Are the Canucks even asking the right questions in their GM search?

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Jim Rutherford knows hockey, that’s for sure.

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It makes sense that he would be involved in a search for a new general manager for the Vancouver Canucks, not just because this is someone who will work for him, but also because he has a depth of knowledge that should be leaned upon.

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But the fact he alone has been tasked with finding someone to lead the Canucks into a dreamed-of glorious future is concerning.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have engaged with PBI Sports’ Neil Glasberg to do a search for candidates to be their new hockey boss. Glasberg represents hockey executives, so the conflict of interest potential there is high, but publicly the claim from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley has been that PBI is tasked with seeking out a broad list of options for the company to consider as its new president of the Leafs.

The fact Canucks ownership didn’t ask for an outside firm to help in Rutherford’s search leads me to wonder if they are even considering the big picture.

What questions are ownership asking? Is there any consideration for what this organization should look like in 2035? When do they imagine they will be not just contending, but winning the Stanley Cup?

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In setting out a future vision, there are things they do not know. This is why you bring in an outsider, to give you a perspective on what you need to know, and what you simply don’t know.

So hearing that the Canucks are interviewing candidates such as Kevyn Adams is pretty much the point. (So is any speculation, founded or otherwise, about Marc Bergevin.) What this team needs is not just a general manager, but an organizational vision.

Rutherford has projected one, but obviously all this faltered. He wouldn’t be searching for a new GM if the last one had worked out.

And if he’s doing this search on his own, unguided, he will find an answer to the straightforward hockey question of finding someone to sit in the chair — which is fine, but it’s the stuff around the edges that forever matters with this team.

I go back to a comment made to The Athletic in their recent agents’ poll, that the belief on the other side of the aisle is that the organization lacks the full infrastructure you need to succeed in the modern NHL. It’s not just that they are a solitary standout in the training facility wars — it’s that it is even an issue.

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The Canucks have talked about getting their own facility for 16 years. There have been four different hockey operations bosses in that time, but only one owner. If you didn’t catch Rutherford’s meaning on Friday about a getting a deal finally done at the Britannia Rink in east Vancouver to build an extension to the existing facilities there, let’s be clear: His message was if the deal doesn’t get done, it’s not his fault.

The team’s vision remains tied to the willingness of ownership to spend. That’s it. And until the team’s vision is decoupled from those thrifty instincts — and let’s be clear, that’s how the Aquilini family has made its money — and shifted toward simply what an ambitious, trophy-winning organization needs, whomever is put forward by Rutherford as the next GM will continue to have one hand tied behind their back.

The Canucks sit at a big inflection point in their history, one way or another. It would behoove ownership to sit back and understand that a proper plan just isn’t something they have thought of before. Don’t think just hockey here. Ditch your hospitality or property development instincts.

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Once upon a time, Mike Gillis and Laurence Gilman learned a bunch from the San Antonio Spurs on how to be great. There were lessons there. There were also lessons in sports science — that era of Canucks was before the curve in deploying data in guiding decisions around things such as rest and scheduling. What was done then by just the Canucks has become standard practice around the league. The Canucks are no longer leaders in this regard. It’s not an accident that on the ice they now bring up the rear.

Today, the Canucks’ leadership should go find out how the L.A. Dodgers became who they are now.

Or how Bayern Munich continues to be a great football club.

The vision needs to be clear. It needs to be ambitious. It needs to be supported. And it needs discipline in its execution.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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