Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford will spend this weekend whittling down a list of candidates to replace Patrik Allvin as the team’s general manager.
From what I can gather about the process to this point, the prohibitive front-runner remains Canucks assistant GM Ryan Johnson. Rutherford, however, intends to cast a wide net in search of a hockey operations leader with integrity, communication skills and who has a deep understanding of where the Canucks are positioned in their team-building cycle.
Yes, experience successfully rebuilding an organization will be a heavily weighted factor in this search.
Based on what I’m hearing, it seems that outside of Johnson, Vancouver’s other assistant general managers — Émilie Castonguay and Cammi Granato— will not be part of the search to identify Allvin’s replacement.
While the full list of candidates isn’t yet compiled, I’m beginning to hear about a small handful of names that the club will strongly consider.
Here are nine to track as Vancouver’s search for a new general manager gets underway.
Ryan Johnson, Abbotsford Canucks GM
Johnson remains the top candidate for the Canucks general manager vacancy.
As we reported on Friday, a league source with knowledge of Vancouver’s priorities expressed skepticism about whether or not the prospect of hiring Johnson appeals to Canucks ownership. On the other hand, a team source granted anonymity to openly discuss Vancouver’s general manager search has denied this suggestion to The Athletic and insists that Johnson is Rutherford’s preferred choice to succeed Allvin.
Johnson has been with the organization for over a decade and is a player development ace with a keen eye for talent. His fingerprints are all over some of Vancouver’s best pro scouting investments in recent seasons, including a handful of bargain bin free agents like Kyle Burroughs, Kiefer Sherwood and Dakota Joshua, all of whom Johnson was heavily involved in identifying and recruiting to Vancouver.
The 49-year-old, a former Canucks player during the Mike Gillis era, is also a gifted communicator and a natural leader with the weight and experience to relate to active players. His work constructing the 2025 Abbotsford Canucks Calder Cup champions and the culture of development that he’s built in the Fraser Valley reflect very well on Johnson’s abilities as a leader and an organization builder.
Whether Johnson is the choice in Vancouver or not, he’s a strong candidate to be an NHL general manager in short order.
Tom Fitzgerald, former New Jersey Devils GM
Recently dismissed from the New Jersey Devils, Fitzgerald would be a strong candidate and will almost surely be interviewed and considered for the Canucks’ GM vacancy in the event that he isn’t the choice to take over the Nashville Predators.
Fitzgerald, 58, worked with Rutherford in Pittsburgh for a few years before following Ray Shero to the Devils and ultimately succeeding him as general manager. His work with the Devils was mixed; he had a strong run rebuilding the organization’s young core, but got bogged down under an avalanche of inefficient contracts to depth players, gave away too much no-move protection and compromised his ability to win the bidding for Quinn Hughes.
Kevyn Adams, former Buffalo Sabres GM
Adams may be the first general manager to be fired midseason to deserve serious consideration as a nominee for the Jim Gregory Executive of the Year Award.
Adams, 51, served as the oft-criticized GM of the Buffalo Sabres for six years before he was fired in December. Immediately after he was relieved of his duties, however, the Sabres team he constructed caught fire and surged to break Buffalo’s long playoff drought and win the Atlantic Division.
More suddenly than just about any reputation has ever been resuscitated in NHL history, Adams’ work atop the Sabres hockey operations department has taken on a very different look as a result of the shocking events of the past four months. For a team like the Canucks that’s now mired in a rebuild, Adams’ experience seems enormously relevant to the task at hand.
The Canucks will probably look to talk to Adams as part of their process to identify a new general manager. It’s notable too that there’s some familiarity between Adams and Rutherford, as Adams was a member of Rutherford’s Stanley Cup-winning Carolina Hurricanes in 2006.
Roberto Luongo, Florida Panthers special adviser to the GM
The former Canucks superstar goaltender, Luongo has been part of the Florida Panthers’ back-to-back Stanley Cup champion front office since his retirement in 2019 and built a gold medal-winning team as the general manager of Team Canada at the 2021 World Championship.
Luongo currently serves as a special adviser to Florida general manager Bill Zito, and oversees a Panthers goaltending excellence department that is amassing a wildly impressive track record drafting and developing netminders in the later rounds — some of whom, like Devon Levi, have been monetized by Zito on the trade market for key contributors to the Panthers mini-dynasty like Sam Reinhart.
Yes, Luongo’s Canucks tenure was occasionally complicated, but the 47-year-old Hockey Hall of Famer maintains a lot of affection for the city. He’s also got a special appreciation for the intelligence and passion of the fan base.
Luongo would certainly be a marquee name that would ring out for Canucks ownership. His family ties to South Florida run deep, however, and it seems like a long shot that he would relocate his family back to Canada’s West Coast unless the circumstances, both personal and professional, all lined up perfectly.
Ron Francis, former Seattle Kraken president of hockey operations
Francis, who recently stepped down as the Seattle Kraken’s president of hockey operations, and Rutherford go way back to their shared time with the Hurricanes.
Rutherford hired Francis after his playing days were done, and Francis succeeded him as Hurricanes general manager.
