An underrated requirement I have for the next Canucks President is someone who has enough clout to get them out of this Luongo cap recapture BS that the team has hanging over its head.
There were no rules broken, and the team was retroactively punished. Just like how Lamorello got out of his penalty almost entirely with the Kovalchuk thing, someone needs to go to bat for the Canucks here too. Hell, maybe it should be Lamorello.
i think we overestimate clout. lou lamoriello was not an old boy. he was a college hockey coach turned athletic director, which in the late 80s and early 90s was about as outsider as it got in the NHL. he was a smart executive who knew the right things to ask for and how to ask for them.
and man, when you look back at lamoriello, in his four biggest disputes with the league he came out better than could have been reasonably imagined each time.
long before lou goes way too far on the kovalchuk contract, and the league fines him $3 million and makes him give up a 1st round pick only to later, for no reason, give the devils an unspecified amount of the money plus the pick back; long before lou wants out of that contract and it magically disappears, he already was a total boss. and for an organization that had moved twice and had no history or record of success--
st louis signs shanahan without the draft picks to pay it off and lou manages to convince the arbitrator to send back scott stevens. i mean, scott stevens. st louis offered curtis joseph and rod brind'amour; those were very good players.
then in the scott stevens tampering case, lou managed to get $1.425 million, a 1st round pick (in 2001, which they traded and was eventually used by florida on one lukas krajicek), and a swap of first round picks (in 2003, which they used to get parise; NJ was coming off winning the cup so they swapped away the last pick of the first round).
it's not like kevin lowe can just walk into the league office and wave his six stanley cup rings around and get that done. it's not about clout, imo, it's about smart people doing smart people things.