I too don't really understand the overwhelming hatred/disapproval about this. I believe they talked to the Spurs the year before about conditioning and the Canucks leadership group should be happy to sit down with everyone they can about it.
1. We are one of the teams with the most travelling miles in the whole league, if not #1.
2. We play an incredibly hard 82 game season.
3. One of the keys to winning in the playoffs is conditioning and avoiding injuries (2011 we didn't do so well in that regard)
4. We have one of the oldest cores in the league (similar to the Patriots and Spurs, except we haven't won anything)
Ergo, having the leadership team (i.e. Sedins, Hamhuis, Edler, Higgins, etc) speaking with great athletes in other sports who are around the same age can't hurt.
I feel like we are projecting the other management mistakes or narratives into this one, such as the fact that Aquilini is too involved in the team or these meetings about conditioning are pointless. If we treat this story in a vacuum, I like that Aquilini is doing this. It was probably part of the Canucks strategy to reach out to these players/teams and only Aquilini has that pull to be able to get these numbers.