The Vancouver Canucks are on the verge of finding a new general manager, but soon they’ll need to replace the man who’s hiring him.

Jim Rutherford announced after the NHL Draft Lottery on Tuesday that he’ll be stepping down from his role as Canucks’ President of Hockey Operations after the draft in June. With Patrik Allvin’s replacement as the team’s general manager yet to be found, and a little over a month and a half until the draft in Buffalo, someone has to steer the ship through that crucial juncture. Once that day has passed and a new GM is in the seat, Rutherford will step away from day-to-day decisions and into a senior advisory role.

But when that moment comes, the Canucks will have another front office vacancy to fill. But who’s going to fill it?

The list of names for the general manager job has been extensive, but the options floated for a president role have been far fewer. Current Toronto Maple Leafs exec Shane Doan was considered a candidate for some sort of non-GM-related zcanucks front office job at one point, but that seems to have quieted down. Current Blue Jackets VP and former Canucks exec Lawrence Gilman’s name has come up in many public suggestions, but the team hasn’t asked Columbus for permission to speak with him. With so few names in the conversation, it seems likely the team will go without a President of Hockey Ops for a while, or at least until after the new GM is hired.

In all likelihood, Rutherford told the team of his intentions before they began the search for a new GM. Rutherford has made it no secret that his initial deal with team ownership was to stay for only two years, and that he had underestimated the pressures of the Vancouver market when he took the job. But as Rutherford leads the search for a new general manager, no one is looking for his replacement yet, and that responsibility will fall to ownership.

Canucks ownership is the same set of decision-makers who hired Bruce Boudreau as head coach before bringing on Rutherford as president back in 2021. That led to a messy divorce during Boudreau’s second season — a year Rutherford didn’t initially know his contract had — before the coach was let go midway through the 2022-23 season in favour of Rutherford’s own hire, Rick Tocchet.

Now the Canucks could be getting some priorities backwards again. If the outgoing President of Hockey Ops is the one hiring the new general manager, what are the odds that Rutherford’s successor won’t want to hire their own? It leaves the incoming GM in a tough position quickly, where they won’t be the direct hire of the person who’ll eventually take Rutherford’s place.

One possible scenario where this works is effectively giving the POHO and GM roles to one person, with the expectation that they’ll pass the role on to a successor over time. Joe Sakic began as VP of Hockey Ops and GM with the Avalanche in 2016 before passing the general manager job to Chris MacFarland in 2022. George McPhee held both roles for the Vegas Golden Knights before promoting Kelly McCrimmon to GM in 2019. The Canucks likely have such an option already in Ryan Johnson, who’s served in a variety of Canucks’ roles since 2013 and led the Abbotsford Canucks to a Calder Cup championship as GM last season.

For the time being, hiring a new President of Hockey Ops will have to take a backseat. But ideally, one of the five final candidates will be able to take on both jobs and build a promising front office to share the responsibilities around them.