MVN - Most Valuable Network

Firing Nonis was a mistake

The Vancouver Canucks fired GM Dave Nonis Monday after the Nucks missed the playoffs by three points.  Most franchises give their GMs a five year grace period to see and evaluate the situation after that but the Canucks gave Nonis four and one of them was the year of the lockout.  Many Canuck fans will be happy with this move because the Canucks are an extremely boring team to watch and the team hasn’t done anything magical under Nonis but firing the man was a mistake on several levels.

First of all it is highly unlikely that somebody else would have landed Roberto Luongo.  The trade was one of the top three most lopsided trades in NHL history.  If that trade wasn’t made the Canucks would be in far worse shape then they are today. Just imagine what a farce this franchise would be if Dan Cloutier was still their goalie. They would be a lowing scoring, boring team that allows a truckload of goals.  He deserved at least another season as GM just for pulling off that trade.

It is also not as though the Canucks suck last season either.  The team had a 105 point regular season and made it to the second round of the playoffs.  It isn’t as though the team is the laughing stock of the league.

Also, who says the guy you hire is going to be any better? This is an organization that already fired one of the top GMs in the league so they have a questionable history of firing GMs.  The new guy will have to learn who their top prospects are and when they are at in their development, who the top prospects are in this year’s draft, he will likely fire the coach so the team will have to learn a new system, develop a relationship with the other GMs in the league, all of these things take time. Was Paul Maurice any better than Pat Quinn? I would say that he was worse.

It is also extremely difficult to make the playoffs when your blueline is decimated by injuries.  People often argue that injuries are a poor excuse but come on, anyone with half a brain knows that if you remove the top four defencemen out of a lineup that any team will win fewer games.  It is a simple case of common sense.  In my opinion it is safe to assume that if the Canucks had a healthy blueline they would have won two more games and made the playoffs.

Firing a GM because your team didn’t make the playoffs is also faulty logic.  If that is true then shouldn’t 14 GMs be fired every year? Almost half of the teams in the league don’t make the playoffs and hockey is a zero-sum game, every advantage someone gain is at someone else’s expense. Nonis has a decent hockey team in Vancouver and it’s not as though he isn’t trying to get some scoring.  He tried to get Richards but Dallas was willing to pay a huge price for the guy.  The Canucks have guys on their team that can create offence like Morrison but he was hurt for half the season which complicated the team’s problem.

A GM also needs to be able to make long term decisions that are painful in the short-term but are for the overall good of the franchise without the fear of getting axe.  Part of Lou Lamoriello’s success in Jersey is that he can make long term plans while his colleagues cannot to the same degree.  Sure Nonis could have outbid the Stars for Richards but he would have put the long term health of the franchise at risk.  Are the Islanders better off today for trading for Ryan Smyth, the answer is no they are not.  Nonis deserve another season to address this problem.  Nonis has tried to make the Canucks better and some of his deadline moves haven’t worked out but it is not as though he sits on the sidelines and twiddles his thumbs, he is one of the better GMs in the league.

As a fan of hockey I hope at the very least this makes the Canucks a more bearable team to watch.  Their style of play sucks and can really only go up.  Hopefully that is the biggest change that happens out west.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 1:56 am and is filed under Regular Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.