Earlier today, Vancouver Canucks president Jim Rutherford spoke at length with the Vancouver media.
In a press conference that spanned almost an hour, Rutherford expressed his disappointment in the job he’s done so far, talked about how his roster needs “major surgery”, and among other things, gave a vote of confidence to his core players and stated that the Canucks would like to retool instead of rebuild.
“We’re not looking towards a rebuild. I’d rather call it a retool,” said Rutherford. “My preference is when we make these deals, it’s not necessarily for draft picks that may come in and help the team four years from now, five years from now. I’d prefer to get younger NHL players that maybe didn’t work out in their entry-level contract and, you know, bring them in and give them a second chance. We’ll still try to acquire some draft picks. But we have to go about this in a way that that it’s not a long-term rebuild, and I think we can do that.
“The possibilities are out there. Now you get some of these players that have been two years in the league and haven’t met their expectations. You know, they may not turn out either — there’s a risk of that. But it’s no different than the draft picks that you take that you find out three years from now that they didn’t develop properly. So that’s kind of the direction we’d like to go. So it’ll be a mix of draft picks and hopefully younger NHL guys that have NHL experience.”
Rutherford also talked about how he’d like to acquire younger players as opposed to draft picks, although he did mention that the Canucks aren’t going to be closed off to the idea of adding draft picks.
The press conference and the use of the word retool has many fans feeling discouraged about the state of the Canucks, and you can read more about the press conference as a whole by clicking here.
In completely unrelated news, former Vancouver Canucks assistant general manager Chris Gear tweeted the following today:
We’re not exactly sure what movie he’s talking about — we were unable to locate Gear’s IMDB page — but it sounds fun!