How do you spell relief? Y-O-U-R-E F-I-R-E-D

So, everybody feel better now? No? I didn’t think so.

Now that Alain Vigneault has been relieved of his duties, he’s probably the only one feeling a sense of relief. Seriously, he still gets paid until he finds another job, so he gets to put his feet up and enjoy the summer without having to worry about the braying of the rabid fanbase and circling media vultures that define the hockey-verse in this town.

But hey, you got your coaching change.

Now what?

Well, blood lust being what it is, the Vancouver fanbase is still not satisfied, nor will they ever be:

So now many have turned their sights on other targets: GM Mike Gillis, the scouting staff, any of a handful of players, including the Sedins and Alex Edler. You get the picture.

Although in many ways, the Canucks fanbase is like the BC electorate. There are many factions with their pet causes, and without a focal point to coalesce against, the complaining will probably subside to a low murmur for the time being.

Instead, attention will now turn to speculation and dissection of every possible coaching candidate out there, real and imagined. Heck, I’m surprised I haven’t seen an analysis of which Game of Thrones characters would make the best Canucks head coach. (Say what you want about Vigneault’s lack of communication, he’s miles ahead of Coach Hodor.) 

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s kind of the point. There are probably people out there that would take ANYBODY over Alain Vigneault.

Much of the comtempt for Alain Vigneault arises simply from his long tenure with the team and not much else. For many of these people, they probably have little to no understanding of Vigneault’s coaching abilities and the innovations he introduced to the game during his time with Vancouver. But if anything, I’m sure those novel approaches to the game are just one more thing to be held against him: 

The fact remains he was by far the most successful coach in Canucks history, in large part because of the way he was able to adapt his tactics to the players at his disposal. Sure, there were mistakes made and questionable decisions, including the reluctance to use Jason Garrison on the first unit power play and the inexplicable switch back to a clearly injured Corey Schneider for games 3 and 4. But, as Cam Charron laid out so well, his ultimate failure was in not finding the Fountain of Youth: