There seems to be a bit of a thread running through the reporting of the surprising news that the Vancouver Canucks and Trevor Linden have amicably agreed to consciously uncouple. A lot of the people who are plugged into the Canucks seem to have reached the same conclusion: Jim Benning and Vancouver’s ownership group felt the young players the Canucks have coming into the lineup just needed a little support to contend for playoff spot. Linden thought the team was further away than that and decided to leave.



“They think they’re close to competing for a playoff spot and Linden doesn’t” is also an easy explanation to accept for this schism because, well, it’s hard to make much sense of what the Canucks have done this summer unless they think they’re close to a playoff spot.



This raises a couple of questions: just how likely is Vancouver to make the playoffs and how likely would that be the result of a team turning the corner as...