‘It’s a big day for Swedish hockey’: Vancouver Canucks name Patrik Allvin 12th general manager

The Vancouver Canucks have officially named Patrik Allvin the 12th general manager in club history.

Allvin worked with Canucks president Jim Rutherford in Pittsburgh and was promoted by Rutherford to the Penguins’ director of amateur scouting in 2017.

A native of Sweden, the 47-year-old Allvin joined the Penguins as a European scout in 2006-07, and was promoted to head scout in 2012.

“I am pleased to welcome Patrik and his family to Vancouver,” said Rutherford in a statement. “Patrik and I worked together for seven years, and I believe he will be an excellent General Manager. He has won three Stanley Cups and has experience at all levels of hockey operations. He is intelligent, works hard, makes strong decisions and I believe he will help us build a winning team in Vancouver.”

“I am grateful and humbled for this opportunity and want to thank Jim and the Aquilini family for their belief in me,” said Allvin. “Leading an NHL team in Canada is an honour and building a championship team in Vancouver is our goal. Jim has assembled a diverse and talented hockey operations group in Vancouver, and I look forward to working closely with all of them as we build a team that fans will be proud of and will ultimately compete again for a Stanley Cup.”

Allvin was long considered the front runner to land the job, and becomes just the second non-North American permanent GM in NHL history, and the first Swedish-born GM in NHL history.

“I think it’s a big day for Swedish hockey,” said Allvin. “I’m truly honoured and proud to be the first one [Swedish GM], but also to join a team with with Jim Rutherford.”

Ultimately, familiarity and being well-connected in Europe were the biggest things that led to Allvin getting hired ahead of some of the other candidates.

“I’ve known Patrick for a long time,” Rutherford told CanucksArmy. “I know how he works and I knew that he was a legitimate candidate, but I wanted to go through the process. I narrowed it down to five but I talked to a lot of people, a lot of phone conversations, with different people that were also good candidates. But then when we narrowed it down to five we had the meetings in person and all the interviews were very good. Very, very good — all five candidates, but Patrick did stand out.”

“He’s a very smart guy. He knows players, he knows how to evaluate players, he knows how to find players. He’s well connected in Europe, where we’d like to get into that market a little bit more and try to get some players out of there. He just he has a lot of good things going for him and like I said, we already have the working relationship. We know how that’s going to go.”