Will there be management and/or coaching changes in Vancouver this offseason?
Donnie & Dhali: Elliotte Friedman, when asked about the Vancouver Canucks management and coaching staff, and if there could be changes coming this offseason. Will Jim Rutherford and Adam Foote, be back next season?
Rick Dhaliwal: “All right. Canucks, Twitter, let’s go here. It can get crazy.”
Friedman: “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Dhaliwal: “We know there’s certain accounts that they got an agenda. They like to do their stuff. They work together, blah, blah, blah, it can get crazy. They also are asking for changes in Vancouver. The president to be fired. The coach to be fired. The GM to be fired. You can’t fire everybody.”
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Friedman: “As I was walking over here, and you know, they asked me about Rutherford. And you know, I do speak to him from time to time. And I just don’t see like, I’ve dealt with him enough over the years for, you know, 25 years now, like, I’ve been in the business, and he doesn’t sound any different, right?
He’s defiant. I think that, you know, I don’t think you, like he was a goalie in the NHL, and now he’s been a manager for, what, three decades, four decades. I don’t think you get to that, and he’s won three Stanley Cups without a little bit of like FU to people who are when the things go badly …”
Don Taylor: “We’re aware of that.”
Friedman: “And, you know, I just think, I don’t, I didn’t get the sense. I know there’s been a lot of rumors about, has he had enough? He’s in his 70s. You know, I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but when I spoke to him earlier in the year, I got none of that. None of that. And I just, I mean, who knows what can happen? But the last couple times I spoke to him, I did not have the impression of a guy who was walking away from anything here.
You know, the Foote talk. I think that some, I find it interesting, he said a couple of weeks ago or recently that there’s more passion in the dressing room. Some of the problems this year were bigger than Adam Foote.”
Taylor: “Yeah.”
Friedman: “Like the what was going on in the room, you know, (Quinn) Hughes is unhappiness that was, that was bigger than him.
I think that, I judge Adam Foote on one thing right now, and that is, do the young players get better? I also feel this, that if you hire a coach and you change them in a year, it’s an organizational failure. I think it’s, it’s a bad thing.
But the, the only thing I’m judging on now, Foote on now, is, is (Zeev) Buium getting better? Is (Liam) Ogren getting better? Is (Marco) Rossi getting better? Name any player up and down the lineup that you guys want to that you think is part of …”
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Taylor: “(Tom) Willander?”
Friedman: “Yeah, Willander. Are they getting better? To me, that is the way that Foote should be judged. And I think the other question got to be asking yourself, is safe, for argument’s sake, McKenna’s a Canuck next year. Do you think that foot can teach him the ways of the NHL?”
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