Official Francesco Aquilini Thread

Oh Melnyk does meddle in hockey ops indeed, and has meddled with the media as well when he was getting unfavourable press
Yeah.. but he's an actual Sens fan.

FAQ is not a Canucks fan.

FAQ sees the Canucks as a revenue milking asset.
 
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The fans at the game should boooooooo this clown without mercy. It does not matter what the team does now. If he can "bribe" the fans with a few wins, nothing will ever change. Also don;t invest a cent in the team or anything Aqua owns. Don't give the family any money. He needs to feel the heat personally. It won't bother him if only Jim and Green take the heat.
 
I want someone from the media to directly ask Aquilini, “It’s been rumored that you make a lot of decisions on the hockey side of the organization and don’t allow GMs the ability to be independent. Is this true?”
Then he will obviously say it’s not true, which then the media member could say, “So the situation with where the hockey team is today is all Jim Benning’s making?”
He’d either have to come clean and say he screws around with things or he’d have to throw Benning under the bus and put it all on him.
I know it’s asking too much for someone in this media to ask a tough question though.
 
They may have badly miscalculated and lost the media here that has been so sympathetic to their failings.

Just astonishing levels of arrogance. How dare you report that our terrible team is terrible!
This is really my only hope. The media here has been complacent in the pathetic performance of this team forever. I think the general fan reaction to this gong show has (finally) gotten them to change face... Knowing the media though, they'll win 2 games in a row and proclaim we owe Jim an apology
 
I have a plan to get any Canucks owner to fix the team into a winner. Just apply a scaling tax to their assets based on how well the team did last season where worse performance means higher taxes and better performance means lower taxes. Winning then generates you even more income than it usually would.
 
I have a plan to get any Canucks owner to fix the team into a winner. Just apply a scaling tax to their assets based on how well the team did last season where worse performance means higher taxes and better performance means lower taxes. Winning then generates you even more income than it usually would.

And this would work because Aquilini hasn't been trying to win and generate playoff revenue?
 
And this would work because Aquilini hasn't been trying to win and generate playoff revenue?
It's speculated that he only really cares about earning income and would be basically fine just barely making the playoffs every season. That and we've seen that he doesn't seem to like firing his staff if they have much left on their contracts, I mean how else can you explain Benning and Green still having jobs?
 
It's speculated that he only really cares about earning income and would be basically fine just barely making the playoffs every season. That and we've seen that he doesn't seem to like firing his staff if they have much left on their contracts, I mean how else can you explain Benning and Green still having jobs?
He fired Gillis and Torts with 4 years left on their contracts
 
I want someone from the media to directly ask Aquilini, “It’s been rumored that you make a lot of decisions on the hockey side of the organization and don’t allow GMs the ability to be independent. Is this true?”
Then he will obviously say it’s not true, which then the media member could say, “So the situation with where the hockey team is today is all Jim Benning’s making?”
He’d either have to come clean and say he screws around with things or he’d have to throw Benning under the bus and put it all on him.
I know it’s asking too much for someone in this media to ask a tough question though.
That’s easy. He would throw Benning under the bus. Years ago he threatened litigation when accused of meddling with the team.

He wants to claim credit when things are going well. And he’ll blame negative online nerds and the fake news media when things aren’t.

You won’t pin him down on anything. Too much plausible deniability there.
 
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Can we get Ryan Reynolds to buy his home town hockey team?

At least he would then be too busy to meddle.
 
No.

Ownership had such an easy out by just firing Benning and letting competent people take control. Instead they've managed to do everything possible to turn the crosshairs on themselves.
He has the even easier out of hiring a POHO, but too stupid to get over his ego.
 
He fired Gillis and Torts with 4 years left on their contracts

To be fair, that’s when the value of the franchise was on the rise and peaking. Now the franchise value has nosedived and Aquilini has lost a lot of money in the restaurant industry during the pandemic.
 
I think the most infuriating part of this whole saga is that Francesco is holding these meetings with Benning and what not - is there something missing that your dumbass hasn’t learned in the past 7 years about Jim that you’ll learn through this?
 
I think the most infuriating part of this whole saga is that Francesco is holding these meetings with Benning and what not - is there something missing that your dumbass hasn’t learned in the past 7 years about Jim that you’ll learn through this?

These guys are in this together. Aquilini loves thinking he's a super smart sports guy and acting as de-facto President of the team and the last thing he wants is to admit failure and to be forced to step back and hire and actual President to run the team, or worse yet to have his bum spanked by his dad and brothers and have the toy taken away from him.

So he will just try to keep digging downward with Benning instead of trying to crawl upward without him.
 
i think we have reached the everybody has to throw things at the ice stage

pacifiers would be my preference

It tells you everything you need to know.

Someone with true conviction would just ignore the noise. Our owners are nothing but Bullies and I have heard they do similar things in their other bussiness ventures
 
This

This is pretty benign stuff. If all he was doing was using the team as a vehicle to schmooze with celebrities but he kept his nose out of the day-to-day operations, I’d be totally fine with it (in spite of the woo woo nature body guru thrust onto the players).

it's quite amusing and I think revealing of his management style that he would send out an email containing the sentence "I hope your enjoying your off season with your family after your incredible championship season"
 
it's quite amusing and I think revealing of his management style that he would send out an email containing the sentence "I hope your enjoying your off season with your family after your incredible championship season"
He’s clearly not a good writer and perhaps that’s reflective of his intelligence. Who knows. But I’m far more concerned with his hands-on involvement with the team and his shielding of Benning from consequences for years.

Whether that comes from stupidity or (more likely) vanity, is immaterial. I just want him to stop doing it.
 

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