Are Rutherford’s comments a ‘white flag’ before Canucks blow it up?
Halford & Brough react to Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford’s comments in the Globe & Mail, where he appeared to suggest that the team’s current core could not continue to co-exist.
VANCOUVER — Here in the truth business, it is hypocritical to criticize anyone for being honest.
Vancouver Canucks president Jim Rutherford was being honest.
But the truth can still hurt, and the Hall-of-Fame head of hockey operations for the Canucks was painfully honest when he said in a story posted Tuesday that the long-standing differences between top centres J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson are irreconcilable and that the National Hockey League team can’t contend for a Stanley Cup with the group it has.
“I felt like for a long time that there was a solution here because everybody has worked on it, including the parties involved,” Rutherford told Gary Mason, the British Columbia columnist for The Globe and Mail, about Miller and Pettersson. “But it only gets resolved for a short period of time and then it festers again and so it certainly appears like there’s not a good solution that would keep this group together.
“We’re talking about two of our top players, certainly our two best forwards. It can really be tough on a franchise — not only present but into the future — when you’re planning on peaking this team into a contending team and then you find out that’s not going to happen. Or at least it’s not going to happen with the group we have now. Then you have to put together a new plan.”
So, knowing the tension between Miller and Pettersson and its possible consequences, why did management push to re-sign both players — Miller to a seven-year, $56-million contract in 2022, and Pettersson to a franchise-record, $92.8-million, eight-year deal ahead of the NHL trade deadline one year ago?
“Because these players are top players for us,” Rutherford explained to Sportsnet, “and if you have signed players and it doesn’t work out, you’re in a better position to get a return for them.”
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In a season of serial drama for the Canucks, this latest chapter is the blockbuster. The Globe interview re-amplified all the “noise” around the team that head coach Rick Tocchet and his players have been trying to stifle or at least ignore.
As we’ve reported and most people around the team have known, Miller and Pettersson have never been close as teammates despite their individual success and the team’s 109-point season last year. But they have co-existed for five-and-a-half years, profited spectacularly, and when questioned by reporters in December strongly denied there was a serious rift affecting the Canucks.
“I don’t know why people still try and make s–t up, excuse my language,” Pettersson said.
Miller told reporters a day later: “You guys, in a sense of that outer world, have created this thing. Like, this isn’t a thing.”
Apparently, it is. Their boss has confirmed for everyone that this is a thing. The biggest thing. Maybe the only thing.
“We’ll have to do the best we can in trades,” Rutherford told The Globe. “Whatever assets you get in return, you may turn them into something else. And we have to work our way back into being a contending team.”
The Canucks, with Miller and Pettersson, have been trying to work their way back to being a contending team.
After a revolving door of injuries and absences to key players, which has involved a struggle to return to form for most of them, Vancouver remains only one point out of a wild-card playoff spot.
Their 5-2 road win Monday in St. Louis, in which both Miller and Pettersson played well, gave the Canucks their first two-game winning streak since Dec. 1. Even through the team’s wild inconsistency, Tocchet has had the Canucks playing solid defensively. And they’ve been resilient, not losing more than two games in a row in regulation time all season.
With Miller and Pettersson starting to play better, and the team stacking together a couple of impressive wins, it felt Monday night like maybe things were finally starting to turn for the Canucks. And then came Tuesday.
The Canucks visit the Nashville Predators on Wednesday.
“What I said, everybody knows it doesn’t put Toc or the players in any different position,” Rutherford insisted to us. “They’ve been dealing with it. This is nothing new to them.
“There’s no reason for them to feel any different than they’ve felt all along. What I have now said publicly, which pretty much everybody knew anyways (except) no one would say it, nothing has changed for the players because the players have dealt with this every day.”
Asked why the Miller-Pettersson relationship is suddenly untenable after all these years, Rutherford said: “I think it’s the same as anything; when something goes on for a longer period of time, it has a chance of not working. And people maybe don’t work at it as hard, and eventually it just breaks.”
But doesn’t this stark transparency undermine Canucks management’s negotiating position on trades?
“I’m not worried about that,” he said, “because if we trade one of these players, we will trade them when we decide to, and when we get what we want. And if we don’t, we won’t trade one of them. Again, common sense.”
It is difficult to see how any of this helps the Canucks.
But over more than three decades in NHL management — and after winning three Stanley Cups as a general manager — Rutherford has rarely been a loose cannon. He is usually purposeful and measured in what he does.
Maybe making the team more uncomfortable pushes players closer together. Or maybe making Miller more uncomfortable encourages him to further loosen his grip on the no-movement clause in his contract. Pettersson’s NMC starts next season.
In the end, Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin will be judged on their actions and the team’s performance more than what anyone says.
“We’ve seen how the team is capable of playing, and we’ve also seen how it’s played in an inconsistent manner,” Rutherford told Sportsnet. “I watch what everybody else watches, and… we don’t know what we’re going to get. But certainly this team is capable of being a playoff team.
“We’ll deal with our team as normal as we can under these circumstances. And it’s what I said earlier: If something makes sense for the Canucks (in a trade), we’ll take a look at it, and if it doesn’t, the players will stay and continue to try to work through this situation.”
But probably not quietly or in private.
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