Official Francesco Aquilini Thread

Love the BB hiring behind the bench..wish the new GM was hired already..I do not want to go forward with Smyl as a interm,,to me it seemed during the press conference,,that the job was his for the taking as he was talking...
I got quite the opposite impression. Felt like he had enough of Benning f’n it up and went to aqua demanding changes. Feel like he’s a Canuck lifer that will work wherever you put him. Was refreshing to see someone take the reigns.
 
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FAQ clearly doesn't like doing press conferences. I thought he looked nervous and a bit shaky at points. As for what he said, a lot of blah blah but the comment I want to single out was his response to a question along the lines of "what have you learned from the past 7 years?". FAQ's answer was "the importance of culture". What a pile of manure.
 
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FAQ clearly doesn't like doing press conferences. I thought he looked nervous and a bit shaky at points. As for what he said, a lot of blah blah but the comment I want to single out was his response to a question along the lines of "what have you learned from the past 7 years?". FAQ's answer was "the importance of culture". What a pile of manure.
FAQ clearly doesn't like doing press conferences when he has shit the bed 8 years straight.
 
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I don’t have time to watch 30 mins. Did anyone ask him if he’s finally going to be willing to allow his hockey operations group to run the team as they see fit?
 
FAQ clearly doesn't like doing press conferences. I thought he looked nervous and a bit shaky at points. As for what he said, a lot of blah blah but the comment I want to single out was his response to a question along the lines of "what have you learned from the past 7 years?". FAQ's answer was "the importance of culture". What a pile of manure.


The entire family would rather be in the shadows
 
One can only imagine where the team would be today if Linden had been allowed to do his thing?
 
Pretty vanilla press conference but I thought Aquilini was fine. Both him & Smyl were nervous to start and then settled in.

I can at least respect the passion from Smyl, though I really don't think he should be in this large of a role for long. He's probably fine in the consigliere role or whatever he normally does.
 
OK, I watched the entire presser. Here are my thoughts:

1. Aquaman loves the spot light. Yeah, he looked nervous but he enjoys the attention. You could be REALLY media shy like McCaw, but Frankie loves to talk hockey, loves to tell people that is the owner.

2. I don't buy the "no influence" stuff for one second. He'll meddle whenever he sees fit. Put it this way, he may not be interested in every minutia of hockey ops, but when he gets focused on one single idea (ie. hiring a coach) he'll have it done, no matter the GM/President.

3. Love Steamer's passion. But that man has no idea about modern hockey operations or business sense. Thought "re-jig" was some new hippie term or something. There was a question about player development and he answered with the most useless answer:
"We lost a few players on waivers, there's a reason we lost them, we developed them so well"...uh what?
 
We’ve bashed Aquaman for over 3 years and rightfully so but credit where credit is due, he finally did it, better late then never I guess. Don’t F*** Up choosing the new President or GM now.
 
Francesco seems to me like he's the kind of guy who buys a piece of furniture from IKEA, pulls all the parts out and assembles it without the instructions (because he just knows how to do it), and then realizes halfway through that he's used the wrong pieces in the wrong places.

And then he goes and buys more stuff from IKEA and blames the old stuff for not working. Even though IKEA has service available that he can pay to have someone professional to assemble it for him, he refuses.
 
I don’t have time to watch 30 mins. Did anyone ask him if he’s finally going to be willing to allow his hockey operations group to run the team as they see fit?

That would be career suicide for a journalist, instant ban from all Canucks media.
 
We’ve bashed Aquaman for over 3 years and rightfully so but credit where credit is due, he finally did it, better late then never I guess. Don’t F*** Up choosing the new President or GM now.

It doesn't matter who he hires, if he doesn't stop meddling, the results will be the same.
 
Pretty vanilla press conference but I thought Aquilini was fine. Both him & Smyl were nervous to start and then settled in.

I can at least respect the passion from Smyl, though I really don't think he should be in this large of a role for long. He's probably fine in the consigliere role or whatever he normally does.

FAQ has had some disastrous outings before, this wasn't one of them. He was actually kind of fine which I was surprised, maybe he knew that the BB hiring and JB firing bought him some capital so he felt a lift out of that.

OK, I watched the entire presser. Here are my thoughts:

1. Aquaman loves the spot light. Yeah, he looked nervous but he enjoys the attention. You could be REALLY media shy like McCaw, but Frankie loves to talk hockey, loves to tell people that is the owner.

2. I don't buy the "no influence" stuff for one second. He'll meddle whenever he sees fit. Put it this way, he may not be interested in every minutia of hockey ops, but when he gets focused on one single idea (ie. hiring a coach) he'll have it done, no matter the GM/President.

3. Love Steamer's passion. But that man has no idea about modern hockey operations or business sense. Thought "re-jig" was some new hippie term or something. There was a question about player development and he answered with the most useless answer:
"We lost a few players on waivers, there's a reason we lost them, we developed them so well"...uh what?

Yeah, Smyl seems genuine but doesn't jump out as the sharpest crayon in the bunch...like he'd jump in, and often you're like, "Okay, that really didn't add anything". And he kept repeating that he has ideas and will contribute, thou doth protest too much.
 
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Pretty vanilla press conference but I thought Aquilini was fine. Both him & Smyl were nervous to start and then settled in.

I can at least respect the passion from Smyl, though I really don't think he should be in this large of a role for long. He's probably fine in the consigliere role or whatever he normally does.

Agreed.

Overall the presser was a positive surprise for me.

There were some... lets say worrisome comments, that kind of confirmed some of my fears. Mostly about owner meddling.

He had a "written response" along the lines of "Owners own, GMs manage, Coaches coach and players play" After that, when asked about how they landed on BB as coach, it was pretty obvious it was his doing, not that of the Smyl led interim group.

So there is that...

But! I dont doubt Smyl wants whats best for the org. Same goes for the Sedins... Perhaps they will be able to make the Aquas see the value in insulating the GM from the ownership.
 
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One can only imagine where the team would be today if Linden had been allowed to do his thing?
We would have more cap space but Linden was also bad. Do you really want me to recount the bad moves made during his tenure as president ?
 
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One can only imagine where the team would be today if Linden had been allowed to do his thing?
Linden do his thing? Like what... hire Benning.... refusing to rebuild...refusing to even use the word rebuild...then be condescending to fans when he wanted to rebuild...for vouching for a Benning extension...using Jingo words like "transparency" and then canceling summits with season ticket holders when he couldn't take the heat. He is responsible for creating this mess.
 

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