Across his time with both the Hurricanes and the Kraken, Francis was a relatively passive team builder. His trade volume, in contrast with Rutherford’s, was low. He’s famed, above all else, for his preternatural patience as a hockey executive.
Whether Francis is ready to step back into another hockey operations challenge this quickly after his time in Seattle came to an end is an open question. And certainly his work with the Kraken, and the bungling of the expansion draft process in particular, leaves a lot of room for fair criticism.
If the Canucks are looking for an executive, however, who has successfully and patiently accumulated talent through the draft during the darker days of a rebuild, Francis certainly fits the bill.
Sam Ventura, Buffalo Sabres VP of Hockey Strategy and Research
Ventura, a co-founder of the memorably great War-On-Ice hockey analytics resource website, which was a successor to Behind The Net and Extra Skater and critical to the popularization of analytics-based hockey analysis in the previous decade, is currently an R&D Department head working for the Sabres.
Ventura, 38, has worked as an NHL executive for over a decade, ever since he was first plucked out of academia by Rutherford’s Penguins in the summer of 2015. He is still, however, an affiliated faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Statistics & Data Science and an advisory board member for the University of Pittsburgh’s MS in Quantitative Economics program.
Obviously, Ventura is eminently qualified.
Ventura may not ultimately be requested to interview as part of the general manager search, but he’s certainly being considered as the club begins to construct its list.
Marc Bergevin, Buffalo Sabres associate GM
Bergevin has been linked to the Canucks job by Sportsnet 650’s Satiar Shah and is a name with some ties to the organization. Bergevin was briefly a Canucks player during the Brian Burke era and served as an assistant general manager to Canucks adviser Dale Tallon during his tenure as Chicago Blackhawks general manager.
Bergevin’s GM tenure with the Montreal Canadiens was mixed, and included some significant wins — like the trade for Phillip Danault, and the Max Pacioretty trade that returned Nick Suzuki — and some massive, reckless losses — like the trade of Mikhail Sergachev to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the trade of P.K. Subban to the Predators and drafting Logan Mailloux in 2021.
Overall, Bergevin’s record in Montreal is concerning, given Vancouver’s positioning as a rebuilding team and the worst historic impulses of Canucks ownership. His general modus operandi was to build teams that were capable of punching above their weight in the playoffs, and while that resulted in some miracle playoff runs on occasion, more often than not, it resulted in a mediocre team ill-suited to contend consistently or durably.
More than that, how can anyone, especially anyone in charge of a rebuilding organization, look at the trajectory of the Canadiens since parting ways with Bergevin, and conclude that they’d be better off aspiring to emulate what preceded it?
Derek Clancey, Toronto Maple Leafs AGM
Clancey was Rutherford’s first executive hire in Vancouver when he was named an assistant general manager. Clancey also interviewed for the general manager job that ultimately went to Allvin in the winter of 2022.
After a season and a half with the Canucks, Clancey was reunited with Brad Treliving, who hired him as a scout when he was the general manager of the Calgary Flames, when Treliving took the top job in Toronto. It seemed, at the time, odd that Clancey was permitted to leave Vancouver in a lateral move.
Clancey is highly regarded by Rutherford as a talent evaluator and hockey guy, and was a major part of Pittsburgh’s professional scouting success during the back-to-back Stanley Cup wins that Rutherford oversaw. Given what’s occurred in Toronto over the past few weeks, Clancey is available and may get considered for an interview for the GM job in Vancouver.
Jason Spezza, Pittsburgh Penguins AGM
Based on what I’m hearing about the profile of executives that the Canucks will consider interviewing, there are a couple of younger assistant general managers who have been working for rebuilding teams that have caught Rutherford’s eye and who the club will likely be eager to speak with as this process unfolds. I’m not precisely sure who those candidates are just yet, but there are a variety of names that match that description, and Spezza would seem to be the most high-profile.
Spezza, 42, has built up his reputation as an assistant general manager with the Penguins and the general manager of their AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. That he’s been named co-general manager of Canada’s 2026 World Championship team, alongside Treliving, speaks to the extent to which his star is on the rise.
Spezza followed Kyle Dubas from Toronto to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2023 and is widely viewed as a hotshot future top candidate for executive leadership in the very near future. He would represent a major coup if he were willing to consider working in Vancouver.
Jeff Tambellini, Tampa Bay Lightning AGM
A dark horse candidate with significant ties to Vancouver and the Canucks, Tambellini is a 42-year-old up-and-comer with coaching, player development and scouting experience.
The former Canucks winger, whose most famous franchise moment was a highlight-reel backcheck in the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs, was a head coach in the BCHL before joining the Lightning front office during their back-to-back Stanley Cup championship victories earlier this decade, serving as a college scout with the organization.
Tambellini then moved on to the Kraken to work in player development for several years before returning to the Lightning to take over Mathieu Darche’s vacated portfolio as the assistant general manager in charge of player development.
Tambellini is a well-rounded, whip-smart candidate who brings significant local connections, name recognition and an intimate familiarity with the Vancouver market.
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