Friedman: ‘Tension is really high’ in the Vancouver Canucks organization right now

“The moral victories are gone. The tension is really high… The one thing I was talking about with someone there on the weekend is you can really feel it in the organization. You know, sometimes your organization is really tense because of everything you’re going through. It’s like that with the Canucks right now. Everybody’s looking around at everybody else saying, ‘okay, we’re waiting for something to happen.’ Is it going to be an executive? Is it going to be a coach or is it going to be a player? Who’s it going to be?

And the other thing that happens is that factions develop. People are like, ‘well, I think that this person’s safe so I’m going to kind of align with them, or I think that person has the proper ear, so I’m going to align with them.’ And there’s definitely a lot of that going on. You’ve got agents calling the team to figure out, ‘what’s with the players? Who’s getting moved, who are they shopping, if anyone?

You know, the one thing I did hear from a couple of teams is, when when you’re going through this, the vultures are circling — like, the sharks smell blood in the water — every other tortured metaphor I can pull out here. And you know, a couple teams did say to me, you can tell Vancouver’s trying to be careful. They really are aware that this is the time you make the deal that hurts you for decades. You don’t want to do that.

But you just can’t help but feel that something is coming there over the next little while, and everybody is kind of waiting to see — what’s that first move going to be? The sense I really get around the organization is that does everybody jump into the rowboat together? Is everybody kind of together? There are people sitting there and saying, ‘oh, boy, I’ve got to protect myself, I’ve got to align with this person.’ It certainly feels that people are looking around saying, ‘what’s my best route for surviving this?’