Rattle off a laundry list of all the things Mike Gillis has fumbled in the last 12 months or so, and you're going to come up with a lot of items.

Many of them are contingent upon the ongoing illusion in Vancouver that this was a team well-suited for the rigors of the newly constituted four-division NHL; in which the Canucks now had to play more, and more important, games against titans like the Kings, Sharks and Ducks on a regular basis. A look at the roster the Canucks brought in to start the year, and the coach they thought would guide them back to a Cup Final, should have been a pretty good indicator that things were about to take a hard left into the rough part of the Pacific Division neighborhood, populated already by two other Western Canadian teams, but still they pressed on.

There was some thought, and I must admit to sharing it, that John Tortorella could coax a better performance out of this team; not because they had the personnel to play his style (they didn't and don't), but because he seems to have an ability to bend rosters to his will. It doesn't always work overnight, but historically, it has always worked.

The Canucks, perhaps the most veteran team Tortorella has ever taken over as an in-progress group, largely rejected what he espoused. “'Hard' hockey? Blocking shots? All set, thanks.” But the makings of this wreckage of a franchise, ruined by their pursuit of the Cup that eluded them just a few short years ago, were already in place.

Gillis's first and greatest mistake was letting the goaltending drama stretch on longer than your average kabuki play, complete with astonishing transformations and plot twists no one could have ever seen coming. And while it was never quite revealed that Roberto Luongo or Cory Schneider's pads were made from the skin of anyone's parents, the fact that it was Schneider flying away after all that nonsense was definitely a jaw-dropper. The return Gillis ended up getting for a relatively young, career .927 goaltender — the No. 8 overall pick — was perhaps the best he could have done, but when it comes to taking Bo Horvat with it, not so much. Especially because that left him with a goaltender who was good, but old, expensive, and certainly about to decline hard over the next few years, and who carried a contract which essentially made him valueless in a trade.

That Gillis got anything at all out of Florida is a minor miracle.

That said, though, people have criticized the Canucks for ending last season with a goaltending tandem of Luongo and Schneider, and now being on their way to ending it with a duo of Eddie Lack and Jacob Markstrom. This is, by any measure, a notable downgrade, but it indicates a judicious stewardship of the team in one respect:

Gillis is totally prepared to blow up this roster; and while Canucks fans will be loath to hear it, is the best thing that could happen to it.

Here are the simplest two questions to divine whether the Canucks should start dismantling perhaps their best roster ever:

1) Were they likely to compete for a Stanley Cup?

2) Were they likely to get better?

The answer to both questions is an effusive “no,” and thus Gillis, having made his most crucial misstep in dealing Schneider, was at a crossroads.

On the one hand, he could make like his forebears in Calgary and Edmonton, and try to milk a few more seasons of feckless playoff appearances in which his team wins a game or two but ultimately doesn't come close to being in any way threatening to one of the top teams in the West, before inevitably bottoming out in embarrassing and difficult-to-watch fashion. On the other, he could sell what he could, while he could, and potentially start the team back onto the path to success in a handful of years while still keeping its “core.”

He chose the latter tack, which by the way is the smarter one.

It is also, though, the less popular one, and the one less traveled by. In hockey we're used to seeing many of our more dynastic teams (if you want to call the Canucks that; they certainly held significant considerable sway over a garbage division for years but had little in the way of tangible success outside the Presidents Trophies) run slip slowly but inevitably under the black waves, rather than explode spectacularly like a Nazi blimp over Lakehurst.

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