Quote:
Originally Posted by Blaster86
y tho
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Rutherford just cares about structure. This isn't different from Carolina or Pittsburgh, except that in Pittsburgh he had all-time legendary players to generate offence while everyone else played their structured, defensively sound, low-risk hockey. Go back and look at the comments he made after the first year he was there when Boudreau was still coach - essentially "we only win because we have a good goalie; we don't have any idea how to break the puck out of our end". Look at the trades since then - Bo Horvat parlayed into a future bottom 6 C in Raty plus a defenseman; JT Miller traded for a young defenseman in Mancini and then the pick flipped for another defenseman in Pettersson. The Canucks' entire near-term prospect pipeline is all defensemen - Mancini, Kudryavtsev, Wilander, Mynio... Lekkerimaki is the only offensive prospect they have as far as I can tell.
Canucks management wants to win games 2-1 in a shootout as much as possible. Foote is a good bet for that. As far as Malhotra goes, it'll be interesting to see if he joins the big club as assistant after the AHL playoffs - that would suggest he's on deck, but as you say, good chance he finds a better offer in the meantime.