The Vancouver Canucks held a press conference on Thursday to announce Henrik and Daniel Sedin as Co-Presidents of Hockey Operations, and Ryan Johnson as the 13th General Manager in franchise history.

Here are 10 takeaways from the availability.

Francesco Aquillini led off the press conference with an opening statement introducing his new hires, but he also took the time to address the fanbase.

“To our fans, we appreciate that this rebuild will require patience. But we will ice a team that competes hard every night. Rebuilding and competing hard are not mutually exclusive. … We are 100% committed to rebuilding the roster into a championship-calibre team. … Daniel, Henrik, and Ryan, you have the full support of ownership. We will provide you with all the resources you need to succeed.”

Later in the press conference, Daniel shared that he and Henrik have 100% autonomy to do whatever they want to help improve this organization. So, it sounds like ownership is actually on board and understands that to get back to where they want to be, they will need to take their time to get this right.

While all of this is nice to hear, we’ve been down this road before. We’ve heard this same message, and it hasn’t necessarily followed suit. Will this time be different now that it’s two of the best Canucks of all time? I sure hope so.

Culture has been a massive talking point over the last two seasons, but it sounds like those issues date back further than that. When the Sedins were leaders of the team, you would rarely hear about locker room issues. But over the last few years, that has been lost, a locker room rift divided two superstars and played a hand in the rebuild the team finds itself in today.

That is priority number one for the Sedins: to bring back that Sedin mentality. “We’ve got to show up every day and lead by example,” Henrik said. “Culture is huge. You can not win without it. That’s impossible. You can not be sustainable without it. … For us, the culture piece is our main thing to fall back on over the next little bit here.”

Johnson shared a similar sentiment:

“I think anybody that has worked with me, alongside me, players that have played with me, they understand there’s some real non-negotiables. Before we talked about wins and losses or getting to that point, the environment will be first and foremost. That will be very clear.

“The environment is something that I will establish now as I’m talking to players, not in September. They’ll be very aware that when they walk into this facility in September, that they’ve got to make a decision of who they want to be as a player and who they want to be as a person and a teammate. And they’ll know that. We will establish that very, very quickly.”

The players have spoken about how the culture shifted after the NHL Trade Deadline. Now with the Sedins and Johnson at the helm, they’ll find those bad apples and address them.

For many fans, this was going to be a big worry. It wasn’t too long ago that fans heard Jim Benning continuously preach that they could turn this around in two years. This organization has failed to commit to a proper rebuild and instead has tried to accelerate the process to help them get back into contention. And, well, that’s never worked, and rarely does it ever result in a Stanley Cup.

So, hearing Johnson say he doesn’t want to rush the process, and that he wants to build through the draft, is a breath of fresh air after the handful of re-tools, hybrid, whatever you want to call it, fans had to deal with over the last decade.

“I think to put any type of timeline on [the rebuild] is unfair to the process,” Johnson said. “It’s more about building the environment first. It’s making sure the staples are there; the things that we believe in. Creating a safe environment where players can improve, can make mistakes, and can have resources. We’re going to do this step by step, and we’re not going to race through it. We’re going to be strategic with everything we do. We’re going to be aligned with everything we do. So that we know, as a group, we’re sticking to the vision that was talked about in May of 2026.”

While there isn’t a timeline on the process, Henrik mentioned that the fastest way to get through this stage is to actually go slow.

“To do this as fast as possible, we have to be very careful and go slow. I think that’s the fastest way to get to where we want to be. We’ve got the full support from ownership. They’re putting in and giving us all the resources to do whatever we want and need to make this as fast as possible, but to not do it too fast.”

We aren’t saying we don’t believe them, but they can say this now. What happens when they sniff a little bit of success and some of their high draft picks start to crack the lineup and make an impact? Will they cave and try to fast-forward the process? That’s where teams actually stunt their rebuild. However, with some of the other candidates reportedly saying they could turn this situation around quickly, it doesn’t sound like Johnson was one of them after what he said today.

At first, we knew the Sedin twins were getting bigger roles, but we didn’t know they would jump all the way from Player Development to Co-President of Hockey Operations. We were a little unsure about who would report to whom among them and Johnson, but that was clarified at the press conference.

Johnson will report to the Sedins. Henrik and Daniel will report to ownership. But with how often all three of the new regime talked about being aligned in the decision-making process, it sounds like it will be a full committee.

After Patrik Allvin was fired, Jim Rutherford said that the next General Manager will decide the future of Head Coach Adam Foote. When asked for his assessment of Foote and whether they will make a coaching change, Johnson said it was unfair to judge Foote based on the circumstances he dealt with last season, but that they will evaluate all departments in the coming days.

Johnson brought in former teammate and current Abbotsford Canucks Head Coach Manny Malhotra, and by all reports, the two are very close. So, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the new regime want to appoint its own head coach. But the time may be ticking, considering the Toronto Maple Leafs – where Malhotra served as an assistant coach for four years – are also looking for a new bench boss.

