RandV
It's a wolf v2.0
I still hold Gillis in high regard, despite his failure to keep the cupboard full. He gave us one of the most successful runs the Canucks have had.
Burke was incredibly short sighted, and that seems to be his MO. Look at Anaheim, Toronto and even Calgary to an extent. A lot of noise, a lot of talk of "truculence" and no results with no picks or prospects brought in. Remember when Brandon Reid was our highest touted prospect? I do.
Nonis was brought in to clean up Burke's mess when we started to decline. We had more success (prospect wise) then we did under Burke, which is like saying we skated faster then a dead guy, Sedins not withstanding. He remade the team, and plugged a long standing hole in net, and who knows, without a cap we could have been a dangerous team. But these are the times we were living in, and we lost a lot of talent as cap casualties. He didn't do well though. We had major holes that weren't fixed and it cost us.
None of that fixes or excuses Bennings idiocy spree.
This would imply he had anything in the cupboard to begin with? The cupboards were pretty empty when Gillis took over and the whole drafting/farm system needed to be reworked. He was fired just as his investments would have started paying off.
That's the right call on Burke though, overall did a good job bringing us back to respectability but was incredibly short sighted. Nonis paid lip service to looking towards the future, and the organization a huge one by not trading for Brad Richards despite the push from ownership, but otherwise didn't actually do a whole lot to push the Canucks future forward (not that he had much time to). Had that one amazing once a decade draft in his first year which I'd call a fluke, as otherwise his drafting was quite bad and a lot of picks were tossed away in meaningless trade deadline deals.