Dave Nonis was the architect of the most significant trade in Vancouver Canucks history, but it wasn’t enough to save his job. Nonis was fired Monday after the Canucks missed the playoffs for the second time in three years. (CP Images)
Without even knowing it, on a warm June afternoon in 2006, Dave Nonis inadvertently slipped the noose around his own neck.
It just took two years for the trap door to fall.
Probably far too nice a guy to hold down a position so unforgiving, Nonis was gassed as general manager of the Vancouver Canucks Monday night, a move that was both shocking and perversely expected at the same time.
Shocking because Nonis was seen as one of the brightest young minds in the game. Expected because his charges, in a performance-driven business, missed the playoffs in two of his three seasons at the helm.
In some twisted way, Nonis may have been giving his walking papers for masterminding perhaps the most one-sided trade in NHL history. After pick pocketing Roberto Luongo from Mike Keenan's drawers for a scarred Todd Bertuzzi and second-tier goaltender Alex Auld, they began mapping out the parade route on the west coast.
Pre-Nonis, the Canucks were probably a Dan Cloutier injury away from being a legitimate Cup contender.
Harsh? Maybe. Realistic? You bet.
For a few years, the Canucks were the Philadelphia Flyers of a decade ago, the Ottawa Senators of, well, a month ago. A legitimate starter away from a Stanley Cup.
So Nonis stepped in and, 25 months later, pulled off the biggest trade in team history.
Suddenly, the bar was raised a tad higher in Vancouver. In Luongo's first season, the Canucks enjoyed their most productive regular season ever before bowing out in the second round.
From that point on, nothing short of progression would do for the Canucks.
Instead, there was a serious regression this past season, partly because Nonis couldn't, or wouldn't, pull the trigger at the deadline to add the scoring help the Canucks desperately needed.
Even with Luongo not exactly carrying the team down the stretch and his blueline decimated by injuries, someone had to take the fall and, in the end, for better or worse, one hell of a nice guy lost his job.
But in the end, Nonis was the master of his own demise.