This is an excellent post UW - could not have written a better summary of this management team's performance and it addresses several topics which I have been reflecting on since posting more frequently. I want to comment on a few specific points you raised.
UWSaint wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 10:38 am
- [EP40, Horvat, Miller, who to keep, who to move? With the salary cap, this really wasn't an option. Ex ante -- good decision -- it probably had the best chance of working out to keep the youngest and most skilled and the play driver -- but probably any would have worked out in the near term if a true #2 RHD was going to be the ultimate return (and good on them for getting Hronek). Ex post, I am sure that most think EP40 should have been moved b/c he probably returns the most in a trade and because his performance would fall off a year after the trade. But me? Ex post I would have chosen Miller because I think his implosion was both material to the Canucks failure and I think it is very likely that the time bomb was ticking regardless of the contributing factor (believed to be EP40's contract and lack of commitment). No one else imploded over it.... Only if management knew or should have known Miller's runway was shorter than his contract would Miller have been the obvious choice to move.
I've been musing over this dynamic for a few days and actually scrapped a recent post as I couldn't find the right place to raise this but I think it's relevant to this thread.
In my view the Canucks made the right call from a pure hockey perspective because Horvat (as much as I like him) is overrated. Miller & EP40 have hit their struggles to say the least but at the time of the trade (and after), Horvat was clearly a level below both of them. In order of impact:
1. Pettersen - easily the best of the 3 centres with the most potential to be a gamebreaker. It's easy to forget now but the hockey community highly rated Pettersen and he was trending toward a top 10 centre.
2. Miller - More offensively talented than Horvat and only 2 years older. A playmaker and scorer who even bad years was close to a PPG player since 2019-2020
3. Horvat - a great 2nd line centre having a career year inflating his future value. Scoring 31 goals in 49 games with the Canucks and failing to finish with 40 on the year is very telling.
I'm happy for Horvat that he is maintaining his solid play but he is not a franchise player and is not a 1C on a contending team (arguably at all). He is an ideal 2C on a good team. There is no scenario in which trading EP40 was the right call at the time because you need game-breaking elite talent and (at the time), he was the only one of the 3 who looked like that. I do not see them getting an equivalent gamebreaker in return if they traded him.
This team was ultimately undone by Petey's collapse and JT Miller's issues - I'm not sure how much management could have predicted this. It sounds like they knew Miller & Petey didn't get along but I don't think it was easy to expect Petey's game to drop that badly (and so suddenly, not right after the Horvat trade but rather a full calendar year later).
I agree a viable alternative would have been to trade Miller at the time. That would have been the optimal outcome but only if it meant that Petey avoids the collapse - hard to know if that was possible.
- The post-Miller plan. Miller's implosion and his trade required the Canucks to adopt a new plan, and the path they chartered was to peak at a playoff bubble team. The return was okay given the options, but they use the first get MP3, neither addressing their weakness nor looking at a new future 1 (fragile) center deep. They opted for safe certainty with the resigning of Lankinen as well. Managing downside risk instead of taking risks with youth or hording assets to pull off something bigger. Ex ante, very questionable, Ex post, disastrous.
Agreed - flipping that 1st is a fireable offence.
- The summer to keep the Captain at all costs. Part of the post-Miller plan, to be sure, but the idea was that with the core stripped and a in-the-conversation-for-best-Canuck-ever talent needing to be resigned in 2 years, the entire summer seemed focused on making moves they thought would make Quinn happy -- sign his friends. With Demko and Garland inked earlier than necessary (Garland isn't a July 1 a year out talent when the future is uncertain; Demko would be but huge question marks about health (and not too much of a discount given), the management continued its recent pattern of acting faster than they need to act. Boeser, well, given what was on the free agent market, the deal made some hockey sense, but really, it was mostly for the feels. I don't mind terribly taking the risk on Demko (though I think it would have been prudent to wait and a deal still could have been had because those injury questions would keep hi FA value depressed). But the think about the summer for Quinn's friends is that Quinn didn't just want to play with his buddies -- he wanted to win. Ex ante, this was all very questionable, but absolutely unforgivable if they had a very strong idea that QH was not going to resign and that winning was the prerequisite. Ex post, disaster.
Agreed - probably the biggest fireable offence considering they likely knew about QH.
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