1:04 p.m.: Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini confirmed the team has signed Rutherford to a three-year extension (via The Athletic’s Thomas Drance).
11:08 a.m.: The Canucks will announce a contract extension for president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford today, TSN’s Farhan Lalji reports. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes the deal will carry a three-year term, keeping him in his seat with Vancouver through 2027.
If true, it will be the second straight three-year deal for Rutherford after he was brought on as POHO and interim general manager in December 2021. Rutherford held the GM position for nearly two months before settling on Patrik Allvin for the role in late January 2022.
Rutherford, who will be 75 next month, will spend 32 consecutive seasons in an NHL front office if he serves out the extension. The Canucks are his third organization, having previously served as president and GM of the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes from 1994 to 2014 and GM of the Penguins from 2014 to 2021.
His front office regime has seemingly ended a decade-long rebuild process for the Canucks. He’s kept together his inherited core of Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Brock Boeser, Quinn Hughes, and Thatcher Demko, and will guide the Canucks to their first full-season playoff appearance in nine years this April.
What’s pushed this team back into contention, however, are recent acquisitions made by the Allvin/Rutherford crew. Filip Hronek has continued his ascent into a true top-pairing defender, making his duo with Hughes one of the most dominant in the league. Players like Teddy Blueger and Dakota Joshua have proved to be valuable depth players on cheap UFA deals, giving the Canucks some needed bottom-six scoring punch.
The Canucks’ 98-63-21 record ranks 14th in the league since Rutherford took over. While most of his work has come to fruition this season, it’s been a slow build for Vancouver since choosing to replace Bruce Boudreau with Rick Tocchet behind the bench midway through last season. In 81 games under Tocchet, the Canucks have a sparkling 50-23-8 record.
With the extension, Canucks ownership is entrusting Rutherford’s regime to handle one of the most important contract negotiations in history with Pettersson, who is a pending RFA and will need a long-term deal past this season. He and Allvin will also need a new contract for Hronek, who, like Pettersson, is slated for restricted free agency this summer. They’ve done a good job at getting out of what was an extremely undesirable salary cap situation a few seasons ago, but they’ll need to work even harder to manage the financials over the next few seasons with some big-ticket deals coming down the pike.
I think we will find during the playoffs that the Canucks are a pretty good regular season team.
I think we will find in the playoffs that the Islanders are not even there
Very possible!
Meanwhile a bunch of us that pay attention realized this some time ago. It was not too far back that you and bunch of the other know-it-alls that infest this site were babbling about the horrible Canucks organization and how Jim Rutherford and Rick Tocchet were bad retread hires from the old-boys network.
They are retread good ole boys club members!
Hey yinzers,
Remember when you all decided this guy was senile and ruining the team because he didn’t win the Cup every year and we happy to kick him on his way out the door and then we ended up with Hextall and all this guy has done is keep winning like he has every single place he’s ever been?
(Not so) good times.
Dubas has done fine, but I’d love to see an alternate universe where Jimmy just kept swinging for the fences here.
…and were happy to kick him…
GMJR walked out on the Pens. He was not fired… he walked out. Speculation has been rampant on the causes ever since (that he tried trading Letang and was rebuffed by ownership) but this weird meme that he was somehow “railroaded” out of town by mysterious malevolent forces is weird & wrong. The guy isn’t a saint (see how he treated poor Bruce Boudreau in Van).
Did you hear about Boudreau being pressured into making Hughes a forward by someone in Vancouver management. Boudreau said it last week. Crazy story!
Yes, but much of the fans and media were already slagging him long before that and were all too happy to see him go.
Jimmy laughs last.
While we clean up the Hextall sabotage.
Would love to know what deal he had in place that ownership rejected that led to his departure. If I recall it invoked Letang
To be fair the end of his Penguins tenure was pretty terrible. Just because they ended up hiring one of the worst GM’s in recent history doesn’t mean it wasn’t time for a change.
Dubas has never done fine as a GM, If fact, He’s quite below average in his job position.
Define terrible.
Most of the moves people complained about were actually pretty good…unless you judge them solely by whether they lifted the Cup and then OK.
Just look at the Kraken guys…turns out McCann, Tanev and Oleksiak are all pretty good, right?
Jimmy was trashed for all of them.
I recall Pens fans really hated getting Jack Johnson, Gudbranson, Tanev, Pearson, and giving up Hagelin. I’m sure there’s more but that’s just off the top of my head.
I am particularly fascinated with the Tanev thing. After the Pens signed him, I remember fans getting mad about him being overpaid & hurt all the time and hoping the Kraken would draft him to clear up cap space. Then when Hextall let him get taken in the expansion draft, everyone got mad about him being lost for nothing. Just can’t win as a Pittsburgh GM.
No, some of us understood that Tanev was an ELITE 4th liner and worth his salary as a rare player who can make an impact playing 12 minutes a night.
But you reminded me of Josh Yohe, who defended the moronic Brock McGinn signing (signed 1/4 of the player for 80% of the price) and said he was just as good, defended most of Hextall’s moves only to 180 on him at the end.
I literally had to listen to people defend losing McCann AND Tanev when (at most) they only had to lose one. At most. I’ll remind, they protected Carter AND Blueger.
Just dumb. Just dumb moves that never any upside. And people defended them.
All while criticizing Jimmy because his swings didn’t always leave the park.
Tocchet is gonna win the Jack Adams and raise the Cup this year. The Summer of Garly and the Never Ending Party coming this June.
Tocchet is NOT a very good coach.
Jim Montgomery deserves the Jack Adams so far this season and should have won it last year.
I don’t know he’s a good coach b the rabid turnaround the oilers have had since Knoblauch took over has to warrant some attention
Hard to argue with success.
What success? There is nothing in Tocchet’s post playing resume that points to success! He’s a pedestrian coach in the worst division in the NHL this season. Fifty percent of the teams make the playoffs and the Canucks won’t get past the second round of the playoffs.
The story is about JR, not Tocchet. Try to keep up.
Not seeing anything special in Tocchet’s coaching career thus far, Just the egregious gambling scandal with Janet Gretzky when Tocchet was kicked out of hockey for two year’s. That my friend is solid leadership! You’re welcome!
Wilf, are you on drugs?
Nice deflection mechanism when I’m coming at you with solid facts! Just as I thought, You got nothing! You are the Sean Avery of this site.
Did you even read the heading of the article?
You need help.
The rather large, Slow, And immobile Vancouver blueline will be exposed in the playoffs along with Tocchet’s subpar coaching.
You sure have a hate on for Tocchet
He just isn’t that special as a coach.
Now the question is how badly do they move the chips all in on this year? Would a bet & rental of Guetzel or Henrique at a cost of Lekkimaki or Podz PLUS A FIRST perhaps show their doubt about getting Pettersson committed long-term, since how often does a long playoff drought result in a long Cup run the next year? Seems they could learn from other teams that take the first playoff lessons & shoot for the future…