The Vancouver Canucks President of Hockey Operations, Jim Rutherford, went on the Bob McCown Podcast to discuss last season’s success, this offseason, and his thoughts on how the overall team projects heading into the 2024-2025 NHL season.

The Canucks had their first successful season since Rutherford took over as the President in the 2020-2021 season. Vancouver finished with a 50-23-9 record – only the third team in franchise history to hit the 50-win mark – finishing with 109 points and walked away with their first Pacific division title. Instead of praising the work he did building the roster, he created much of it to the work of Rick Tocchet and his star players.

“It starts with the coach and the coaching staff to set up a plan and have the respect of the players, and the players to accept it. It started early when Rick Tocchet worked with these players to tell them what they needed to do to be ready for the season. The players all bought into it,” Rutherford explained. “They followed what the coach was explaining to them, and they got off to a good start, and it just built from there.”

“We have good players, good young players who are coming into their prime. We have good players at key positions – our goaltending’s good. J.T. Miller has become a special player over the last couple years. He’s always been a good player, but he’s a special player, and that goes along of course with [Quinn] Hughes, [Elias] Pettersson and with [Brock] Boeser having a really good year. I was happy for Boeser, you know, he went through some issues personally and he’s got them behind him now. He just had a really good year.”

This was uncharted waters for Rutherford and Co. as they were now in a position to buy players rather than looking to have a fire sale for their expiring depth pieces. Rutherford and Patrik Allvin worked together, making numerous trades throughout the season. Their two most impactful being the acquisitions of Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov. Here is what Rutherford had to say when asked about his thought process on making the trades for Lindholm and Zadorov and if he expected that those two would still be Canucks today.

“When we traded for them, we looked at it two ways when we decided what we were going to give up for them: We knew that they may be with us, [or] they may not be with us. We offered both of them contracts. We tried to keep them; our preference was to keep them,” Rutherford said. “When we saw that we were going to keep them, we shifted our cap space to other players and actually ended up in a position where we could get more players to fill in some of the areas. So, as much as we would have liked to have kept both players, we really like them personally and how they performed, but we were able to add some other players and still build a strong team.”

Due to Vancouver’s lengthy rebuild throughout the last few seasons, July 1st looked very different than it did the years previous. When pitching a free agent to come to Vancouver, the proposal to players wasn’t as enticing as it was after this successful season. The club would need to exceed the total contract or the duration to persuade players to come, which would inevitably only set the team back. But Rutherford described what it was like for the franchise this offseason.

“You’ve got to show the players where the teams at, what we’ve got, where we think we can get to, and also, the reasons why they would like to play in Vancouver,” Rutherford explained. “We have a lot to sell — a wonderful city, an owner that gives us everything that we need. The one thing we’re short of right now is a practice rink, which we are making headway on that. We totally redid our dressing room. We’ve got a good coaching staff and a good organization. We found out through free agency this year that there were a number of players that want to play in Vancouver, which was a real positive sign for us.”

After a busy opening day of free agency, Rutherford and Allvin weren’t done adding to their forward corps. They signed Daniel Sprong to a one-year $975k contract on July 20th.

“We ended up signing another free agent in Daniel Sprong. Certainly, based on the year he had last year, deserved to get a bigger contract than he got, but he recognized where he was at,” Rutherford mentioned. “He recognized he’s going to play the long game, and Patrik [Allvin] and Rick Tocchet did a really good job when they talked to him about coming to Vancouver. So now we pick up another middle-six forward that we think could score 20-25 goals. So we’re still looking at ways to improve our team even though we are comfortable with the work we’ve done in the offseason.”

Rutherford further added on where he envisions Sprong to play in the lineup.

“You [John Shannon] talk about, ‘Can he play on the second or third or whatever line;’ We like to have a balanced forward line,” Rutherford said. “He could play on the first line, depending on the chemistry of that line and how many guys on the line are aware of the puck on the defensive side of it. So that’s an area we’d like our guys to work with him and see if we can improve that by 10-20%, and if that’s possible, we’re going to have a complete player.”

The biggest addition from the Canucks and Rutherford this offseason was signing Jake DeBrusk. They signed the 27-year-old to a lengthy seven-year, $38.5 million contract that pays him $5.5 million annually. He was brought in to hopefully be the help that Pettersson needed on his wing during the playoff run.

“Well, we’ve liked Jake DeBrusk for a few years. Basically, since I got to Vancouver, Patrik has been talking about Jake DeBrusk, ‘Can we trade for him? Can we trade for him?’ We could never figure that out, and [when] he became a free agent, we were fortunate he came to Vancouver,” Rutherford said. “He’s a guy that can play on your top line, he comes up big in big games, he can play either wing and certainly, if he takes his game up a notch, he’s a 30-goal scorer. We don’t know him well enough as to how he trains in the summer, how he approaches the game; we’ll find out when he gets there. But I know Rick Tocchet has been talking to him, making him feel comfortable and talking about things he can do to be successful.”

And while Vancouver has done some great work this offseason, Rutherford highlighted some areas where the team could improve.

“I mean, our powerplay has to get more consistent,” Rutherford answered. “We certainly have the players to have a good powerplay, and now it’s all about how do you make that work on a consistent basis. There’s been some adjustments made there, one where we’ve got some more options for the coaches that came in here. Heinen can play on the powerplay, DeBrusk can play on the powerplay, Sprong can play on the powerplay. The Sedins have been so good for us, but they’re going to be more involved and helping on that powerplay.”

Lastly, the health of Vezina runner-up Thatcher Demko was brought into question. In March, in a game against the Winnipeg Jets, Demko suffered a lower-body injury that kept him out until the final two games of the regular season. With the hope of the entire fan base on his back, Demko was healthy for the opening night of the playoffs. However, after a last-minute desperation save in Game 1, Demko suffered a separate lower-body injury that would hold him out for the remainder of the playoffs.

“I think there needs to be some adjustments in how he approaches his workouts. He is probably the hardest-working guy that I’ve ever seen,” Rutherford said. “He’s on the ice before the players come on the ice. He’s probably put in enough work with Ian Clark before the players come on the ice. So maybe between Thatcher and Ian and Rick Tocchet, we look at how much work he’s putting between games, and I just think he pushes himself a little too hard.”