If you missed it on Tuesday, The Hockey News posted a survey that ranked fans' confidence in management groups around the NHL. The poll was conducted after the draft and the early days of free agency.
The Vancouver Canucks ranked dead last. By quite a large margin.
After the survey was posted, Patrick Johnston of The Province took the author to task for his methods. The survey featured only 200 voters, who were required to answer seven questions about each of 30 teams. Highly unlikely that every voter was hyper-informed about the details of every team's moves in every single category of a survey that large.
At the time of polling, I imagine the Canucks' coast-to-coast image wasn't helped by the publicity surrounding Jim Benning's tampering fine, or the fact that the team was reasonably low-key through the big week—having completed the Erik Gubranson trade a month earlier, scooping up just one high-profile free agent in Loui Eriksson, and making just one pick in the first two rounds of the draft.
When your team finishes 28th overall in the standings, it'll take some time to change the national narrative. ESPN's Joe McDonald published his latest power rankings on Tuesday as well. He moved the Canucks up one spot on the strength of the Loui Eriksson signing—from 30th to 29th, now ahead of the Stamkos-less Maple Leafs.
Johnston re-polled over on The Province website, focusing only on the Canucks. The survey is still cumbersome, with the one-to-10 scale in the six main categories, and the results show up in order of popularity, which makes it difficult to eyeball an overall impression. But the survey has now drawn over 3,000 responses, presumably mostly from local hockey fans, so the results should be a bit more representative of the mood here in the city.
There's more variance in the different categories than we see in the Hockey News poll, which also indicates that the respondents are more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the management group. In The Province version of the poll, "Drafting and Developing" rates quite high, which makes sense, while one-out-of-ten is by far the most popular response with respect to the team's "Vision."
I think there's still a reluctance among a large part of the fanbase to accept that the Canucks' vision is to plow forward with the most competitive team possible, trying to make the playoffs and rebuild as they go. That doesn't align with the "tear it down" mentality that has been screamed from the rooftops for the past few seasons, so people have a tendency to believe that "there is no plan" when, in fact, there is a plan—it's just not the one that they were expecting or hoping for. I guess the question that remains unanswered is whether or not this vision can actually yield the desired result—short-term benefits while building long-term stability and, ideally, getting fans back into the building at Rogers Arena and excited about the team once again.
Clearly, the Canucks still have some challenges in PR as well as Hockey Operations. Still, I feel like the team has done a better job keeping control of the narrative than it did during the last offseason. Last year, the tumultuous Summer Summit was held on July 9—I don't imagine that event will happen again this year.
Until the results start to improve on the ice, they're going to have to endure the jabs. Is it any wonder that the organization hopes to make that happen as soon as possible?
Another example of the team's drafting and developing success during the Linden/Benning era could turn out to be centre Adam Gaudette, who was drafted in the fifth round in 2015. In this article at Canucks.com, Tyson Giuriato covers the story of Gaudette, who made the leap to college at Northeastern a year earlier than expected, then excelled in the second half of his season, scoring 25 points in his final 23 games as his team went on to win the Hockey East Conference.
Gaudette turns 20 in October and will be heading back to Northeastern for a second season. At 6'1" and 170 pounds, he needs to add some muscle, but his hockey sense has impressed Stan Smyl.
"He is a strong, two-way centre that can also play right wing for you," Smyl told Giuriato. "He contributes everywhere such as the penalty kill and power play, but what impressed me was his play five-on-five. He stood out in that area and to me five-on-five makes a difference in a player and is going to make a difference in his game.”
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»