Vancouver Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford met the media following Tuesday evening\u2019s draft lottery, which saw the team learn\u00a0they would be picking third overall in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rutherford began the\u00a0media\u00a0availability by discussing the draft lottery results.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the fact that the Canucks\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0going to pick number one, it\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0mean that we\u00a0have to\u00a0be all upset about this.\u00a0This is a really strong draft.\u00a0You really\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know how the draft is going to fall. You\u2019ve got a number of good defencemen in there.\u00a0Don\u2019t\u00a0know how high\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0going to go, and so until we get to the draft,\u00a0it\u2019ll\u00a0just be speculation how it ends up falling,\u201d said Rutherford.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut whatever way it falls, we feel\u00a0very strong\u00a0that\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0getting a really\u00a0good player. And who that player is,\u00a0we\u2019ll\u00a0just have to wait and see. So, with the disappointment of all the excitement that goes with picking number one, number three is still going to be a great building block for the Vancouver Canucks.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He did not give any names when discussing some of the top prospects in the draft, but did mention that some defencemen are good enough to go number one in the draft, while also mentioning that when you are building a championship team, you\u2019ve got to be strong down the middle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rutherford went on to discuss the Canucks\u2019 vacancy at General Manager. He said he has spoken to over 15 candidates but has narrowed the list to five.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve\u00a0been through this process before. I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think [I have] ever interviewed as many people as we did this time, but this has been as good a process as\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0seen. A lot of interesting people, a lot of interesting ideas [on] how they would approach things. So, it is going to be a tough decision,\u201d said Rutherford.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He later discussed the team\u2019s future and how the organization wants to gradually keep moving forward to being a playoff team.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes that take two years? Three years? Four years? I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think anybody knows. It\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0be wise for somebody to think they know,\u201d said Rutherford. \u201cBut within that period of time, keep adding those young players, and if we can add the type of players that are already in there that have got good character, it\u2019ll happen sooner than later.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of the availability, Rutherford confirmed that, moving forward, following the draft, he will step into an advisory role and remain with the organization as an alternate governor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is confident in putting together a really\u00a0good staff\u00a0moving\u00a0forward.\u00a0Rutherford would not confirm if a President of Hockey Operations will be put in place with the new General Manager, but the team will be able to announce their plans when the GM\u00a0is\u00a0announced\u00a0in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vancouver Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford met the media following Tuesday evening\u2019s draft lottery, which saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-652511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}