Canucks GM Mike Gillis starts the awkward job of explaining another trainwreck

Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis sat down with the media today to chew over the big, gristly question facing his organization this week: what in God’s name happened?

On Tuesday night in San Jose, the Canucks were sentenced to five months of yoga and Home Depot shopping trips. This was supposed to be a team with an outside shot at the Stanley Cup, not a four-game warmup partner for the Sharks.

So what, in the opinion of the five-year GM, was the problem? And more important to the club’s frustrated fanbase: what’s the solution?

It’s been less than 48 hours since the Sharks treated the Canucks to the NHL-playoffs version of a swirly, so it was unsurprising that Gillis’s responses were often thin on detail. They were also seriously tangled by the end of the press conference.

One moment, he was declaring that his club’s ugly exit means that it’s time to “reset this organization”—that NHL hockey has “evolved” to the point where “changes have to be made.” The next, he was praising the Canucks’ core, from goaltender Cory Schneider to the mainstays of his defence and on out to his most prominent forwards. In other words, an overhaul is needed, but not to the point of doing an overhaul.

On the one hand, the crushing loss is a sign that “we have to be better.” On the other, it's a result of not getting “the breaks” in the series. Unworthy and yet unlucky, all at the same time.

And what were the specific disappointments? Hey, said Gillis, fidgeting with a stray water-bottle cap, it’s too easy to sit around indulging in hindsight, which is always 20-20. Nevertheless, the Canucks are going to make a clear (20-20) analysis of this most recent failure (probably through something like hindsight).

What remains equally cloudy is how Canuck fans will react to this bit of throat-clearing before the real dirty work of explaining begins. The mood in town seems to have swung against Gillis since Tuesday, with sports-radio callers sharpening up their farm implements and pundits wondering aloud about whether he’s accomplished anything of note in his five-year term.

A popular line is that the GM simply inherited a successful lineup from his predecessor, and therefore can be safely and summarily shit-canned. After all, he’s contributed “nothing”. But that seems a long way from fair. Convincing a forward with Alexandre Burrows’s mix of skill and energy to re-sign for a measly $2 million a year hardly counts as nothing. Nor does acquiring defensive talent the likes of Christian Erhoff, Dan Hamhuis, and Chris Tanev. Even the recently maligned Jason Garrison is rounding into a solid addition.

That said, this mentally scarred marketplace appears to be looking for something a lot splashier—and whenever Gillis has gone splashy, the results have varied between awful and really, truly awful. Look no further than the Keith Ballard deal. Actually, do look further, to the damp-squib signing of Mats Sundin, or to Roberto Luongo’s hilarious multidecade deal, which the goalie himself has discovered to suck.

Gillis seemed more than a little tired of thinking about this whole morass today. In that respect, and perhaps that respect only, he and his team’s fanbase are on the same page.