans or to us as owners that our team isn't in the playoffs." Aquilini also seemed to indicate that the defence-first style favoured by Nonis and coach Alain Vigneault didn't meet with his approval. "As owners we made a commitment to deliver the kind of hockey our fans deserve," he said.

I've thought about this overnight, and I'm still conflicted. On the one hand, Nonis' teams missed the playoffs two out of his three years: on the other hand, they fell short by small margins each time. This year, a lot of the problems were due to injuries to the defence corps, which on paper at least looked like one of the deepest groups in the league, and injuries can't really be blamed on a general manager. On the other hand, the Canucks have struggled with the same lack of offence almost since Nonis took over, and he hasn't done much to address the problem. James Mirtle, who's in favour of the firing, has a good look at the acquisitions Nonis made: notable ones include Marc Chouinard (now in the Swiss A-League!), Steve McCarthy (getting limited playing time on a terrible Atlanta team), Mika Noronen (playing in Russia for AK Bars Kazan) and former almost-All-Star Rory Fitzpatrick, now playing for the AHL's Philadelphia Phantoms. There isn't too much in that list that screams "Great talent evaluator!" As I wrote in my Canucks post-mortem, "One of the big problems with this team was how they were built and the almost-complete lack of scoring depth. Responsibility for that has to fall on the GM's desk. Granted, he hasn't had all that much room to work so far, and has made some nice moves (Luongo, Willie Mitchell and Aaron Miller come to mind), but he hasn't done much of anything to improve the offense."

This off-season's going to be critical, as the Canucks actually have some room to play with under the cap and can remake the team. In a lot of ways, it would have been nice to at least give Nonis a chance when he has some cap space, as he's never had a lot of cash to work with. Still, the actions taken this year are likely to define the team for years to come, and thus, they should be made by a GM who the owner has confidence in (Aquilini inherited Nonis from John McCaw) and who plans to be around for the long term. In the end, I guess I'm probably in favour of the firing, as long as Nonis is replaced by someone better.

The timing absolutely stinks, though. From Kuzma's story (linked above), it sounds like Aquilini made a snap decision to fire Nonis based on what transpired in their year-in-review meeting yesterday.

"Dave Nonis was asked to defend the season in a 3 p.m. meeting Monday," Kuzma writes "Francesco Aquilini didn't like what he heard and three hours later, he acted in a swift and decisive manner. The Vancouver Canucks chairman and owner fired Nonis as general manager of the NHL club largely because it failed to advance to the playoffs for the second time in the last three years."

Aquilini should have been less "swift and decisive" in making his decisions, and thought about the timing involved. Impulse firings are never a good idea. First off, the Canucks were reportedly about to lock up Fabian Brunnstrom, who would have been a great fit with the Sedin twins and added some desperately-needed offense. Now, Brunnstrom's apparently reconsidering joining the Canucks, and may even go to Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press. Could Aquilini not have waited until they had Brunnstrom locked up?

The timing is highly unusual, as the CBC's Elliotte Friedman points out. "It’s rare – extremely rare – for anyone to fire a general manager by statement, in the evening, while playoff games are going on. Public relations firms will tell you that the best time to release bad news is Friday night. In the hockey world, this has got to be a close second, although there’s no way Aquilini can expect this to go under the radar in B.C." Friedman suggests that the timing might be to allow Vancouver to make an offer to Brian Burke if the Ducks are knocked out this week, but even in that case, there was no need to pull the trigger this quickly.

The other timing issue is with respect to the quickly upcoming draft, one of the most important moments each year in building a team. The Canucks need to get a GM in place by June, hopefully earlier so that they can familiarize themselves with the minor-league prospects and pick out the holes. However, two of the candidates proposed so far, Brian Burke and Ken Holland, are both still with their current teams. If their clubs make a run, they may not even be available until just before the draft, and then you're bringing a GM in to one of the most intense parts of the year with little preparation. This is less of a factor if they go with an internal hire like Steve Tambellini, but it could still be a challenge to adjust to the top job that quickly. Let's hope that whichever way the Canucks decide to go, they wind up with the new GM by then: you don't particularly want an interim GM running the draft and making decisions that will drastically affect the team's future.

Happy birthday, Mr. Hockey!

Congratulations are in order to Gordie Howe, who turns 80 today. There are some great retrospectives on his career from NHL.com's John McGourty and Shaun P. Roarke, as well as the Canadian Press (via The Hockey News). Howe was my favorite player growing up, even though I never had the privilege of watching him play. I fell in love with the Howe legend from reading about him, particularly the part about his move to the WHA to play with his sons Mark and Marty after the Red Wings decided he was too old. Mostly because of him, I was a diehard Hartford Whalers fan growing up (and still have a Whalers jersey). As Kevin Allen of USA Today points out, one of the best things about Howe was he could do anything.

