Laurence Gilman was let go by the Vancouver Canucks (along with fellow Mike Gillis hires Lorne Henning and Eric Crawford) in 2015, as the new regime, led by president Trevor Linden and general manager Jim Benning, officially cleaned house and started over.

Gilman’s position as assistant GM was focused on managing the salary cap and contract negotiations. He had term left on his deal but the Canucks decided to go in a different direction. At the time, they talked about “alignment” in the front office as one of the reasons to get rid of the trio. 

Simply put, Gilman was one of the reasons for the Canucks’ rise to the top of the NHL during Gillis’s tenure as GM. His shrewd management of the cap let Vancouver play games with the NHL’s salary procedures, routinely bringing players up from the minors and off injured reserve in place of another so as to not violate any rules.

The result was one of the most tightly packed rosters the league has ever seen. The Canucks were more than $9 million dollars over the salary cap during the 2011 season, yet only accrued $15,000 in overage penalties.

Many Canucks during that time were playing on contracts for far less than they could have fetched on the open market, and that’s in no small part to the pressure Gilman and Gillis applied to them. Players like Alex Burrows took far less than market value in order to be part of a contending team.

Generally speaking, firing people because they don’t “align” with your views isn’t necessarily a smart way to run any organization. When it comes to banding together a hockey team specifically, it’s handy to have a collection of individuals with different talents. It’s also important to have a smattering of opinions, as employing a throng of ‘yes men’ will ensure that only one basic tactic is employed.

It’s not like the Gillis-Gilman era didn’t make mistakes. There are plenty of skeletons in that closet: the Keith Ballard trade, the Roberto Luongo contract, for example.

But it might have helped the Benning-Linden regime to have someone like Gilman who may have presented another angle. The Canucks clearly needed a rebuild, but the executives in charge were unwilling to consider the tear down.

Gilman will be a respected voice in the Maple Leafs organization, and Toronto is lucky to have him. It’s a similar scenario to the one that Gilman saw upon first arrival in Vancouver. The Leafs are a deep, good team. The main difference is that the core pieces in Toronto are much younger than the Canucks’ stars were. Watch Gilman talk many of those young stars into favourable contracts as the Leafs turn into a contender for years to come.