Turnover the name of the game in the Vancouver Canucks' business of late

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There once was a time when people worked for the Vancouver Canucks for years and years.

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Players, coaches and GMs come and go, but in the business end of things, stability was once the name of the game.

But for almost five years now, churn behind the scenes seems to have become a standard thing.

This summer is no exception. On Friday, the Canucks announced the hiring of some new performance personnel, and a couple of new scouts, but a number of notable behind-the-scenes names have left the team as well.

On Friday, the Canucks hired three new therapists — Chris Trivieri, Curtis Bell, and Gerry Ramogida — to replace physio Josh Termeer and chiropractor Erik Yuill. They will continue to work under Alex Trinca and Roman Kaszczij.

And two new scouts, Patrick Leblond and Luca Caputi, have been hired.

The departures, though, do stand out. In June, for instance, there was the departure of vice-president of communications Loring Phinney after only nine months on the job.

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A cheery, upbeat person, with years of experience as a communications and public relations professional, Phinney was a solid choice to fill the shoes of the equally well-regarded Chris Brumwell, who was dumped more than a year before Phinney was hired.

But for whatever reason, Phinney came to decide the job wasn’t for him, so he left.

The team’s visual look is going to be different too.

This week, we learn that Kate Pettersen, also hired a year ago to be the team’s in-house on-camera reporter, is also gone. The @CanucksReporter account created for her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time of her hiring hasn’t been active since late May and shows no sign of Pettersen anymore. It’s been “locked” for some time, meaning new followers must be approved by the person controlling the account.

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She hasn’t commented herself on the change — she still has Canucks photos in the banner of her own X account, although there is no longer any written mention of the Canucks on her account — but multiple sources have confirmed she is no longer working for the team. Her departure isn’t that surprising, given she was hired last summer to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the team — she travelled to all games, filed multiple reports daily to social media, as well as doing post-game interviews that would air on Sportsnet — and she did so … right up until the second round of the playoffs, when she was curiously not sent to Edmonton to cover the team, instead being sent to a low-key public watch party in a Vancouver park.

Also gone from the team’s content department is longtime videographer Paul Albi, who shot much of the Canucks’ best ice-level video footage over the years. He was first hired in January 2014 and was a big reason why the Canucks’ videos — especially the behind the scenes and the ice-level action footage — looked the way they did.

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Threes others in the content department, including Andrew Ross, the team’s other primary videographer, also left the department this summer.

Further, there is another surprising executive level departure — chief revenue officer Terry Kalna is understood to be on his way out.

Kalna was scooped up from the Pittsburgh Penguins only two years ago to head up the Canucks’ partnerships, sponsorship and sales strategies.

Several sources expressed surprise about his departure, which is said to be “to spend more time with family.”

The Canucks haven’t necessarily been quick to fill executive gaps in the last few years. Beyond them taking more than a year to replace Brumwell, the team was without a full-time chief legal officer for two years, hiring Catherine Chow as chief legal officer and general counsel in January, filling a role that became empty when chairman Francesco Aquilini fired Chris Gear in December 2021, shortly after firing former general manager Jim Benning as well. Gear’s former deputy Chris Beardsmore, who held the title of general counsel, had also taken on the duties of the chief legal officer until August 2023, when he resigned. He joined Gear and another former Canucks colleague, James Douglas, at Blackfin Sports Group a month later.

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Hockey ops bye-byes — The Canucks also said sayonara to a pair of former NCAA prospects this week as well, as neither Jacob Truscott nor Matthew Thiessen were signed to contracts before Thursday, the deadline to sign NCAA draftees who have completed four seasons of collegiate play. … With the hiring of Leblond and Caputi, the Canucks’ amateur scouting department sits at 11 scouts, as Thomas Gradin, Pier-Alexandre Poulin, Wyatt Smith and Sergei Chibisov have all been let go. Gradin had first built his reputation scouting in Sweden but had primarily scouted the BCHL and Western Hockey League over the past decade or so; Smith had covered the U.S. midwest since 2012; Chibisov scouted Russia; and Poulin was hired two years ago to scout Quebec. Leblond is expected to scout Quebec, while Caputi’s experience to date has been in Ontario.

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pjohnston@postmedia.com

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