Patrick Johnston: 34 years ago, faced with a bad run of results, Canucks president Pat Quinn got aggressive. Will Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin do the same?
His team was playing lacklustre hockey and the vibes in the room just weren’t good. Beginning on Jan. 12 and running through the trade deadline on March 5, Quinn would make five trades — and one firing — all of which had substantial impact on his roster. His team needed more heft and more scoring punch, too.
He began by making what seemed like a relatively minor trade at the time, flipping a fourth-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens for bruising defenceman Gerald Diduck, who had become a spare part in Montreal after three seasons as a regular for the New York Islanders.
That same day, Quinn picked up skilled defenceman Tom Kurvers from the Toronto Maple Leafs, another defenceman who had fallen by the wayside, for Brian Bradley, a skilled but small centre who was constantly fighting for ice time and, in the long run, was going to lose out to Petr Nedved in Quinn’s plans anyway.
Diduck became a longtime Canuck. Kurvers was flipped after the season, but his crafty play down the stretch made a difference.
Less than a week later, Quinn moved off a malcontent of his own: Petri Skriko, who thrilled fans just a few seasons before but struggled to score the previous season and asked for a trade the summer before. Skriko was dumped on the Bruins for the draft pick that would become Mike Peca.
At the end of January he played one of the few remaining cards he had: he fired head coach Bob McCammon and installed himself behind the bench. The move was widely criticized at the time, most commentators noting it was Quinn who’d assembled the roster and McCammon had tried his best with what he had.
The Canucks saw the fireball from their own plane, which landed moments before and was taxiing to the gate.
But by the end of the month, Quinn’s Canucks had recovered enough to be 5-6-2 under his direction. But the Canucks’ opened March with a pair of brutal losses — 7-1 to Montreal, then 8-0 to Chicago — and Quinn made his final moves. On March 5 he made two trades, one massive, one smaller, both of which would have lasting positive impact on his squad.
The big trade is well known: Quinn traded hard-rock defenceman Garth Butcher and underachieving Dan Quinn to St. Louis for speedy sniper Geoff Courtnall, playmaker Cliff Ronning, bruising winger Sergio Momesso and hard-nosed defenceman Robert Dirk. All four became key Canucks almost immediately.
And that same day, Quinn picked up tough defenceman Dana Murzyn from the Flames for grinder Ron Stern and spare part defenceman Kevan Guy.
These moves would give the Canucks a new identity: they were suddenly a big strong team, with doses of skill mixed in.
If current Canucks management were to plot a similar course, it would not be a surprise. President Jim Rutherford has a long career of making trades when he has to, of understanding how to move on from acquisitions that don’t work. GM Patrik Allvin’s resumé is much shorter, but he’s shown a similar willingness to mix things up.
Allvin himself has admitted he may have to make a change to his team’s chemistry to get their playoff ambitions back on course.
He may be running out of time to do so.