A midsummer chat with Vancouver Canucks’ general manager Jim Benning, who is at his summer place in Oregon but hasn’t stopped working:

Sun: In the last six weeks, you’ve traded two of the most popular Canucks, Eddie Lack and Zack Kassian, acquired a core player in Brandon Sutter, completely restructured your hockey operations department and hired a new chief amateur scout. We’re guessing you haven’t had time to ride the horses on your acreage outside Portland.

Benning: I don’t ride the horses. I stock the barn with hay and I shovel the manure out of the stalls. My wife and kids do the riding.

Sun: Has this summer been busier than you expected?

Benning: What we’re trying to do is build a team that can play whatever style the game dictates. So we’ve made some changes this summer. I thought maybe in the playoffs we didn’t play with the intensity and emotion to step up in a playoff series and win, so we brought in Brandon Prust and Brandon Sutter. We’ve got some good, young, skill players coming up. But we want to surround them with players who fit.

Sun: Sutter has been a good third-line centre in this league, but what makes you think he can centre the second line on the Canucks?

Benning: I think he’s ready to take on more responsibility. As a third-line centre in Pittsburgh, playing behind Malkin and Crosby, he was still used in all types of situations. He’s a right-shot centre-iceman who’s good on draws. He’s going to bring us more speed. He’s a good forechecker who gets pucks and takes them to the net, and he’s always on the right side of the puck.

The other part of this thing is we want to make sure we do right by Bo Horvat and not rush him into situations. It would do him harm if we put too much pressure on him this season and said ‘you have to be the No. 2 centre.’ Brandon is looking forward to this. He’s excited.

Sun: He just signed a five-year contract extension worth nearly $22 million, which is a lot of money for someone who has never had more than 40 points in a season. Sutter should be excited.

Benning: You win with players like Brandon Sutter. I’m not comparing him to Patrice Bergeron, but when I was in Boston, Bergeron was a great two-way player for us. Look at Jonathan Toews (in Chicago). That’s how you win in the playoffs. When we look at Brandon Sutter and all the things he brings, he’s going to be in our next wave of core players. I believe his best hockey is still ahead of him.

Sun: Draft pick Jared McCann could become a core player, too, but he took a huge check to the head Monday playing for Canada in that junior tournament in Calgary. How is he?

Benning: He flew into Vancouver today and will be seen by our doctors.

Sun: Does he have a concussion?

Benning: We don’t know how bad it is. He flew in today with Stan Smyl and he told Stan he’s feeling a lot better.

Sun: Another of your elite prospects, Jake Virtanen, is still with Team Canada. Is he having the summer he needs to have to challenge for NHL playing time next season?

Benning: He’s having a good summer. He’s been working out hard. When he showed up in Utica (for the AHL playoffs), he was 228 pounds. He’s down to 210 now. He has bought into doing the work off the ice and watching his diet and giving himself every opportunity he can to make our team.

Sun: Judd Brackett was a part-time scout for the Canucks the last seven years. How did he become your new director of amateur scouting?

Benning: We’ve worked with our staff over the course of a year; we see Judd as a guy who knows what NHL players are supposed to look like and knows the kind of players you need to win. We like the way he works with other people. We think he’s going to be a rising star in the scouting business.

Sun: Where does his promotion leave chief scout Ron Delorme and associate chief scout Thomas Gradin?

Benning: Ron and Thomas have a lot of experience. Before we hired Judd, we talked to them. We’ve asked them to help mentor Judd and we’re all going to continue to work together as a team. Amateur scouting is the most important thing we do.

Sun: You also hired another amateur scout, Mike Addesa, a former U.S. college coach who resigned from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1989 after using a racial slur against a black player. Did you know this?

Benning: I was aware of that. He made a mistake 25 years ago. That was a long time ago. He scouted for the Detroit Red Wings for 15 years. All the other scouts call him ‘Coach.’ He’s a good scout and he’s going to help mentor some of our younger scouts.

Sun: Your hockey-ops department, with John Weisbrod as assistant GM and Laurence Gilman, Lorne Henning and Eric Crawford fired, looks much different than it did a couple of months ago.

Benning: Change is hard. I like Laurence and Lorne and Eric. They’re good people. But that’s part of what happens when there’s change at the top. You need to be unified through the ranks and that’s what we’ve tried to do.

Sun: Are you satisfied with what you’ve done?

Benning: From the time I took the job (14 months ago) until 10 days ago, I went at it hard. It hasn’t been easy. I’ll admit it — it’s been hard. I’ve had to make hard decisions to try to remain competitive while building for the future. It’s not an easy thing to do. But for the most part, we’ve been able to accomplish that this summer.

Sun: Take the rest of the summer off.

Benning: I’ll be back in Vancouver next week.

imacintyre@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/imacvansun