The role every NHL team — Canucks included — should have, but don't - Canada News Beep

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NHL teams should include senior management figures who have spent their working lives mostly outside the game.

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Published May 28, 2026 • 3 minute read

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gillis Mike Gillis in 2009, when he was president and GM of the Vancouver Canucks. photo by Carmine MarinelliArticle content

For all the progress hockey has made over the past decade-or-so, it still tends to look inward when it comes to filling out its staff, let alone choosing who should be at the top of the pyramid.

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Hockey has gotten better at welcoming people inside the game who have an interest in unconventional thinking, but has been reluctant to bring in outsiders, people who may know hockey but don’t have any previous hockey management experience.

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There are exceptions, of course. The analytics departments that everyone has now were mostly staffed a decade ago with people who were writing and thinking about the game. They were a true vanguard of hockey’s data revolution. The whole system changed, with teams in the minors and junior and elsewhere now bringing along their own analysts, creating a system that the NHL can and does recruit from.

But hiring at the top level — people who aren’t just doing the grunt work but also guiding the thinking of teams — remains pretty insular. Even a data-forward guy like Evan Gold, who was in consideration to be the Vancouver Canucks’ next GM, has two decades of conventional hockey organization experience behind him. Rarely have teams done what the Pittsburgh Penguins did two years ago, when they hired Jonathan Erlichman away from the Tampa Bay Rays to be the senior person in their hockey research and development department. He holds the title of vice-president, hockey research, development and strategy, and is one of president Kyle Dubas’ key lieutenants. Rarer still was Carolina’s decision to promote former outside Eric Tulsky to GM — and look how well that worked.

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It was a bold move, but there is little doubt he’s helped play a big role in the Penguins’ quick turnaround over the past two seasons. Erlichman, a Canadian, came up as a baseball guy after doing a math degree in university. He knows sports, but his perspective makes him unique in that front office.

This is the kind of hire that Mike Gillis mentioned on an episode of the Sekeres And Price show last week. If he were ever involved with an NHL front office again, he would suggest the team hire an outsider to be the team’s head of strategy. Someone who isn’t beholden to ‘hockey thinking,’ who would surely see something the standard approach might have missed. A head of strategy, if you will.

“One of the positions that I wanted to create was a really high-level strategy and opportunity role for somebody outside the game, not currently in it,” said the former Canucks president and GM. “They would just look at the other 31 teams and constantly evaluate their vulnerabilities and where there’s an opportunity.”

They would improve meetings by having a book on every other team in the NHL, ready to present a way to get what they think the Canucks need.

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“They walk in and they go through every one of the opposition of every team in the league and say ‘OK here’s their weakness,” Gillis went on. “This is what they’re going to be looking for. Here’s how we might be able to manage this. Do we have the pieces necessary? How do we go and get a piece necessary to get the one they might give up?

“How do we design our summer signings to reflect in a rebuilding situation like the Canucks’? How we’re going to trade players at the trade deadline for more capital. How we’re going to get that group of 21 to 24 year old players that become your core players at 25 to 29, that give you a chance to be in that five year window for a championship.

“To me, that role, I don’t see it anywhere.”

Asked who he had in mind, Gillis wouldn’t divulge, but I found myself thinking of guys like Cam Lawrence or Steve Werier, guys who have worked in hockey but who have long experience in business. (Lawrence is currently chief financial officer of MEC, while Werier is a corporate lawyer who has worked for Amazon and tech startups, especially in the burgeoning AI field. Both formerly worked for the Florida Panthers)

When Gillis ran the Canucks, they were known for being ahead of the sports-science curve in hockey. Today, all NHL teams pay attention to things only the Canucks were doing 15 years ago, like the importance of sleep and nutrition. How long until every team has a director of strategy on staff?

The Canucks would be smart to get ahead of the curve on this again.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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The role every NHL team — Canucks included — should have, but don’t

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