In the past, he has always felt like he could find a solution to any tricky situation, Rutherford told The Globe and Mail during an interview on Monday, “and I felt like for a long time that there was a solution here because everybody has worked on it, including the parties involved.”
“But it only gets resolved for a short period of time and then it festers again and so it certainly appears like there’s not a good solution that would keep this group together.”
Of course, personality differences exist in every NHL dressing room. For as long as the league has existed, there have been situations where players haven’t liked one another. You would think that in this case, an alpha male who likes to push his weight around like Miller, 31, and a more sensitive and soft-spoken player like Pettersson, 26, could put their differences aside for the good of the team. But apparently not.
“We’ve had those conversations and I think the parties understand that and I think they’ve tried,” Rutherford told me. “As you know, sometimes emotions get deep and as much as people try sometimes you can’t get over it. It certainly appears that’s what’s going on here.”
“We’re talking about two of our top players,” Rutherford said. “Certainly, our two best forwards. It can really be tough on a franchise – not only present but into the future – when you’re planning on peaking this team into a contending team and then you find out that’s not going to happen. Or at least it’s not going to happen with the group we have now. Then you have to put together a new plan.”
“When you don’t have chemistry, it’s hard to be that consistent team because there’s too much going on in the room for everybody to concentrate on what they’re supposed to do,” Rutherford said.
I asked Rutherford if he means the Miller-Pettersson drama has impacted the entire team.
“Yes, yup,” he said.
Rutherford and his general manager, Patrik Allvin, are uncertain if removing one of either Pettersson or Miller will fix the problem. “We don’t know,” Rutherford said. “We’ll just have to wait to find out. We’ll have to take it a step at a time. If we try and do it too fast, that’s really when you can make some mistakes.”
“If we were going to completely start over that means [Hughes] goes,” Rutherford told the Globe. “And we’d like to figure out a way that he’s here forever.”
“We’ll have to do the best we can in trades,” Rutherford said. “Whatever assets you get in return, you may turn them into something else. And we have to work our way back into being a contending team.”
“So yeah, if a centre goes out of here we have to get some kind of centre back but it’s not going to be the same as the centre going out. It might not even be a No. 2 centre, but you’d have to do the best with what we have until we figure out how to fill that spot back in.
“And then, of course, you have to get extra things [in any trade] that you can either use in the future to flip for NHL players now or for other positions or things like that.”
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