SAN JOSE — Mike Gillis, the Vancouver Canucks general manager with a press conference set for noon Vancouver time on Thursday, has always fancied himself a cutting-edge guy.
With savvy cap management, new age techniques like sleep doctors and the state of the art “Mind Room” at Rogers Arena — where players can gas-up their brains with positive thoughts — Gillis channels his inner Billy Beane as a forward thinker.
So if we can all agree that hockey is a smarter, more innovative place with the Canucks GM in it, then that’s a good thing. Because his Canucks are, as of today, perhaps the most complex, intricate equation among the 30 teams of the NHL.
Watch Mike Gillis’s press conference Thursday at 12 p.m. PT/3 p.m. ET on The Score, Sportsnet Pacific and sportsnet.ca
Gillis will not fire head coach Alain Vigneault today. He’ll take stock, cool down, and likely do the deed next week.
When he does fire his coach however, Gillis still won’t have scratched any of the top five or six items off of his lengthy to-do list in Vancouver.
The Canucks have reached the intersection of Right Now St. and Tomorrow Ave., and the direction in which Gillis proceeds this summer will make the difference between a prolonged, Alberta rebuild, or a Philadelphia-like retooling.
The questions are tough, but it’s a good thing Gillis is a smart cookie. Because the answers will be even harder to find. To wit:
The Canucks have just 17 players signed for next season and already are $102,778 over the falling $64.3-million cap, according to capgeek.com. That means they have to shed salary and sign six or seven players at the same time.
To accomplish that and at the same time improve this roster seems inconceivable. So that is the impossible equation that blankets a nest of smaller — but no less difficult — problems.
Start with this simple query: Should Gillis be managing to win a Stanley Cup in 2013-14, or biding his time for a retool?
It’s easy to say, “We play every season with the intent of winning a Cup.” Everyone says it.
But when Calgary said it from about 2009-13, when Edmonton said it from 2007-2010, when Toronto said it for all those years when the team was not Cup worthy, it was the wrong tact. Playing for “right now” means dealing away picks and prospects, which only digs the hole deeper.
Ask Calgary.
In goal, Roberto Luongo will return only draft picks, and either Vancouver will take on a bad contract in return or eat some of his salary. Either way, the Luongo haul very likely won’t help Gillis win “right now.”
The desperate GM could instead trade Schneider, who would bring in a player or two with an immediate impact. But Schneider is a better, younger goalie, with a far friendlier contract. Keeping him is the “tomorrow” decision.
Trade a Ryan Kesler? You could. But you’ll get more from a contending team if you ask for young players and drafts in return, than if you try and get Kesler’s equal in a “today” player.
Because Kesler’s equal today is pushing 30, has had multiple surgeries, and his game is in decline.
So you see the balance of “today” and “tomorrow.” As the two Alberta teams have taught us, the sooner you start thinking about tomorrow, the faster today will arrive. The longer you put it off, the more distant the finish line is when you finally start down the track.
For Gillis, however, the thorniest issue surrounds the Sedin twins, who will celebrate their 33rd birthdays on Sept. 26.
Calgary fell into the trap of trying to provide Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff with Cup worthy teammates for too long. Their diminished return — likely nonexistent in Kiprusoff’s case — added a season or two to a Flames rebuild that only now is beginning.
As each season passes, the Sedins will require more help, and already they are alarmingly ineffective in big games. Supporting them means more free agents, and more Gillis trades that brought in Derek Roy, Keith Ballard and David Booth.
It is the formula for running the cupboards bare. And Gillis had better be careful, because the Canucks minor-league cupboards are already devoid of top-six impact forwards.
Why are the Canucks on the decline, while on the verge of a new alignment that will see them in tough to make the playoffs as soon as next season?
Well, Gillis has traded poorly, and absolutely botched the Luongo situation, from the day he signed him to failing to move Luongo this year. More importantly, the Canucks have not drafted and developed well enough.
Show us a team that has hit the skids, and we’ll show you one who has wasted several years of draft picks. It’s the reason why Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau are being supported now in San Jose by the next wave of Sharks, and the Sedins have nothing of the sort in Vancouver.
It doesn’t have to be a Calgary- or Edmonton-like rebuild in Vancouver. But if Gillis doesn’t learn from the mistakes made in Alberta, it may yet turn out to be.