The Canucks have already shown signs that they are serious cup contenders this year when they acquired Elias Lindholm from the Calgary Flames. They have traded most of their high end assets except for the untouchables' and are smart not to give away their first round pick next year.
The Canucks are in a inciting place. Edmonton, Toronto, New Jersey are underachieving. Chicago is two years away from being two years away and Las Vegas is having a typical Stanley Cup Champion hangover type season. All these signs point to this could be Vancouver's year.
The way I see it, the teams that I mentioned above will likely who Vancouver will have to go through to win a Cup in the next 2-4 years. The math says to go all in this year.
In Jim Rutherford's tenure of working as a GM, he has had two different types of teams he has taken over. In Carolina, it was a team that recently relocated to a new city and had some wiggle room with how he wanted to construct the team.
In Pittsburgh, he inherited an All-Star team that desperate to become a dynasty. In both instances he was successful however, the paths were completely different.
In Carolina, the team only made the playoffs five times in 17 years and only went through one medium sized rebuild.
With the Penguins, they made the playoffs every year and winning the Cup twice. The Vancouver job seems to be somewhere in the middle. He took over a team with a decent amount of talent in a Cup starved city where the passionate fans are just asking for one cup before they die.
He stood pat for the first year on the job. The team in 2022 recovered well under Bruce There it is until it all fell apart in the fall of 2022. He slowly started to put his handprint on the team until the last six months where he has gotten impulsive.
Being Impulsive, is not always a bad thing. A lot of the moves he has made have worked out. They had to givee up some draft capital to get out of cap problems but for now he has pressed the right buttons.
There is two ways I think I could see this team going. For one, they re-sign Petterson and have him long term with the expectation that as long as you have Petterson, Hughes, Demko, Miller, and your three stud prospects for the next 10 years that you expect to be a playoff team. The goal is to have the chips fall where they may in the playoffs but the hope is Demko can steal you one Cup in the next 10 years.
Option two:
Petterson refuses to sign and you go all in this year. Providing the right opportunity to give yourself a juggernaut team to take down Edmonton in the second round and hopefully the Cup. In this situation you would have to unload on Petterson getting a huge return to get younger. This would require signing Lindholm in hoping you can still put a respectable team on the ice.
If they can't then I would unload on Hughes before his contract is up to get even more assets and make a major play on Connor Bedard when the time comes.
Rutherford I think has the skills to navigate both cases efficiently. Failed rebuild attempts generally end up working in the teams favor. Look at Edmonton's and Colorado's failed rebuilds have resulted in generational rosters. I would look for Ottawa and Buffalo's failed rebuilds to catapult both fanbases into great rosters the next 3-5 years.
Canucks are in a good position. As long as they don't let both Lindholm and Petterson walk for nothing.
