The Canucks have a free agency problem

National Post

8 hours ago

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Long, long ago, there was a powerful NBA team in a little city that was lovely but far from the bright lights. And yet the San Antonio Spurs found a way to not only keep their all-time superstar Tim Duncan, but built an organization around him that remained one of the association's leading lights for many years.
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They understood that to not only keep Duncan but to attract a supporting cast, they had to be the best. That's a lesson that former assistant general manager Laurence Gilman brought to the Canucks when he was hired away from the Arizona Coyotes in 2008 — one that his old boss Mike Gillis took to heart, one that his (brief) second boss Trevor Linden also paid heed to.
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I thought of this when I heard president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford lament a month or so ago, and then his general manager Patrik Allvin repeat last week on the 100% Canucks podcast, that free agents seem less inclined to sign north of the border.
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'A lot of the players in the UFA pool signed with their teams before July 1. Some of them expressed that Canada wasn't a preferred destination,' Allvin told John Shannon and Landon Ferraro last week.
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We have all heard the concerns about high-income-tax jurisdictions, such as B.C., versus low- or no-tax places like Florida and Nevada. Sure, that's a consideration for some players, but there are other things that players care about. Quality of life is a big factor in Vancouver's favour, for one.
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But you ask an agent — and I asked several — and other league sources, you will hear a more problematic picture. Where once there was effort to make this organization a destination in the mould of the Spurs, now prospective free agents only see chaos.
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There is the well-known story of Gillis and Gilman flying to Sweden to make the Sedins a big offer — but also one that they admitted was less than they might be able to get elsewhere. That they flew to see the Sedins to deliver the offer themselves carried weight, but so did the message of what they would do with the money they weren't spending on the twins: They were going to secure players elsewhere in the lineup.
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And they would spend on amenities — like a practice facility. That is a long-standing issue, one that the current management group does seem committed to make happen, but we'll wait until there are actually signs of something happening, rather than suggestions that ownership has hired someone who was formerly with a rival developer and who has been tasked with making the thing happen.