TORONTO — The coach is searching for a coach.
All decked out in Vancouver Canucks warm-up windbreaker and pants—the same type of getup John Tortorella wore for practices during the 2013–14 season—Trevor Linden retrieves a whistle from his pocket and blows.
He’s running a two-puck passing drill called the Russian Drop for winners of Voltaren Emulgel’s Stay in the Play contest, coaxing his “players” for the afternoon to execute simultaneous drop passes to each other at centre, circle, then charge toward the opposite end of the rink and beat the goaltender on a breakaway.
“This is a tryout for me,” he quips. “If I do a good-enough job with you guys”—a lottery of 16 unrestricted free agents covering the spectrum in age, gender, height, skill level and home province—“you might see me name myself the next coach of the Vancouver Canucks.”
He goes on to say how the NBA might be onto something with the coach/president dual title (see: Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers, Stan Van Gundy), how he might carry that trend to the NHL. Or, he says, maybe he’ll follow the example of Phil Jackson getting Derek Fisher and hire Teemu Selanne, “the best player to retire this year,” to coach the Canucks. Of course, Linden is smiling the whole time.
If the coach search or the possible Ryan Kesler trade or his first draft as president of a hockey club—a big-market one that plays in the same division as the Stanley Cup champions and finds itself in a bit of a pickle after missing the playoffs for the first time in six years—has the 44-year-old frazzled, there is no way to see it.
At Toronto’s MasterCard Centre for a promotional commitment made before he was awarded the Canucks’ presidency, Linden slips easily between signing autographs and cheesing for cellphone pics to ducking around the corner to make business calls.
Sit down with him one on one, and you can’t blame him for firing off text messages during a brief state-of-the-union update; he, along with new GM Jim Benning and the rest of the Canucks front office, is in the middle of pinning down Tortorella’s successor.
“The most important qualification is the toughest one to identify, and that’s the ability to connect with the players and get them to play for him,” Linden told Sportsnet Thursday afternoon. “You look at past performances from their teams. You try to judge the person. Get a sense of who they are, what they are, how authentic and genuine they are and try to pick up on that. You try to talk to players who’ve played for that coach and had experience with that person.”
The chosen one will have impressed both in the arena and in the interview process, prepared with a plan to return the Canucks to the post-season.
“You have to take all these pieces and consider them—resumé, experience, structure, interview process itself, the X’s and O’s part of it,” says Linden.
According to Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy, the Canucks have interviewed Mike Johnston, Peter Horachek, Marc Crawford and Dan Bylsma. There are plans to speak with Scott Arniel and Willie Desjardins, a believed frontrunner who won the Calder Cup with the Texas Stars Tuesday but skipped the team’s celebration Thursday.
Desjardins interviewed with the Penguins via telephone Wednesday, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Linden says he spoke with 2009 Stanley Cup champion Bylsma for five hours Wednesday.
Linden’s favourite coach was Pat Quinn, and their mutual respect went a long way. He doesn’t want a dictatorship, nor does he want two sets of rules—one for superstars and another for the supporting cast. Lucky for Vancouver, the Canucks don’t have that problem. The Sedins, he says, are not only the team’s greatest talents but its hardest workers.
“They don’t cheat,” he says. “Other players know who cheats.”
Taking time to choose his words carefully, Linden says he had four or five candidates in mind when the coach quest began and that he wants to speak with “a couple more.”
Linden adds there’s a good chance the announcement of a coach could happen before the draft, which takes place next Friday in Philadelphia, but he’s trying not to put timelines on it.
“Things happen, so it’s possible,” he says.
That the guy playing coach is hunting for a coach is not the only paradox in the Canucks organization. If they want to commit to a rebuild (they don’t, Linden says), the Canucks have plenty of tradable assets, yet according to the Vancouver Sun, 10 roster players have no-trade clauses. This season the team will pay Mike Gillis not to manage, Tortorella not to coach, and Roberto Luongo, David Booth and Keith Ballard not to play. The dressing room is half-filled with veterans at the win-now stage of their careers, yet the number of twentysomethings in the play-now stage is miniscule.
“It’s a delicate dance,” Linden says of the conundrum. “We want to bring our young players into a situation where they can develop but still have the guidance of the seasoned guys.”
Perhaps Kesler, a top-two centre virtually anywhere, is selfish for wanting out of a team caught in limbo. Or maybe he’s a realist who sees the writing on the wall.
It’s safe to say it’s a foregone conclusion that Kesler will be traded, right?
“I wouldn’t say that,” Linden replies.
So Kesler would understand if you can’t get a deal done and be okay with coming back to Vancouver in October?
“Ryan is a former teammate. I consider him a friend. I’m trying to do right by him,” Linden says. “We’re in communication with him and his agent.”
There are other unknowns, too. Defenceman Chris Tanev, 24, is a restricted free agent and could be coveted by the competition.
“We value him tremendously in Vancouver. He’s a good kid. We’re in contact with his agent and working through the options,” says Linden, but admits it’s “hard to say” if Tanev will be re-signed by July 1.
And who will replace Booth, on whom the Canucks used their final compliance buyout this week?
“[The buyout] gave us the flexibility to move forward this year and throughout the season. In fairness to David, he had some injuries that were difficult,” Linden says. “We’ve got some things in the works. You always have ideas and plans, and sometimes things don’t always happen the way you want them to.”
Also in the works are pitches to move up the draft ladder from the No. 6 slot and possibly some poking around for an opportunity to add talent in net.
“Eddie [Lack], for us, is our clear No. 1. He’s had a tremendous year, and he’s a good kid, and he’s come along way,” Linden says. “[But] in Toronto here, they didn’t have a clear No. 1 and they went in with two good young goalies—that’s not a bad situation because internal competition is good. It’s good to have two guys who are trying to be better every day.”
Yet on the ice, coaching the contest winners, Linden brings up his strong relationship with Toronto GM Dave Nonis, formerly of the Canucks.
“I wonder, does Toronto have a goalie they want to get rid of?” he says, with a laugh. He’s joking. Maybe.
“President” is the perfect title for Linden. He is a face of calm masking a cloud of uncertainty. He’s easy with a compliment, quickly remembers strangers’ names and has mastered the art of saying “no comment” in the pleasant, drawn-out way that could fool you into thinking he had commented. When the record button isn’t on, he’ll talk about skiing in Whistler or Brett Hull’s work ethic like he has all the time in the world, yet he’s busy, “trying to get to July 15.” In short, he’s good at his job.
At one point during the scrimmage, with Linden doing his best Doc Rivers impression behind the bench, a contest winner named Charlotte tells him how she can’t believe the Canucks waited so long to fire Gillis, how the former GM made some awful decisions.
Linden smiles and listens. He doesn’t say a word.