We’re currently in the long lull of the hockey off-season where there is very little going on. With little news to report on, there are a few directions hockey writers can go: speculate on impossible-to-answer questions about the future, ruminate on the past season, or overreact to even the flimsiest of rumours.
Alternatively, you can create your own news.
That’s the direction The Hockey News took by asking a group of hockey fans to rate their confidence in the management of every team in the NHL. The Canucks’ management group rated poorly, finishing dead last in front office confidence.
That looks bad, but as soon as you take a closer look at the methodology The Hockey News used to get those results, some fatal flaws appear.
First of all, the headline on the article is misleading, if not outright false. It reads, “How much confidence does each NHL fan base have in their front office?” but that’s not at all an accurate reflection of the survey.
Instead, The Hockey News asked people to rank every single team in the NHL. They had “just over 200 people” respond to the survey. There’s no guarantee that any of the people responding to the survey were even Canucks fans and unlikely that they got fans from every team in the NHL to respond.
These 200 or so people were asked to rank each team in six different categories—roster building, cap management, drafting/development, trading, free agency, and vision—as well as weighting the importance of each of these factors, and answering if they were more, less, or similarly confident in that team’s management as they were last year.
With seven questions per team and the additional weighting of factors, that’s a total of 216 questions in the survey. Personally, I’m shocked that even 200 people completed the bloody thing.
How confident are you that the people responding to this survey gave a knowledgeable, thoughtful response 216 times in a row?
To put it another way, how confident are you in the management team of the Carolina Hurricanes? What are your opinions on their drafting and development, salary cap management, and the vision they have for the team? And I need an answer now, because I’m going to ask you about 29 other teams and I don’t have all damn day. Just give me a number from 1-10. Any number. Go!
So, with a limited sample size of respondents answering way too many questions about teams they likely don’t follow, I’m inclined to utterly dismiss the entire poll. Its methodology is so fundamentally flawed that the results are all but meaningless.
At best, the poll shows that hockey fans around the league don’t think particularly highly of Jim Benning and the rest of the Canucks management team. That in itself is marginally useful, but it speaks less to the actual job that Canucks management is doing and more to their inability to articulate what they’re doing.
The Province ran their own poll in response to The Hockey News, asking Canucks fans to rank the team in the same six categories and getting around 3000 responses. While it’s still just an informal poll, a sample size of 3000 Canucks fans is more useful than 200 hockey fans for getting an impression of how Canucks fans view Canucks management.
The results differ significantly from The Hockey News, but are still not overwhelmingly positive.
| THN | The Province | Difference | |
| Roster Building | 2.7 | 5.42 | 2.72 |
| Cap Management | 3.17 | 5.28 | 2.11 |
| Draft/Develop | 3.92 | 6.28 | 2.36 |
| Trading | 2.23 | 4.06 | 1.83 |
| Free Agency | 3.21 | 5.15 | 1.94 |
| Vision | 2.19 | 4.81 | 2.62 |
| Total Average | 2.91 (weighted) | 5.17 | 2.26 |
Unsurprisingly, the Canucks rank best in drafting and development, which is meant to be Jim Benning’s strong suit. The management team would likely rank better if they had acquired more picks or traded fewer away, giving them a larger prospect pool, while there might also be some backlash after passing over Matthew Tkachuk at the draft in favour of Olli Juolevi.
But the emergence of Brock Boeser as a blue chip prospect at forward, Thatcher Demko as one of the best goaltending prospects in hockey, and youth like Ben Hutton and Bo Horvat making an impact in the NHL means that confidence in drafting and development is fairly high.
At the low end, however, is trading, which received the highest number of “1” votes in The Province’s poll. Part of the low grade may be for his inability to make a move at the trade deadline, but recent deals—trading young, exciting forwards like Jared McCann and Hunter Shinkaruk for the less exciting Erik Gudbranson and Markus Granlund—surely haven’t helped that perception.
But the one that should be most concerning for the Canucks is the rating for vision. Fans can forgive a lot if they know it is service to a strong, focussed vision. The low rating here is a PR nightmare: most of the Canucks fanbase either doesn’t know what the vision is for the future or doesn’t agree with the vision that management has set out.
Are the Canucks rebuilding? Maybe! Sort of!
Is the plan to get younger? Yes! But at the same time, they’re not going to acquire additional draft picks by trading aging veterans and they’re going to trade younger players for guys who can contribute now. So, no? Maybe? A little bit? Younger, but not too young.
Are they aiming for the playoffs? Definitely!
Is that wise? Probably not! But maybe! Anything could happen!
Have they clearly articulated how they’re planning to get back into the playoffs? Not really, unless “Don’t get injured this time” is a plan.
I’m willing to give Canucks management the benefit of the doubt and assume they have a plan. Some of their moves even seem savvy if you’re willing to believe there is a plan. I’m just not entirely sure what that plan is, because it hasn’t been communicated well.
Fans don’t necessarily need details, but they need a vision that they can believe in. What is the vision right now? “Squeak into the playoffs while also sort of rebuilding at the same time. We’re younger and faster, but also older and slower. Come see the next generation play limited ice time while we wring as much out of the previous generation as possible.”
Look, maybe the Canucks’ management team has a strong and compelling vision that is driving all of their decision-making. Five years down the road, fans could end up with a great team and will be able to look back and see the path that brought them there, but right now the path is confusing and unclear.
It isn’t surprising that there is a lack of confidence in the Canucks’ management right now, even if it’s nowhere near as bad as The Hockey News suggests. Clearing up the communication of their vision is key to giving the fans more confidence in the team.