There are a ton of flaws on the roster that the Sedins and Johnson are inheriting. But the biggest question mark is what to do with their underperforming star, Elias Pettersson.

Making a trade of this magnitude would be a massive move to make – one that I’m not sure they want to rush. However, after two straight seasons of not coming into training camp prepared for the year, the Sedins and Johnson mentioned Pettersson’s preparation coming into next year will be the biggest thing they’re looking for:

“With Elias, we’ve been through this as players,” Daniel shared. “You’re going to have some really good seasons, you’re going to have some tough seasons. We’ve found that after a long career, looking back, our best seasons we had, we were well prepared. That is everything you can control. It’s how hard you work in the summer, mentally ready to get when training camp hits. I think that’s the one message to him: preparation.”

Johnson wants to ease the pressure on Pettersson and give him a clean slate with no expectations heading into next year, in hopes of getting the most out of him:

“Here’s my initial thought on Elias: I want to wipe away all the expectations that may exist in him,” Johnson said. “Just like the rest of our hockey club, not just our players, but our staff. We’re asking them to come into September the most prepared that they could be. For our players, it’s going to be physically and mentally to make a decision.”

We’ll have to wait and see what Pettersson we see in September. Will he come in ready to play? Will he have put forth the needed effort and training to spark a bounce-back? Or will we see him get off to a slow start for the third year in a row? If that’s the case, I’m not sure how long his leash will be with the new management group.

The Canucks are in a slightly different situation than most rebuilding teams. Thanks to the Quinn Hughes trade, the Canucks already have a few promising pieces to start a rebuild. Do they have that true difference maker to push you over the top? Not quite. But they aren’t completely starting from scratch – at least not according to the Sedins.

Daniel and Henrik shared that they saw something to be hopeful and excited about over the last quarter of the season.

“To be honest, I think the last 15-20 games last season, I was extremely excited when I left the rink after games because I saw something special happening with that group,” Daniel said. “So I think there’s a lot of good people in that room that want to do well for this organization. That gave us all hope.”

“When you left those games, how many fanbases would have the wave going around the rink in the last game of the season after such a bad season,” Henrik said. “I think [the fans] saw something that changed, and that’s why we’re very excited going forward.”

These quotes should mean something to fans, considering they were on the ice nearly every day with the players working with them. The biggest worry for me is that now that they’re upstairs, they won’t have that same impact for the players on the ice. We’ll see who they bring in to replace them in player development.

There were some reports during the hiring process that ownership did not believe Johnson was “cutthroat enough” to make the difficult decisions required in this role. But Johnson quickly put that narrative to rest:

“I think it’s a little bit of a false narrative,” Johnson said. “One thing I do do is create a space in between, that eventually I have to let people know that I don’t want them to perform well because it looks good on me; I want them to perform well because I have their best interest [in mind]. Then, it allows me to create a safe space of conversation.

“It creates a space for me to then make those difficult decisions and to be able to say, ‘We talked about this, I’m moving you out because you didn’t understand.’ So, I think it’s a false narrative because I’m empathetic, I can’t make tough decisions. But people that work alongside me know that that’s far from the truth.”

The Sedins shared what this entire hiring process was for them.

Once they received and accepted ownership’s offer as Co-President of Hockey Operations, the Canucks’ GM search was down to two: Evan Gold and Johnson. But that didn’t stop them from doing their due diligence, as they asked about the previous candidates to get a full grasp of their options, including Gold and Johnson.

They were involved in the final two interviews with Gold and Johnson and shared that they spent a day with each candidate. They gave Gold high praise, but after a few days to mull it over, they ultimately decided that Johnson was the right guy for the job.

The Sedins mentioned they were given 100% autonomy, and it appears they actually had it, as they made the final big decision about who they wanted as GM.

We touched on what the Sedins’ leadership meant to the Canucks locker room back in their playing days, but what they did for the community was just as vital to them becoming so beloved in the market. Over the last few years, we really haven’t seen a ton of community involvement out of this version of the Canucks. But according to Daniel, that’s about to change.

“Looking back, 26 years ago, when we flew into this city, Brian Burke told us that this was the number one organization in the league when it comes to community involvement,” Daniel said. “We need to get to that point. We should be the number one organization when it comes to community involvement. We’re going to ask our players to do a lot. I think it’s so important for us as players that we did those things. It puts perspective in life. Fans will respect it. You might have a bad game here and there, but if you’re out, you do the work in the community, they can certainly buy into what we’re trying to be.”

There were a lot of things that Canucks fans can take positively from this press conference. They said the right things, and they emphasized not rushing this process and building a positive environment at the forefront of their hockey operations. Now, it’s time to see if they can back up their words with their actions leading up to one of the biggest drafts in franchise history.

You can watch the full press conference below!

What do you think, Canucks fans? What were some of your takeaways from Thursday’s press conference with Daniel and Henrik Sedin and Ryan Johnson? Let us know in the comments below!