Vancouver Canucks Op Ed:

Maybe Nonis can get away with riding the kid non-stop, but he’s just as likely to destroy Auld’s confidence, as snap him out of his funk.

Defense. Goaltending. What’s Dave Nonis’ move? What players will the Canucks have to lose in order to swing a trade and free up salary cap space?

Dave Nonis also used to be the Golden Boy, the one behind Brian Burke. Now Burke is gone, and it’s Nonis’ team. Like Auld, our rookie GM needs to face the future and figure this out.

Here’s an interesting side-note on this for Sharks fans — when Dean Lombardi was removed from his post as GM of the Sharks, the two leading candidates for his position were current GM Doug Wilson, and, it is rumored, then asst GM of the Canucks Dave Nonis. And then Nonis wasn’t a candidate, and a bit later, Doug Wilson was hired.

Not too long after Nonis stayed in Vancouver, Brian Burke found himself an ex-GM as well, and Nonis was promoted into the position. Some of us wondered at the time if Vancouver cut a deal at that time with Nonis to keep him around by nuking Burke to keep him around.

And now Burke is down in Anaheim doing some pretty interesting things, and Doug Wilson in San Jose is WAAAY under the Salary Cap AND has Joe Thornton, and in Vancouver, they’re so close to the salary cap the stick boys are being laid off between games to save some cap room.

One can only wonder — if they had to do it again today, would Vancouver ownership still want to keep Nonis around as much as they seemingly did at the time? I doubt Burke would still be in Vancouver in any event — but is Nonis going to be what many of us thought he might be? At the time, I was in the camp that felt it was time to give Nonis a shot at GM; now, he’s showing he still hasn’t proven us right.

The salary cap is going to continue to be the thing that makes or breaks GMs over the next few years; so far, Nonis hasn’t done a great job of managing it, and it’s affected his team. ONe can only wonder what the morale impact is on the players that know they’re on that virtual bus to Manitoba on every off day, just so the team can save a few bucks on their contracts. I know THAT would put me in the mood to sell out every shift…