How have we gotten to this point?
Last year was supposed to be a building block for the Vancouver Canucks. They won the Pacific Division and looked to be turning into a contender after years of suffering.
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One of the many answers to that question is the on-ice production and how it just hasn&#8217;t been there this season. But the Canucks added so much more offensive depth to help them. So why has the offence dried up?
Well, one easy answer is because of the <a href="https://canucksarmy.com/news/jim-rutherford-elias-pettersson-jt-miller-rift-no-good-solution-keep-vancouver-canucks-core-together">now-confirmed-by-the-team-president rift between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller</a>.
And trust me, I&#8217;m sick and tired of talking about this, too. However, after <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/article-vancouver-canucks-jim-rutherford-elias-pettersson-jt-miller/">Tuesday&#8217;s article from Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail</a> featuring an interview with Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford, there are some things to point out and highlight.
First off, this isn&#8217;t new. Everything Rutherford said, we, for the most part, already knew.
We knew there was a rift between the two players, but this stems much further back than anybody realized.
Former <a href="https://canucksarmy.com/news/a-lot-tension-ex-vancouver-canuck-richardson-told-miller-would-lose-pettersson">Canuck Brad Richardson shared a story</a> of him telling Miller that he was going to lose Pettersson if he continued to be tough on him. Richardson said there was &#8220;a lot of tension&#8221; between the two players when he was their teammate. Richardson last played for the Canucks in the 2021-22 season.
The coach during that time was of course Bruce Boudreau. Before he was hired, <a href="https://int.canucksarmy.com/news/ex-vancouver-canucks-coach-bruce-boudreau-weighs-in-rumoured-rift-between-elias-pettersson-jt-miller">Boudreau said he was told about the rift</a> between the two players, but thought it was in the past while he was behind the Canucks&#8217; bench.
Fast forward to the 2022-2023 season, when the Canucks had to decide between re-signing Miller or then-captain Bo Horvat.
We ultimately know how this ended. This management regime chose Miller over Horvat and traded their captain to the New York Islanders, pushing all their chips in on Miller, despite knowing the rift between the club&#8217;s top two centremen.
Hindsight is always 20-20, but it&#8217;s hard not to imagine what might be different if the Canucks chose Horvat over Miller? Would we be in this position today? Doubt it.
At that point, management was seemingly hopeful that the two would be able to work out their differences, knowing that Miller was here for the long haul. But that&#8217;s not how it all shaped out.
The rift continued throughout the years to the present day. And look, you don&#8217;t anticipate that a relationship between two players will reach a point where they just simply cannot play with each other anymore. Rutherford said Tuesday that it only gets resolved for a short period of time, and then it festers again.
After the Canucks signed Pettersson last season before the trade deadline, Rutherford explained the advantage it is to sign your top players before the deadline, sharing that if it doesn&#8217;t work out, you&#8217;re in a better position to get a return for them.
So, it&#8217;s hard to fault management for extending his star players. Both players were producing at the same time despite their differences, and you have a get-out-of-jail-free card by being able to trade them off if something goes array before their contract kicks in.
However, where I do fault management is for not acting on this quicker.
If you trade one of them before you let all of this get out to the national media and have it be the talk of the National Hockey League for months on end, you could have gotten fair value for Miller. But now we&#8217;re at a point where the Canucks have negative leverage, and teams are asking Vancouver to retain money on Miller&#8217;s contract, which was once considered one of the bigger valued contracts in the league.
Now, the team winning last season probably fogged the entire rift to a point where it was a non-talking point and just put on the back burner. Because when you&#8217;re winning, nothing else matters.
However, when the struggles started mounting, and frustrations started flaring this season, it all picked back up again. And sure, you can look back at the previous instances where the problem resurfaced and just hope that it&#8217;s all going to get swept under the rug yet again.
But how many times were they going to play with this fire until it burned them? One too many times, it seems.
