Farhan the basis of your thread seems to be the notions that the Canucks (no matter who is running the team or on the roster) are naturally an offensive team and that their failures to make the postseason after the lockout - and particularly in 2006 - were because the forward group didn't get it done.
Is that accurate? I'm going to just respond under the assumption that it is.
To me, both our playoff misses were the result of an injury-decimated defense. To be sure, both the 2005-06 and 2007-08 squads had some problems from the very beginning (goaltending and forward depth, respectively) but were in a position to make the playoffs and crashed when the injuries starting piling up in the defense corps.
(Take a look at this blueline from the game before the trade deadline in 2006 - in order of ice time: Bryan Allen, rookie Kevin Bieksa, Steve McCarthy, Sven Butenschon, Nolan Baumgartner. By the end of the season it was not significantly better, here is the blueline from the last game: Jovanovski - playing his 7th game since the new year, Carney, Allen, Ohlund, Baumgartner, Weinrich. Sure Naslund and Bertuzzi were disappointing that season and I am not trying to absolve those players of responsibility but you have to think that with better organizational depth on the blueline or with fewer injuries anyway we would have still made it into the postseason.
As for the 07-08 debacle it's a similar story - we used 11 defensemen and players like Aaron Miller, Mike Weaver, Lukas Krajicek, Nathan McIver.. Kevin Bieksa was - understandably given the abdominal injury and then skate cut - awful when he wasn't missing entirely, Salo missed almost 20 games and Ohlund almost 30, Willie Mitchell played through a fractured vertebrae before sitting ten games... Would an elite center have helped here? Of course, but he would have helped even more if he could play a few games as a defenseman.)
Ultimately I think the Canucks have had other problems in the last few years that have caused them trouble: poor forward depth on the roster meaning that if a key player isn't scoring nobody else does, poor organizational depth on defense meaning that two or three injuries means we are unable to ice a decent roster let alone drive the offense from the blueline like the team prefers, lack of an actual starting goaltender.. these have all been addressed by the current GM and he's given most of us confidence to think that if other weaknesses make this team vulnerable, they'll be addressed as well.
Would it be great to go out and get the kind of player you're talking about, that would guarantee this team wouldn't have trouble in the future - an extra elite first liner, if you will? Of course, and if the right deal crops up you always pull the trigger. But the type of player you're talking about is extremely rare, and given you have provided one example thusfar (and it's a player a troubled franchise have pinned their entire future on) I think we all know that trade is probably not coming without a colossal overpayment. The most reasonable and most likely course of action is to flesh out the prospect group with players who have high ceilings, and who could be key contributors to a top team a few years down the road. Those players are often available in the draft and occasionally via trade and free agency and it would appear our GM is actively seeking those types of players out.
So if the question implied by the acknowledgement that Ryan Kesler will never win the Art Ross trophy is "would you like to have John Tavares [or another player with a similar pedigree and career trajectory] on this team," then yes I sure would. If the question is "would you offer whatever it takes to acquire John Tavares [or another player with a similar pedigree and career trajectory]," then I would almost certainly not.