a lot of what you are attributing to the team is outside noise they cannot control rather than what is actually happening. you could fault them for not cultivating a lapdog local media to control the narrative i suppose but the majority of the current media noise comes from the east coast and twitter is twitter, and the current canuck regime has been woodshedding the local media since they arrived. plus, vancouver is a major sophisticated city and does not have a chip on its shoulder. you just do not have the control over media coverage you can achieve in smaller more parochial markets that have third rate media talent covering hockey who can be bought with free nachos and a fanbase which has a natural mentality to automatically close ranks against outsiders.
as to the actual situation, it's obviously more subtle than you think. the team quit on the ice a couple of games ago, forcing management to react. they had another pathetic outing last night. they are potentially going to lose other players over miller and maybe the coach and down the road hughes is on radar. they may have to make a damage control move to staunch the bleeding
i think they have had a brutal series of choices. just look at the fact they seriously investigated moving pettersson and publicly said so, a guy they signed for $11m longterm half a minute ago. a situation bad enough that this would be a choice to consider is not something that puts you in a strong bargaining position.