In all likelihood, trading Miller would be the preferred option, given the age difference, but you are going to get pennies on the dollar in that deal. Pettersson will nab you a fairer return, but still, you&#8217;re giving up a former 100-point, 26-year-old centreman. Teams trading away those players rarely win that deal.
The writing is on the wall that at least one, if not BOTH of these players are traded in the near future.
Why both, you ask? Well, this rift between the two players has gone on so long that it has oozed its negativity throughout the entire locker room and has started to affect the team&#8217;s on-ice production.
Rutherford said on Tuesday, &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to be that consistent of a team when there&#8217;s too much going on in the room for everybody to concentrate on what they&#8217;re supposed to do.&#8221;
Yeah, don&#8217;t blame them.
Whoever the antagonist and the victim are in this scenario, both players have let it get to a point where it&#8217;s affected everybody in the room. So, it&#8217;s not just as easy as moving off of one guy, and everybody in the room is now all ready to turn the page and push toward the playoffs. There is still the potential that players in the room remain upset because the two couldn&#8217;t settle their differences which led to a trade and now has made the team worse.
How are you going to convince anybody in the locker room that they want to stay in Vancouver after what has transpired and the lack of urgency from management to fix a problem when it arises?
The longest-tenured Canuck and last year&#8217;s leading goal scorer Brock Boeser is an unrestricted free agent this offseason. He&#8217;s spoken about how tough this year has been on him and how it&#8217;s difficult to stay positive through all of this. Why would he want to come back if you&#8217;re trading away Miller, Pettersson or both?
Insiders have shared that offers on Miller haven&#8217;t been fair enough to accept — even at this point, when it seems the room needs more of an addition-by-subtraction type of move. So, how can you convince Boeser to re-sign when your return, from what Rutherford said on Tuesday, may not even be a second-line centre as their replacement?
Let alone Boeser, what about Quinn Hughes? Quite possibly the best player to wear a Vancouver Canucks jersey.
What&#8217;s his thought process in all of this?
He&#8217;s 25, in the prime of his career and is single-handedly dragging this team to playoff contention. He becomes an unrestricted free agent in two years. If the Canucks aren&#8217;t competitive, why would he want to stay for a rebuild?
Rutherford said Tuesday: &#8220;If we were going to completely start over that means he [Hughes] goes. And we&#8217;d like to figure out a way that he&#8217;s forever.&#8221;
I think I can speak for all Canucks fans as well as Canucks media that everybody wants the same thing, Jim.
But if you&#8217;re trading BOTH players, how are you going to build enough to be competitive next season to entice him to want to stay in Vancouver?
Rutherford shared that they&#8217;ll have to do their best in trades. This could mean he&#8217;ll make a similar move as they did in the Horvat trade, using the assets to trade for another impact player like Filip Hronek in another deal.
And hey, I&#8217;ll give Patrik Allvin and Rutherford their flowers there; that was a move that worked out. But can they do it again? And perhaps again?
You will have to use those assets to trade for multiple impact players. And even at that point, will those players work out in a year&#8217;s time to sell Hughes on the team&#8217;s direction enough to want to stay? That&#8217;s a big ask with the level of players departing.
But if we&#8217;re putting on our optimistic caps on, they&#8217;ve done it once; they could do it again.
I&#8217;m not here to put all the blame on management. You&#8217;re grown men playing a professional sport and being paid millions of dollars to do so. Figure out a way to co-exist. Nobody needs you to be friends. Just co-exist.
But that&#8217;s not where we&#8217;re at at this point, and one of them has to go – if not both. If this isn&#8217;t handled properly, the Canucks are headed toward another trade that nobody wants to talk about of Quinn Hughes, and now they&#8217;re in full rebuild mode, whether Rutherford wants that or not.
There were a lot of telltale signs that this might not work out in the Canucks favour. And betting on these two players to be the Canucks&#8217; core in pursuit of a Stanley Cup looks like it&#8217;s not going to pay off.
How did management let it get to this point?
Were they dealt a bad hand in all of this? Yes.
Could they have traded one of these players earlier to garner a fair return and changed the entire outcome of this? Yes.
Will they fix this in time to keep Quinn Hughes? We&#8217;ll have to wait and see.
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How have we gotten to this point?

