Canucks rank highly in NHL front office confidence rankings

While there's still plenty of work to do, the signs are that the Vancouver Canucks are setting themselves up well to become a contender for the foreseeable future. The promise is certainly there, after a season where the team totalled their third-most points in team history and won the first division title since 2012-13.

Rick Tocchet was named NHL Coach of the Year and there's an extremely talented young core to build around. General manager Patrik Allvin was named a finalist for NHL General Manager of the Year, and the way he attacked free agency was extremely encouraging.

As a result of all this, we assume it will come as no surprise that the Canucks have placed very well in The Athletic's ninth annual NHL front office confidence rankings. More specifically, their front office was ranked fifth overall out of all 32 teams.

The criteria

Published on Tuesday (subscription required), every front office was graded in six categories. These included roster building, cap management, drafting and development, trading, free agency and vision.

Written by Dom Luszczyszyn, this year’s edition saw nearly 10,000 responses from fans wanting to grade the team they support (fan base). The overall results also accounted for 250 responses, which graded all 32 NHL teams (public).

Obviously this meant the results were heavily skewed in favour of the respective fan base responses. However, in terms of Luszczyszyn's comments that there was quite a contrast between the fan bases and public results for each team, the Canucks front office did not have quite as much of a disparity compared to most teams.

A significant improvement from a year ago

In respect of the encouraging progress made by the Canucks, consider that this time last year their front office was ranked near the very bottom, at 30th overall. This alludes to how much fans are impressed with the progress made by Allvin and company.

In terms of the comments received from people, those published by The Athletic fit into two camps. One which is happy to admit they were wrong, and those who -- understandably so given the history of the team -- aren't quite all in yet, but are at least optimistic for a change.

In respect of the actual grading categories, roster building came highest at third, while draft and develop was lowest at 16. The other four categories were ranked between fourth and sixth.

if anything, you could make the case that the rankings were actually a little bit too optimistic, which again sounds strange to write given the traditional mindset historically of Canucks fans. Regardless, the front office is in a healthy position among their fan base, with us particularly agreeing with ranking their vision as fifth-best in the NHL.

More objective but still encouraging for the Canucks

Turning to the public rankings, which to reiterate only counts for a small section of the overall responses, it is notable that the overall ranking is still high, at eighth. This is important, given we are -- at least theoretically -- dealing with more objective perspectives on the work of the Canucks front office.

The highest ranking by the public is vision in fifth place, which relates to our own comments in this particular category. The lowest ranking is again for draft and develop, but slightly higher compared to the fan base, in 11th place.

Overall, the main thing which helps is that the front office stuck to their guns, didn't feel pressure about some of the moves wanted by the Canucks fan base, and were proven correct in what they did. As Luszczyszyn concludes: "Fortunately, it all worked out and helped serve as a lesson that this regime really was different — this one actually knows what they’re doing. Confidence means trust and the current front office has earned it."

General observations

No surprise really that the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers front office was ranked first, while the New York Islanders were ranked last. Meanwhile, the Canucks ranked highest among all Canadian NHL teams, while the Toronto Maple Leafs were lowest, at 30.

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