"Bobby Orr was the most spectacular hockey player I ever witnessed," he writes. "Wayne Gretzky is the sport's most creative offensive star and Mario Lemieux is probably the most dangerous scorer ever to lace up skates. But as extraordinary as these three players were, Gordie Howe simply had more tools in his box. He was as ruthless as he was cunning, as powerful as he was skilled, and as durable as he was dedicated. He was the NHL's most complete player."

There have been many who have written great things about Howe over the years, but one of the best pieces is from another legend, Milt Dunnell of the Toronto Star. I was reading a great collection of his work (appropriately titled "The Best of Milt Dunnell") the other day, and came across a terrific (and strangely prescient) column on Howe's longevity that ran May 10 1963 (17 years before Howe finally hung up the skates in 1980, if you don't count his one-game comeback in 1997 with the IHL's Detroit Vipers to become the only man to play pro hockey in six decades). Here's some excerpts from "He Can't Read the Calendar":

"Away back in the early part of the Fat Fifties, Jack Adams, who was running the Red Wings, used to say: 'You don't have to tell me Howe is great. But you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until Howe is 30,'" Dunnell wrote. "Adams was just like all shinny men — impatient. He couldn't wait for a boy to mature properly. What Adams must have meant was: 'Wait until Howe is 40.' This big switch-shooter, Gordie Howe, is a slow developer. He's 35 already — and you can't even be sure has reached his potential. Wait until he's 50. He'll be holding the Hart trophy in his hamlike hands — sure as CCM makes hockey skates."

Well, Howe didn't quite win the Hart at 50, but he came pretty close. He won the Gary L. Davidson Trophy as the WHA's MVP in 1974 when he was 46 (it was subsequently renamed in his honour), and he led the Houston Aeros to back-to-back championships. He dominated the WHA for most of its existence, played until he was 52, and had a solid final campaign in the NHL, racking up 15 goals and leading the Hartford Whalers into the playoffs. That kind of longevity is amazing, especially given the rough-and-tumble style Howe played. Current Red Wings GM Ken Holland agrees.

"I think Gordie Howe is the greatest hockey player of all time, certainly the greatest power forward of all time," Holland told McGourty. "He was the greatest player in the history of this franchise, and I think that he and Steve Yzerman are without a doubt the two greatest players to wear the Red Wings' uniform."

Think about the other great power forwards in the league's history, and how many of them had to retire early or missed significant amounts of time due to injury. Cam Neely, Eric Lindros, Kevin Stevens and Wendel Clark immediately come to mind, and there are undoubtably many more. Howe was absolutely tough-as-nails, and there's a good reason the "Gordie Howe Hat Trick" is named after him, even if he only recorded it once.

Also, good for Gordie for using his time in the spotlight to address a great wrong: the case of his son, Mark, who is not yet in the Hockey Hall of Fame despite an outstanding career. Gordie called Mark's absence from hockey's most famous shrine an injustice when asked about it by a Detroit reporter.

"Check his record,” Howe said. “He wasn't a troublemaker and he did his job. All his coaches told me that he just doesn't get the credit he deserves. He played on teams that were always first or second, and he led the League in plus-minus several times. He beat everybody by about 20 goals and he was a defenseman. I got mad when they put him on defense because I lost my winger."

Mark started out as a forward, but then converted to defense and was a three-time Norris runner-up (and certainly would have won if his best years hadn't conflicted with those of Paul Coffey). He was great at both ends of the ice: in 1985-86, he scored 24 goals, recorded 82 points, led the league in plus-minus with an amazing +85, and also added 7 shorthanded goals. Over his NHL and WHA career (22 years), he put up 405 goals and 1,246 points. He also is the youngest hockey player ever to win an Olympic gold medal. Bill Fleischman of philadelphiaflyers.com makes an excellent case for Mark's inclusion. As Fleischman points out, one of the main reasons Mark is likely overlooked is because several of his good years came in the WHA. The Hockey Hall of Fame's NHL bias rises to the surface again...

Unfortunately, there are two things in the Howe coverage that are somewhat lacking. Understandably, the NHL doesn't want to talk too much about Howe's WHA days, but it's disappointing that CP barely mentions them. It's also disappointing that there wasn't more coverage of Howe's birthday in the big Canadian papers, other than the CP story (although the Vancouver Province's Ben Kuzma ran a nice Q&A with Howe a few weeks back and the Globe has a cool photo slideshow up today) Props to the NHL for doing a great job with a historic moment for one of their legends, and to American media for picking up on it, but it would have been even better if the Canadian papers had followed their lead: the man defined our national game.