Last year was supposed to be a building block for the Vancouver Canucks. They won the Pacific Division and looked to be turning into a contender after years of suffering.
<div class="bam-inline-promotion-block" data-max-length="2" data-placement-id="2111" data-context="web-content-promocard" data-property-id="329"></div>
One of the many answers to that question is the on-ice production and how it just hasn't been there this season. But the Canucks added so much more offensive depth to help them. So why has the offence dried up?

Well, one easy answer is because of the <a href="https://canucksarmy.com/news/jim-rutherford-elias-pettersson-jt-miller-rift-no-good-solution-keep-vancouver-canucks-core-together">now-confirmed-by-the-team-president rift between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller</a>.

And trust me, I'm sick and tired of talking about this, too. However, after <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/article-vancouver-canucks-jim-rutherford-elias-pettersson-jt-miller/">Tuesday's article from Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail</a> featuring an interview with Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford, there are some things to point out and highlight.

First off, this isn't new. Everything Rutherford said, we, for the most part, already knew.

We knew there was a rift between the two players, but this stems much further back than anybody realized.

Former <a href="https://canucksarmy.com/news/a-lot-tension-ex-vancouver-canuck-richardson-told-miller-would-lose-pettersson">Canuck Brad Richardson shared a story</a> of him telling Miller that he was going to lose Pettersson if he continued to be tough on him. Richardson said there was "a lot of tension" between the two players when he was their teammate. Richardson last played for the Canucks in the 2021-22 season.

The coach during that time was of course Bruce Boudreau. Before he was hired, <a href="https://int.canucksarmy.com/news/ex-vancouver-canucks-coach-bruce-boudreau-weighs-in-rumoured-rift-between-elias-pettersson-jt-miller">Boudreau said he was told about the rift</a> between the two players, but thought it was in the past while he was behind the Canucks' bench.

Fast forward to the 2022-2023 season, when the Canucks had to decide between re-signing Miller or then-captain Bo Horvat.

We ultimately know how this ended. This management regime chose Miller over Horvat and traded their captain to the New York Islanders, pushing all their chips in on Miller, despite knowing the rift between the club's top two centremen.

Hindsight is always 20-20, but it's hard not to imagine what might be different if the Canucks chose Horvat over Miller? Would we be in this position today? Doubt it.

At that point, management was seemingly hopeful that the two would be able to work out their differences, knowing that Miller was here for the long haul. But that's not how it all shaped out.

The rift continued throughout the years to the present day. And look, you don't anticipate that a relationship between two players will reach a point where they just simply cannot play with each other anymore. Rutherford said Tuesday that it only gets resolved for a short period of time, and then it festers again.

After the Canucks signed Pettersson last season before the trade deadline, Rutherford explained the advantage it is to sign your top players before the deadline, sharing that if it doesn't work out, you're in a better position to get a return for them.

So, it's hard to fault management for extending his star players. Both players were producing at the same time despite their differences, and you have a get-out-of-jail-free card by being able to trade them off if something goes array before their contract kicks in.

However, where I do fault management is for not acting on this quicker.

If you trade one of them before you let all of this get out to the national media and have it be the talk of the National Hockey League for months on end, you could have gotten fair value for Miller. But now we're at a point where the Canucks have negative leverage, and teams are asking Vancouver to retain money on Miller's contract, which was once considered one of the bigger valued contracts in the league.

Now, the team winning last season probably fogged the entire rift to a point where it was a non-talking point and just put on the back burner. Because when you're winning, nothing else matters.

However, when the struggles started mounting, and frustrations started flaring this season, it all picked back up again. And sure, you can look back at the previous instances where the problem resurfaced and just hope that it's all going to get swept under the rug yet again.

But how many times were they going to play with this fire until it burned them? One too many times, it seems.

