Of course Jim Benning was the first answer and received the most likes but the real, far less intellectually lazy answer is that the Bruins were built around Bergeron, Marchand, Chara and eventually Rask, not the Sedins (who fell off a cliff), Edler (who was a shadow of himself after his back injury) and what ever was left over of Ryan Kesler (who asked to be traded to one team and is so broken down he can't even play anymore). You can deny it all you like, even exclaiming that the Sedins would still be magically playing if not for Benning (lol, they were slow as molasses and bled defensive chances), but the Bruins core was significantly younger and their aging players weren't gifted NTCs and NMCs. One of Bergeron or Marchand, on their own, likely produce more than both Sedins combined had the brothers kept playing. Factor in that the stretch of drafting from 2008-2012 was vomit-inducing, with no youth to augment the Canucks' aging core, and it's pretty easy to see why the Canucks fell off a cliff.
Yes, Benning has played his part in this ugly stretch but the answer is not just "Benning".
i agree to a point. but i wonder if geography is also a factor.
bergeron is not much younger than kesler, and they were from the same draft. similar role, though it is true that kesler plays a bit of a more physically taxing game and was more dependent on his physical abilities as he aged. but on the other hand, it's not like kesler fell off a cliff right after 2011. he was a selke finalist for two years, 2016 and 2017, before he fell apart. if he hadn't played on the west coast his entire career, maybe he just starts falling apart now?
it's funny though that there were a few interesting parallels between those two teams, only one team did things mostly right (and got super lucky) and the other did everything wrong (and had some bad luck thrown at them).
nobody expected thomas to last until 2019, but then i think we're all also surprised luongo is still going strong. both teams had future star goalies as backups in 2011. both rask and schneider became bona fide starters and, for a time at least, top shelf goalies in the league. the big difference of course is the luongo contract snafu and schneider having to be traded, to say nothing of schneider falling apart for the last two seasons. boston had its own goalie tandem meltdown, but they were lucky enough to get out of it and pretty cleanly transition from thomas to rask.
bergeron/kesler i've already noted.
both had rookie centers in and out of their lineups in the finals. boston's was the better prospect, but ours was a great prospect too. neither team got any players of longterm value out of the trade but here again is the big difference in the two franchises' operating procedures: boston wisely gave reilly smith to florida to dump the marc savard contract, buying them flexibility to execute a successful on-the-fly rebuild (in the same offseason they also traded dougie hamilton and lucic to amass a huge stockpile of draft picks).
meanwhile, gillis panic-traded hodgson for kassian when he really should have been able to get more for what was at the time an extremely highly-touted rookie. but where boston traded smith to gain cap room, vancouver later traded kassian AND a pick to absorb cap dump/cancer brandon prust. then they later signed the other guy in the seguin trade, loui eriksson, to an insane $36 million UFA contract after boston wisely let him go.
not to say boston didn't also squander a lot of that cap space (backes) and a few of the assets (rick nash) but they did have the ability to re-sign all their core players longterm and this year had the assets and flexibility to add coyle and johansson.
