Frank Corrado the latest former Canuck to vouch for Mike Gillis for the Leafs GM job

“I think it would be fantastic. I think Mike Gillis was doing things 10 years ago that people still aren’t doing when it comes to how to run a franchise and the resources that he had available for players and his kind of forward thinking mentality,” Corrado said in an appearance on Sekeres and Price. “It’s crazy to think that he hasn’t had a job this whole time and it would be interesting to see like now — with the way things have gone and how much technology has advanced — like how much more advanced would he be in his approach now compared to 10 years ago? And that’s what would excite me about it, but yeah, I heard Kevin talking about that, and he’s not wrong.

“Mike Gillis did a lot of great stuff in Vancouver. He also missed on some things, let’s be honest, they didn’t draft well for the longest time… and then there were also some trades that you sit there and say, okay, like, why would you make that trade? But at the end of the day you’re always trying to do what’s best for your team, and you try and make objective decisions. And that’s what Mike does and what he did.

“I’ll always remember this coming back coming to my first development camp with the Vancouver Canucks and going into training camp that year, there was a Canucks way of doing things, and it was unique to them. And there was like a Canucks way and you talk to other people and players, there was a kind of like a Red Wings way of doing things. And there were a lot of teams that were kind of just stuck in the muck, basically, but knowing that as a young player, when you get drafted into a program, that this is how we do things and this is what we believe in it, and if you follow this path, we’re going to lead to this kind of Promised Land idea. It’s very good for players to have that and it’s good for people within the program to have that belief — like people can get behind it. And that’s what he did such a good job of.”