What a Ryan Johnson-Evan Gold Canucks front office could look like

Article content

If the front-running plan as we discuss the future of the Vancouver Canucks’ front office is for another Boston Bruins executive to be brought in to serve as general manager, and for him to have a person above him be a former player with “president” as part of his title, we really must take a moment to say, “Wait. What?”

Article content

The Canucks are apparently nearing an end to their search for a new hockey boss. Various reports Friday suggested a possible result for the team’s new hockey operations leadership would be current Canucks assistant general manager Ryan Johnson being promoted to a vice-president’s role and current Boston Bruins AGM Evan Gold hired on as the team’s new general manager.

Article content

Article content

Gold has been with the Bruins for a decade, does contracts and cap work, and has been running the Providence Bruins AHL team for half a decade.

Johnson is not a capologist, but has experience that does overlap to a degree. Both have worked across their respective organizations in a variety of roles.

Gold has a law degree from the University of Toronto and clearly has a skill set that matters in the modern NHL. He looks like a guy who should run an NHL team.

Johnson has done the work. Running an AHL team isn’t easy, and you spend lots of time looking around at players on the edge of rosters. He has also been involved for years in looking at collegiate players and knows well what a possible NHLer looks like.

These guys are similar, but different. Johnson was clearly Jim Rutherford’s first choice as general manager, but ownership wanted to hear about more candidates. At the end of the search, it looks like Rutherford’s first instinct remains at the forefront. But they also found Gold, who is very much of the new-wave type of hockey executive who  Rutherford set out to find once the decision was made to build a broader pool of options.

Article content

Article content

If this is the duo that ends up being hired on to lead a new era of the Canucks, there are reasons to say, “This makes sense.” But there is also a lot of questions worth considering.

Let’s break some of them down.

Strengths

If this is the duo, both obviously have long experience in how a hockey organization operates. Both know about the challenges of managing beyond just a squad of 23 NHL players.

Both have a sense of how to develop NHL talent.

Johnson is a former NHLer and is clearly self-aware of what made his own career work and what young players need to know to get there. He is well-regarded for his people skills. He’s a good colleague, as well as a leader.

Gold has travelled across two NHL organizations — he first broke into the NHL two decades ago as an intern with the Washington Capitals — and brings real-world education with him. He is not going to be a conventional hockey thinker, even if his long experience in NHL front offices will have informed him well in conventional hockey thinking.

Who’s the boss?

This is the first potential issue: Johnson might not be named GM, but between his institutional knowledge and being given a title that theoretically is a promotion from his current position, it could make you wonder if he is still the guy in charge.

Article content

But usually you name a GM, and let him be the GM.

The reason we wonder about this is because of how things went down the last time the Canucks hired a former Bruins AGM — recall how muddled things were at times when Jim Benning was GM and Trevor Linden was president?

Staffing?

If Gold is brought in, would he able to hire his own staff? Current Bruins analytics boss Jeremy Rogalski is said to be a close colleague. Would Gold want to bring him aboard as an AGM? In that case, what would happen to current Canucks analytics director Aiden Fox, who is well-regarded in his own right?

And what about the existing AGMs? Emilie Castonguay has been in charge of contracts since being hired on four years ago. Now, GMs don’t usually deal directly with the nuts and bolts of contract work and capology, but that is one of Gold’s strengths. What happens to Castonguay?

Word has been going around for weeks that the Canucks would be interested in revamping some of their scouting setup, and have interviewed a few senior scouts as part of their search. How does such a shift play out?

The pro scouting meetings were this past week, the amateur scouting meetings are next week. Do changes happen after, if at all? What’s the process here? There was talk a few weeks ago that many of the scouts are considering their own futures, but that noise has died down, presumably because answers have finally been given.

The AGMs are presumably on the same term as Patrik Allvin was. He is already in a spot where the team will be paying him not to work. Is ownership really going to want to add to the list of people who are literally just collecting a paycheque? Doubtful.

So we wait. Go ahead and ruminate over the weekend about these questions while we await an announcement.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

Article content