VANCOUVER – After exhausting all other options, the Vancouver Canucks finally did the right thing in hiring Ryan Johnson as their general manager and Henrik and Daniel Sedin as co-presidents of hockey operations.

We borrowed that paragraph from Winston Churchill, who purportedly said something similar about American foreign policy. But there is a relevance to it because the Canucks, in a sporting sense, are nation-building. Or re-building.

Canuck managing owner Francesco Aquilini and outgoing president Jim Rutherford interviewed 17 candidates to replace former general manager Patrik Allvin. And after the ownership family decided whom they wanted to run hockey ops, the iconic Sedin twins were presented with the two finalists: Johnson and Boston Bruins AGM Evan Gold.

It was Daniel and Henrik who then chose to hire Johnson, the Canucks assistant GM, who was the first candidate and, eventually, the final one.

What the three new leaders of the Canucks have in common, besides their background as players and manager/coaches with the National Hockey League team, is intelligence and irreproachable character and integrity.

And since they are taking over an organization at its nadir, a team that rotted from within with startling speed over the last two seasons, those characteristics are a pretty good place to start in undertaking the repairs.

The Canucks are in the embryonic stage of a rebuild, already with a few potential building blocks but obviously needing more. This is not in dispute by anyone, including the Sedins, Johnson and Aquilini. 

What was clear from Thursday’s press conference at Rogers Arena to introduce the new regime is that the most important and immediate job for Johnson and the Sedins is to build a culture and dressing-room ecosystem that can anchor the framework for competitive improvement.

And here again, it would be difficult to find better people to lead that work since the dressing room culture started to erode as soon as the Sedins, who set Canuck standards for more than a decade as players, retired in 2018.

“Before we talk about wins and losses or getting to that point, the environment........

© Sportsnet