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Canucks win 1, lose 1, then hire Cammi Granato as a new assistant GM |
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Tuesday February 8 - Vancouver Canucks 5 - Arizona Coyotes 1
Wednesday February 9 - New York Islanders 6 - Vancouver Canucks 3
Holy schmoley, there's a lot going on in the hockey world right now!
First off, let's start with the games. The Canucks took one step forward and one step back this week, following up a tidy win over the Arizona Coyotes with a historically bad start against the New York Islanders.
Jaroslav Halak made his 10th start of the year, officially triggering his games-played bonus clause, but gave up five goals on 12 shots in 16:19 before giving way to Thatcher Demko for the rest of the game.
The Islanders are a notoriously low-scoring team, too. But even though they came into Wednesday's contest sitting 17 points out of a playoff spot in the East, Barry Trotz read them the riot act after they closed out their pre-All Star schedule with a 3-0 shutout loss to Seattle on home ice.
If that first period was any indication, this next month could be interesting for a team that has been known for defying the odds when it has been counted out. The Islanders have a very tough schedule this month, but also started a stretch of 10 games in 19 nights against the Canucks on Wednesday. That's 20 possible points available. And with six of the remaining nine games against Western Conference opponents, Canucks fans could do worse than to back Trotz's group for the next few weeks, in hopes that they export some of those points over to the Eastern side.
After two days back at work, the Canucks' position is basically unchanged: still 12th in the Pacific. Still six points out of the second wild-card spot. But with a little less runway, now, to make up ground.
One point and two spots ahead — the Edmonton Oilers, who did what they said they wouldn't do less than a month ago and fired Dave Tippett on Thursday. The Oilers are 5-4-1 since Ken Holland reminded the media on Jan. 11 that he had never fired a coach in-season. Edmonton's 11 points over their last 10 games are identical to Vancouver's (4-3-3). The Oilers still have four games in hand, and are going to give it everything they've got to try to manufacture their own "Bruce, There It Is" moment with AHL boss Jay Woodcroft now holding the reins.
Woodcroft may be a newbie as an NHL head coach, but he spent three seasons on the Edmonton bench as Todd McLellan's assistant at the beginning of Connor McDavid's career. So he already has some hands-on experience with McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins and company. And his resume is positively stacked compared to new Montreal bench boss Martin St. Louis, who was literally coaching his son's peewee team in Connecticut before being tapped to replace Dominique Ducharme behind the Canadiens' bench on Wednesday.
If you're interested, here's more from me on the St. Louis situation:
And on Tippett, Woodcroft and the Oilers:
So the Canucks were the first of four Canadian teams to change coaches this season, when they parted ways with Travis Green back in early December. D.J. Smith is the longest-serving coach in Canada — and was actually hired in Ottawa five days before Tippett signed on in Edmonton in May of 2019. Sheldon Keefe has been in Toronto since November of 2019, and Darryl Sutter has been in Calgary since March 4, 2021.
Seeing Woodcroft and especially St. Louis get their chances signals two things to me. First — the pool of available candidates with NHL head-coaching experience is somewhat smaller in season. But this is also seems to be a shift away from turning to a familiar face like a Ken Hitchcock or an Alain Vigneault — which the Oilers have done in the past and which the Canadiens did with their two hires before Ducharme, Michel Therrien and Claude Julien. And which the Canucks did when hiring Boudreau and, for that matter, Jim Rutherford.
Vancouver, I think, was course-correcting for having hired first-timers in Green and Jim Benning. And while the conventional Holland's strategy of bringing up an AHL boss is certainly more familiar than new guy Kent Hughes going waaaaay off the board with St. Louis, the Canucks certainly seem to think that their experienced top dogs have created enough stability to nurture fresh voices — first-time GM Patrik Allvin and new assistant GMs Derek Clancey, Emilie Castonguay and now Cammi Granato, whose hiring was announced on Thursday morning.
Granato, of course, is a long-time resident of Vancouver and has spent the last three years working as a scout for the Seattle Kraken — mostly based out of Vancouver, where her main focus has been on scouting the Pacific Division, including the Canucks. So she already knows the team well.
Her personal resume is top shelf — captain of the U.S. team that won gold at the inaugural Olympic women's hockey tournament in 1998, one of the first women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010, along with Angela James, and kid sister of a couple of familiar hockey faces: current Buffalo Sabres head coach Don Granato, and current University of Wisconsin coach Tony Granato, who was a Canucks nemesis during his playing days with the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks, and originally as a fellow Calder Trophy contender in Trevor Linden's rookie season, 1988-89. Linden ended up finishing second in the voting, behind Mike Modano. Tony was third.
Two years ago, Cammi was gracious enough to invite me into her home for a "Day in the Life" feature, which offers some insight into what makes her tick.
I actually spoke to her earlier this week as well, about her new children's book which has just been published. I'll have that story coming soon.
For awhile, I thought it was kind of amazing that we had such a legendary hockey player living under the radar in our city. When she took the scouting job with the Kraken, her profile rose. Her podcast with Olympic teammate A.J. Mleczko took her to another level. And now, she goes one step higher. I'm suddenly very excited about seeing her and Emilie Castonguay at the Canucks table on the draft floor this summer — whether that ends up happening in Montreal or elsewhere.
And what better time to come on board than six weeks before the trade deadline?
"In her role, Cammi will oversee our player development department and our amateur and pro scouting department," said Jim Rutherford in Tuesday's press release. "Cammi's input will also be included in all areas of hockey operations as we leverage the diverse opinions and experience of our new leadership group to build a winning team."
Let's go!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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