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TORONTO — When Willie Desjardins said everything is on the table after the Canucks were shutout on Thursday night for the fourth time in five games, he didn’t really mean it.

For example, the Canucks may yet split the Sedins, but they aren’t trading one of them.

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Jannik Hansen isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Bo Horvat. Loui Eriksson will be with Vancouver all season, whether he scores an actual goal or not.

The future of the head coach, however, is another thing. It always is. It’s a story as old as Canada itself.

A National Hockey League team with high expectations — don’t laugh — torturously disappoints and the coach becomes an easy mark or, as Don Cherry once described Roberto Luongo, the “escape goat.”

It’s happened so often, firing a coach in-season comes with its own hopeless slogan.

“Well, you can’t trade all the players.”

It is why, increasingly, the conversation around the Canucks is being centred around their head coach.