What a year 2025 was for the Vancouver Canucks. A captain traded. A rebuild retool retool with a hybrid form. And of course, a feud between two star players, leading to one getting traded.

Once Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford publicly acknowledged the rumoured feud between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller, it became a talking point in hockey circles all over the continent, with everyone offering up their take on the situation, and how they would handle it if they were in charge. One of these people was someone who actually was once in charge of the Canucks: hockey lifer and ex-Canucks general manager Brian Burke.

Speaking on The Nation Network’s The Sheet, Burke offered his two cents on the Canucks’ off-ice fiasco:

“I played for a championship team in Maine, we didn’t all get along…We didn’t even eat dinner together, some of us. We didn’t all get along, but we won a Calder Cup together. You don’t have to get along, you just gotta respect each other as players. So to me, the shocking part of this is not that there’s discord or friction. The shocking part of this is that it’s this public. This is wrong. This is not stuff that is supposed to be aired publicly. This has gone too far. The people involved, you know, the coach has tried to calm this down, the GM’s tried to calm this down, Jimmy Rutherford has tried to calm this down. It’s still out there. It’s gone too far. I blame the players involved for letting it get this far. But this is not anything unusual. This is routine for a hockey club. What is not routine is how the broadcasting of it has been.

“Jimmy Rutherford is an impatient guy. That’s why he’s successful. He would have called them in and said, ‘You got to fix this.’ Somebody would have called both players in. I would have called the players in separately and said, ‘I’m not trading anyone. You two sort this out.’ I would have had them in separately then brought them in together and say, ‘you want to grab a case of beer somewhere and go drink beer and solve it, do it that way? You want to fight? You want to go after each other in practice and fight? Solve it that way. Let’s solve it, fix it. I’m sick of hearing about it. And Patrik Allvin would have done the same thing. Jimmy would have done the same thing. It’s not working. So now the best thing is, shame them into making it work and see if you can move on. The good thing is teams have distractions too. A fight will happen where players rally around the team. Something will happen that will get the team to rally around them and forget about this. But right now, it’s a major problem.

“[Trading one of these players is] a last resort. At some point, it’ll come to that. You’re talking big contracts on guys, and because of the attention, are underperforming. You’re not going to get full value right now. Elias Patterson is not going to fight JT Miller to do it, someone else will have to do it. Someone will have to grab JT after practice and say, ‘I’m sick of this garbage. Let’s sort it out now. You’re too big for this guy, you’re too good a fighter, but I’m not. Lets sort it out that way.’ That might be what it needs to be, some trial by combat thing that sorts it out. That might be what happens. You’re right. When I played, we would fight to solve this, and it’s not a good method of resolving disputes, I know, and I know a lot of people are scratching their heads saying ‘did he just say they should fight?’… I remember in my first training camp in Providence, I fought a guy who was a junior, much bigger than I was, tough as nails. Had a great fight, we’ve been friends ever since. First time I met Paul Holmgren, I fought him, we’ve been friends ever since. So sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do.”

When someone of Burke’s stature speaks up, people listen. Which is why it’s no surprise to see his take on one of the biggest stories of the year come in at number five on our list.

Check out our other top 10 stories of 2026 so far!
#10 – Canucks sign Garland and Demko to contract extensions on day one of free agency
#9 – When Rutherford hinted at trading for Jack and Luke Hughes to keep Quinn in Vancouver
#8 – Canucks select Braeden Cootes with 15th overall pick of 2025 NHL Draft
#7 – Brock Boeser details Allvin’s last-minute phone call that kept him in Vancouver