With Jim Rutherford reportedly looking for a new GM to take the reins,  and hinting his own replacement, there is no better candidate to bring home than Mike Gillis and Gilman. As the most successful GM in franchise history, Gillis proved he could take a middling team and quickly transform it into a dominant, true contender. He’s much more than just a former player turned GM; his background as a lawyer means he thinks at a high level, finding the edges and quirks that other GMs simply weren't seeing. Whether it was he and Laurence Gilman mastering the salary cap before anyone else, or fighting the league on our brutal travel schedule, Gillis was always steps ahead. Every decision was carefully weighed. He didn’t just fire coach Alain Vigneault when he was brought in, he evaluated AV and saw his talent, allowing him to transition the team into a more offensive system in which the Sedins thrived. The hockey moves alone to turn the team into a contender say enough, but the way the organization was run in general was of a very high standard.
Ironically, Gillis became a victim of his own successful standard he built. Expectations grew so high that when the 2011 core inevitably aged, he was let go before he ever got a real chance to rebuild.  Critics talk about his drafting, but when you're winning Presidents Trophies, you're always picking in the late 20s. When he actually had top 10 picks, he landed an absolute stud like Bo Horvat and Cody Hodgson, a pick that only failed because of an undetected injury. The time is now for Francesco Aquilini to let bygones be bygones and bring back the man who took us to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, a series lost only because the team was decimated by injuries. Mike Gillis is a proven winner, and alongside Gilman, he’s the right person to finally bring a Stanley Cup to Vancouver and BC. Firing Gillis brought on a dark age; who better to bring us back out? After so much dysfunction, why not bring back the man we KNOW is the polar opposite of everything we’ve seen this past decade? I say bet on the horse that's proven itself