I understand the move however I disagree with this firing. Torts has had success with both teams he has coached prior to the Canucks. Obviously he won the Cup with Tampa and since 2002-2003 his teams have only missed the playoffs three times. I think he needed a team that would actually buy into his philosophy, and with the Canucks its the inmates running the asylum not the Coaches or management. Listening the the Sedins post season presser clearly this Canucks team still believes they are close to being a contending team again which is sad. After watching the extremely high quality of the teams in the western conference playoffs, it has never been more evident how far away the Canucks are from being competitive again.
H. Sedin, D. Sedin, Alex Burrows, Ryan Kesler, Kevin Bieksa, (the supposed core of this team) have all been on fairly sharp downward trajectories in terms of production over the last 3-4 seasons. Farhan Lalji seems to think the firing of Tortorella was due to the lack of production from their best players. This is not Tortorellas fault. This team would have missed the playoffs with Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman behind the bench. This was a team that was feasting on a pathetic NW division for many years, and now that they reside in a competitive division cold harsh reality has finally intruded in Canuck-land. They are small, slow, old, without a proven goaltender, have no GM, now they have no coach, Horvat aside they have a pretty barren pool of prospects (though in Vancouver some will try to convince you that Shinkaruk, Jensen, and Corrado are going to be productive NHLers, which seems more like wishful thinking to me).
It's so remarkable how similar their demise is to the Calgary Flames demise, however if you had told me four years ago when the Canucks were one win away from the Stanley Cup that in four years the Flames would be in a healthier state than the Nucks I would have laughed. Now there is a legitimate argument that the Flames are in better shape than our rivals to the West!
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