Someone's gotta go.

After this sheer disaster of a season the fans want - and deserve - to see heads roll. Whose is a question, as is how big the axe getting swung will be and whether they'll sell general admission tickets. There have been a pile of rumours and reporting from different sources, primarily Rick Dhaliwal, about how the offseason action will play out.

Let There Be (Metaphorical) Blood

I'm personally inclined to the firing of President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford for his attempted "If you think about it, we've been rebuilding for a couple years" gambit. No you weren't, not you aren't, and do shut up. That was a ludicrous spin on a disastrous season.

In a modern org chart, the overall direction of the team is what the PHO* should be responsible for. They should be on the Big Picture, while the general manager tries to make that happen - or explains why it can't. But telling the person who can fire you why their vision won't work is tough.

I don't think General Manager Patrik Allvin disagreed with Rutherford's assessment. They both had to know they were walking a tightrope this year, as the Canucks have been doing for the past decade. The paper assessment wasn't off - decent talent, weak division, perceived troublemakers gone - but the real-world version was a huge risk.

There was one centre coming off a miserable season, another who was perpetually injured, and a third that left. Add a disgruntled star defenceman and incredibly fragile goaltender and that paper should have more annotations than Finnigan's Wake.

As for that real-world version? It's really, really tough to tightrope walk in skates. The worst possible start led to strange attempts at repair led, eventually, to trading away one of the most talented players the team has ever seen. So that didn't go great.

The rest of the year has followed suit, with what is guaranteed to be a bottom-three finish in Vancouver Canucks history, right back into the early '70s. Coach Adam Foote, promoted in large part because of Quinn Hughes' approval, hasn't been able to stem the tide. In the half-season since the team changed direction of their stated goals, they managed 27 points in 46 games. That's 11 wins, with four coming immediately after the Hughes trade.

Part of the reason Hughes liked Foote's hiring is because he wanted to change tactics. Out was Rick Tocchet's slow, careful, low-risk strategy in favour of a high-pursuit, attacking-defenceman style. More pressure, more energy, more scoring chances. A few moves were made to accommodate, and it immediately produced indifferent results, exiting October with a 6-6-0 record.

Injuries piled up, more consistent losses followed, and Foote couldn't adjust his plans to his talent level. There is some question whether he's managed to communicate his plans to the players effectively. Given the regular chaos in the Canucks' zone on any given night, it's a valid question.

Trickle or Torrent

There are reasons why firing each of those three would be the right decision. But that's probably not going to happen.

Big Jim

Rutherford has a lot of clout in the hockey world, and even the most obtuse owners have to acknowledge that. He is also something of a shied for them, as most fans understand that he only took the job with the understanding that he was driving the bus. That was reinforced when he took over the trading of Hughes from Allvin. He undoubtedly talked with ownership about the deal, but only in the sense that "this is happening" was how the conversation started.

Rutherford isn't going to take the reins as general manager, I don't think. He is 77 years old, after all, and is not all that interested in the day-to-day that the position demands. A glance at Allvin's itinerary makes me tired, even if he is getting paid for it. Rutherford is very much the least likely to go.

Don't Call Him Al

That doesn't mean Allvin is safe. By all publicly available accounts, he is highly regarded as a talent evaluator. And, again, looking at the team on paper at the beginning of the season, there is no one in the league who believed the Canucks were the worst in the league. Nobody called for a sub-60 point year. But the risk level was sky-high, and that's what they decided to do.

Whether Allvin was to blame for that risk or didn't do enough to hedge against it is a fair question. It was easy to see how thin the top-end talent was, and whether winning now was the right course. Yes, the idea was "Win for Quinn" but there could have been more than one way to do that. Convincing the captain that he'll be the veteran leader of a team ready to challenge in four years is hard when he's already 26, but did they even try?

That would have been the more assured, and frankly smarter, route. And if Hughes wasn't up for it, well, there probably would have been more bidders for his services in the offseason than in December.

Foote Soldiers On

Most vulnerable of the three is obviously the rookie coach. That he has a three-year deal is irrelevant at this point, or it should be. Right now, the only concern is protecting the reputational asset known as the Vancouver Canucks.

The team is going to skew young. They don't really have a choice, given the moves made. The assessment of Foote's overall job has got to be a failing grade. But does that mean he alone takes the fall? Or that he does at all?

Rookie players aren't expected to succeed immediately, and they shouldn't be. If your team suddenly has a Matthew Schaefer, that's a huge bonus, not an expectation. Whatever the plan was in September, it didn't happen like it was supposed to. Some of that is absolutely on Foote, as it should be. But some is going to be on the players not executing that plan as well.

The stated goal of the team spun 180 degrees mid-season. The players he had to work with changed dramatically. It's fair to say that he didn't know who was on the bench for a large part of the season. It's difficult to change "Hughes controls the puck at the point" to anything else when you don't have Hughes anymore.

There were games when Foote not only had four rookie defencemen, but also a handful of forwards with fewer than 100 games NHL experience and a rookie goaltender. Some of those players weren't just NHL rookies, but from different systems entirely. Those are tough working conditions.

But they also had the Olympic break to work together. They had nearly two weeks without games, extensive home stands without travel, and time to work on systems. The break was essentially a second training camp, if they wanted to approach it that way.

Perhaps the best argument for keeping Foote is the math: the team has had four coaches in four years. Maybe give this one a chance to work it out, huh?

Off With Their Paycheques!

Or not. It's hard to picture a more difficult public relations move than bringing everyone back again. This is doubly true if they lose coach-in-waiting Manny Malhotra and GM of the future Ryan Johnson.

It could be that the team keeps everyone in place and shifts out half a dozen players. Trading a few away, sending the kids down for seasoning in the minors, letting others walk as free agents. That could happen, though whether it would be well-received by fans is another question. It would be a legitimate changing of the talent on the team.

What I don't want to hear is that they are trying to make the playoffs in 2026-27. The goal should be to reach the Stanley Cup, and I want to know there is a plan for that which doesn't involve keeping everyone in place. It didn't work this year, it won't work next. Heck, I don't even want to see any 2026 draft picks in the lineup next year.

We don't know what going to happen in the offseason, but it will be interesting.

*not the soup