In all likelihood, trading Miller would be the preferred option, given the age difference, but you are going to get pennies on the dollar in that deal. Pettersson will nab you a fairer return, but still, you're giving up a former 100-point, 26-year-old centreman. Teams trading away those players rarely win that deal.

The writing is on the wall that at least one, if not BOTH of these players are traded in the near future.

Why both, you ask? Well, this rift between the two players has gone on so long that it has oozed its negativity throughout the entire locker room and has started to affect the team's on-ice production.

Rutherford said on Tuesday, "It's hard to be that consistent of a team when there's too much going on in the room for everybody to concentrate on what they're supposed to do."

Yeah, don't blame them.

Whoever the antagonist and the victim are in this scenario, both players have let it get to a point where it's affected everybody in the room. So, it's not just as easy as moving off of one guy, and everybody in the room is now all ready to turn the page and push toward the playoffs. There is still the potential that players in the room remain upset because the two couldn't settle their differences which led to a trade and now has made the team worse.

How are you going to convince anybody in the locker room that they want to stay in Vancouver after what has transpired and the lack of urgency from management to fix a problem when it arises?

The longest-tenured Canuck and last year's leading goal scorer Brock Boeser is an unrestricted free agent this offseason. He's spoken about how tough this year has been on him and how it's difficult to stay positive through all of this. Why would he want to come back if you're trading away Miller, Pettersson or both?

Insiders have shared that offers on Miller haven't been fair enough to accept — even at this point, when it seems the room needs more of an addition-by-subtraction type of move. So, how can you convince Boeser to re-sign when your return, from what Rutherford said on Tuesday, may not even be a second-line centre as their replacement?

Let alone Boeser, what about Quinn Hughes? Quite possibly the best player to wear a Vancouver Canucks jersey.

What's his thought process in all of this?

He's 25, in the prime of his career and is single-handedly dragging this team to playoff contention. He becomes an unrestricted free agent in two years. If the Canucks aren't competitive, why would he want to stay for a rebuild?

Rutherford said Tuesday: "If we were going to completely start over that means he [Hughes] goes. And we'd like to figure out a way that he's forever."

I think I can speak for all Canucks fans as well as Canucks media that everybody wants the same thing, Jim.

But if you're trading BOTH players, how are you going to build enough to be competitive next season to entice him to want to stay in Vancouver?

Rutherford shared that they'll have to do their best in trades. This could mean he'll make a similar move as they did in the Horvat trade, using the assets to trade for another impact player like Filip Hronek in another deal.

And hey, I'll give Patrik Allvin and Rutherford their flowers there; that was a move that worked out. But can they do it again? And perhaps again?

You will have to use those assets to trade for multiple impact players. And even at that point, will those players work out in a year's time to sell Hughes on the team's direction enough to want to stay? That's a big ask with the level of players departing.

But if we're putting on our optimistic caps on, they've done it once; they could do it again.

I'm not here to put all the blame on management. You're grown men playing a professional sport and being paid millions of dollars to do so. Figure out a way to co-exist. Nobody needs you to be friends. Just co-exist.

But that's not where we're at at this point, and one of them has to go – if not both. If this isn't handled properly, the Canucks are headed toward another trade that nobody wants to talk about of Quinn Hughes, and now they're in full rebuild mode, whether Rutherford wants that or not.

There were a lot of telltale signs that this might not work out in the Canucks favour. And betting on these two players to be the Canucks' core in pursuit of a Stanley Cup looks like it's not going to pay off.

How did management let it get to this point?

Were they dealt a bad hand in all of this? Yes.

Could they have traded one of these players earlier to garner a fair return and changed the entire outcome of this? Yes.

Will they fix this in time to keep Quinn Hughes? We'll have to wait and see.

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Canucks: How did the Miller-Pettersson situation get to this point?

Jonathan Lekkerimäki during the Vancouver Canucks' 4-3 win over the Winnipeg Jets at the 2024 Young Stars Classic from Penticton, BC.

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