From Drance's Athletic article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6851349/2025/12/01/canucks-quinn-hughes-trade-rebuild-mailbag/?source=emp_shared_article
Coaches were told to finish the year strong vs help the team tank.
Literally selling Hope instead of doing whats right for the Franchise.
Why are you still supporting Aquilini?
30 comments
All about bums on seats for Mr Blueberry.
I mean this isn’t news is it?
The ownership prioritizes profits over anything else. A rebuild is not as profitable.
Vancouvers Dollar Bill Wirtz right here. Short term profits > long term success
This franchise is never going anywhere without a practise facility either…
Seems like a pretty unsurprising thing given the different goals of ownership vs fans. Fans want a successful team, ownership wants to extract profits.
Season ticket sales, why would people renew if were dogshit. This is the thought process of a billionaire and his board. It’s also indicative of someone who doesn’t know shit about hockey.
Really Francesco, you’ve been in Vancouver for long enough to know you have one of the loyalist fan bases in the world and your short sighted decision making driven by nothing but dollar signs is exactly why we’re in the position we’re in. Vancouver is one of the best markets in the nhl, it’s a beautiful city, you have every possible advantage. You don’t mind opening up your wallet, which is great. But listen to the people whose job it is to manage hockey teams. It’s not yours.
You might not care about winning the cup, but the fans and the players do.
Do it right.
Pushing to win late in the season, during their membership renewal period, is to help drive renewals. “Look at how the team has played in the last 2 games, and ignore the last 65 games”
Aquilini being short sighted? Who could have guessed?
It’s been clear for a very long time that this ownership cares more about making money and appearances than putting a winning product on the ice. In order for things to change, fans need to start speaking with their wallets and stop giving this team your money.
This team will never build a true, sustainable contender with Aquilini as the owner.
guess we don’t have to expect a tank this year, time to see who we can draft 15 OA again
This is malpractice. Someone teach this ownership about long term investments.
Who cares about being good 4-5 years down the road when all that matters is getting butts in seats the following fall?
Worst ownership in NHL hands down
I’ve made peace that Canucks will not win as long as Aquilini is the owner
Words cannot express the hatred i have for Francesco Aquilini.
“See what we did down the stretch? What if we carried that into next season? And that is why I’m raising ticket prices by 35% again.”
Id be more excited paying to watch a young potential team that always loses than a stale mid team that usually loses.
It’s marketing.
They want to finish strong so they can sell the next season to season ticket holders for the following season.
This is modern capitalism. Wining for 2 weeks is worth losing for 20 years.
This part pretty much says it all. And underlines why I have no faith things will ever change with the Aquilini family around.
Absolutely wild how unserious we are about being contenders. Hopefully with the new franchises taking centre stage in Vancouver the Canucks’ income will be reduced and they will be less of a cash cow for the owners.
I feel like we all knew this already but to see it written out like that from someone reputable hits different
The Aquilini’s bough the Canucks for like $200 million and now the team is worth $2 billion.
And this is the problem.
Aquilini meddled, the team and franchise turned to shit but there was no financial lesson learned.
Then they just doubled down, more meddling, more bad decision and more losing and still made more money.
Again no financial consequences.
Nobody would run a successful company like they run the Canucks. The 3 brothers never played hockey and by his own admission Fransisco wasn’t even a huge hockey fan but he still insists on inserting himself in hockey decisions.
They didn’t build their wealth, their father did….it seems like Franny meddles because he desperately wants to say he made the important decisions that led to a cup, instead of being happy making a few excellent hires, stepping back and letting the experts do their thing.
The reason the team and franchise is shit is because of Fransisco.
>it’s more important to situate how the hockey team fits into an ownership group’s overall business portfolio than to focus on the cash flow impact of hosting playoff home dates…
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>an attraction like Rogers Arena, with the Canucks as the building’s anchor tenant, holds significant spillover benefits for [Aquilini’s] other businesses. Concerts and NHL games help keep downtown Vancouver vibrant and busy, for example, which is a boon to commercial and residential real estate values, and keeps investment into development flowing. Not to mention that these are events that fill restaurants in and around the rink, and so forth.
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>What’s essential in this context, then, isn’t that the Canucks are viewed by hardcore fans and hockey analytics-focused journalists as an inner-circle contender with a credible Stanley Cup shot. **What really matters is that casual fans will retain enough interest and hope in the franchise to take family and clients to games**, and go check out their favourite comedian or country music artist when they roll through town as well.
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>This is the logic, more than the impact of playoff revenue, that’s potentially threatened by the prospect of committing to a strategic, multiyear downturn in results for the purpose of accumulating enough high-end talent through the draft to build a truly great team capable of contending for a championship.
This is equally as appalling as the quote you shared.
It’s confirmation that Aqua prioritizes the Canucks as a cash cow above anything else, and that, essentially, we will never rebuild, and thus never be a serious franchise, until he sells the team.
He doesn’t care about actually being a contender. He just wants casual fans to ‘think we have a shot’.
Drance forgive us for sharing so much of the article verbatim, but this is some of the most important Canucks journalism in—Henrik & Daniel forgive me for saying this—franchise history. Everyone please subscribe to The Athletic and support Drancer for more.
I remember Brandon Sutter put up 13 points in the final 10 games one season
I was PISSED
We were out of it, and then I said WHERE WaS THIS for rest of your contract
If Buffalo didn’t exist we’d have the worst owner in the league. Each passing year it becomes more clear that Aqua is living day to day. He doesn’t care about building a contender, he just wants the team to be *barely good enough* to get butts in seats. Winning down the stretch even if they miss the playoffs baits fans into thinking the team is decent, and will be good next year so buy buy your tickets! Please sell the team so someone with vision and pockets deep enough to execute it can take the helm.
Fuck Aqualini
IMHO It’s to try and gaslit fans into believing the team is better than it is and get season ticket renewals.
Any feasible way to get the aquas out of our hair in the next 10 years?