VIGNEAULT’S RUN

Sitting back watching the playoff’s you have to ask yourself, should we have kept Vigneault for another season, or was it time for him to move on?

Seems he has found his world of happiness, given the success his team is having in the post season of play this season, just a short one year after he left the Canucks.

I for one am happy for him as the problems we had in Vancouver were not necessarily all his doings, but that of also another ex-employed Canuck – Mike Gillis.

Alain Vigneault made it to the conference final with the New York Rangers, and one of his former Vancouver players couldn’t be happier.

Kevin Bieksa the Captain of Team Canada told the media “For Alain, I’m happy for him that he got back there so quickly and he’s a good coach and he’s obviously been there before and he took us there. We had a lot of really good years together. Absolutely we’re cheering for him and hope they do well.”

Bieksa is one of a handful of his (Vigneault’s) former players casually following his playoff run at the world hockey championship, three years after the Canucks came one victory short of the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

After beating the Montreal Canadiens twice at Bell Centre, Vigneault and the Rangers are a short two victories away from advancing to the Cup final.

Bieksa is joined on Team Canada by Canuck teammates Jason Garrison and Alex Burrows, but Garrison only played one season under Vigneault, and so he doesn’t have a connection to him.

Garrison isn’t necessarily cheering for Vigneault and the Rangers and stated “It’s tough to root for success on another team, that’s for sure and it’s notable, kind of the season he’s having and the playoffs that he’s having.

It’s natural for former Canucks to feel a little jealous or envious considering they missed the playoffs under former Rangers coach John Tortorella in a season that cost him and general manager Mike Gillis their jobs.

If they were still playing, Bieksa, Garrison, Burrows, Denmark’s Jannik Hansen and Niclas Jensen, Switzerland’s Yannick Weber and Sweden’s Joacim Eriksson wouldn’t be in Minsk.

Among them, only Bieksa, Burrows, Garrison and Hansen played for Vigneault. Even though things went sour in 2013, Garrison doesn’t have anything bad to say about how the 53-year-old Quebec City native handled a veteran Vancouver team.

Bieksa played for Vigneault for seven seasons during which the Canucks went to the playoffs all but one year and clearly doesn’t share Garrison’s bout of jealousy.

Quite possibly Alain could be laughing at the way the situation turned out, give the recent success his team is having.

The Rangers have only one of those in Raphael Diaz, who played just six games in Vancouver.