Longtime Boston Bruins assistant general manager Jim Benning has been given permission to talk to the Vancouver Canucks, according to a report from CBC's Elliotte Friedman.
From this week's 30 Thoughts:
Trevor Linden is ready to begin his GM interview process, with Boston's Jim Benning widely considered to be the front-runner. Neither he nor the Bruins would confirm, but sources say the Canucks have permission to talk to him. Linden has said current assistant Laurence Gilman is a contender, and it's believed that Philadelphia's Ron Hextall and Nashville's Paul Fenton will be interviewed too. (Sounds like there are more, but the info is dicey, so no guesswork.) There will be some crossover between Vancouver's candidates and Washington's.
Linden and Benning were former Canucks teammates, and the current Bruins executive and former Sabres chief scout briefly worked for Newport Sports, an agency led by Linden's former agent Don Meehan.
While the Canucks apparently have permission to talk to Benning, it's possible that getting permission to actually install him as general manager might be an altogether more difficult task. Writes the Vancouver Province's Jason Botchford:
This has been a rather delicate issue for Linden to navigate, which the president hinted at a week ago after officially firing Tortorella when he said: “Getting permission is not as easy as a simple phone call ... Teams have concerns about their people.”
But this goes beyond being granted permission to interview, something Linden himself suggested when, after being pushed for comment on hiring an executive on another team, he said: “There may need to be a partnership moving forward.”
That’s important because word out of Boston early in this process was that they’d like to keep Benning until after the draft.
Linden recently visited Bruins president Cam Neely in Boston. Could an anticipated stalemate on the Benning-front have motivated the trip?
