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Did Dean Lombardi turn down the Canucks’ President job?

Trevor Linden’s sudden departure from the Canucks caught everyone off guard. Even Jim Benning and Travis Green seemed taken aback and confused. “Everyone's surprised that it happened,” said Green. “We don't really know the specifics.
Dean Lombardi and Darryl Sutter, then of the Los Angeles Kings, answer media questions.

Trevor Linden’s sudden departure from the Canucks caught everyone off guard. Even Jim Benning and Travis Green seemed taken aback and confused.

“Everyone's surprised that it happened,” said Green. “We don't really know the specifics.”

When asked whether there was a rift between Linden and Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini, Benning couldn’t pinpoint one.

“I don’t know all the reasons why it happened and it’s not my place to comment on it,” said Benning, later adding, “I’ve never seen [any philosophical differences]. We would have meetings with ownership once a month. We would go over our plan with them and really our plan has never changed.”

Linden’s exit leaves a gap in the Canucks’ hockey operations team, one that will be filled by Benning, at least for the time being. He’ll add Linden’s presidential duties to his own as General Manager, which has several repercussions.

One is that the Canucks will truly be a reflection of his own vision and ideas. Another is that there will be no buffer between Benning and Aquilini. It’s a lot to put on one person’s plate, and you can imagine Benning will need to delegate more duties to the likes of Assistant General Manager John Weisbrod.

Other hockey executives have done double duty as President and General Manager before, so it’s certainly not unreasonable for Benning to occupy both roles, but the Canucks could still look to replace Linden in the future. For now, however, it’s Benning’s job.

“[Aquilini] called me and he said that despite all the talk out there, he’s not looking to hire somebody as a President of Hockey Operations,” said Benning.

“All the talk out there” stemmed primarily from a report by Elliotte Friedman, who heard from multiple sources that the Canucks had reached out to Dean Lombardi.

 

 

Lombardi would have made a lot of sense for the Canucks. He oversaw a rebuild in Los Angeles as President and General Manager, taking over the team after three seasons of missing the playoffs and leading them to two Stanley Cups. While he left the team in tough shape after that, due to expensive contracts he handed out to aging veterans, few Kings fans would complain.

Hiring a new President, particularly one with extensive experience as a General Manager like Lombardi, would put Benning in a particularly tough spot. It must have been good to get reassurances from Aquilini that would not occur.

Friedman, however, is a reliable, well-sourced reporter and, when he reached out to Lombardi, he discovered a very good reason why he wouldn’t take the job with the Canucks.

 

 

Assuming Friedman’s sources were correct and the Canucks did call Lombardi, it would have been a moot point. Even if he was interested in the job, he couldn’t take it because of his firm contract with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Lombardi committed to the Flyers a month ago, long before there was even an inkling of strife between Linden and the Canucks. So, if the Canucks did call, it would have been too late.

There’s just one issue: if Aquilini did reach out to Dean Lombardi, it makes his promise to Benning that he’s not looking to hire a new President seem questionable. It may simply be that, besides Lombardi, there are no immediately obvious candidates for the job.